November 18, 2020 – New Danish Study Finds Masks Don’t Protect Wearers From COVID Infection A newly released study in the academic journal Annals of Internal Medicine casts more doubt on policies that force healthy individuals to wear face coverings.
The CDC’s Mask Mandate Study: Debunked – AIER
“During the influenza pandemic of 1918, officials often advised Americans to wear face masks in public.” “They were useless.”
15 Apr 20 – Face masks become mandatory in Pennsylvania
https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Guidance/Sexual-Health.
Wear a face covering or mask. During COVID-19, wearing a face covering that covers your nose and mouth is a good way to add a layer of protection during sex with those outside your household.
1 Jul 20 – Pennsylvania makes masks mandatory — even outdoors
18 Nov 20 – Pennsylvania mandates mask-wearing inside your home …
4 Mar 21 – Pa. mask mandate: State holding firm on COVID-19 mask …
Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf will not soon follow the lead of governors in Texas and Mississippi in repealing mask mandates and lifting COVID-19 restrictions to allow businesses to operate at full …
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a strong advocate for mandatory masking, was caught off camera laughing about how wearing masks is an act of “political theater.”
Everyone wore masks during the 1918 flu pandemic. They were useless.
April 2, 2020 at 4:32 am
By Eliza McGraw The Washington Post
People called them “flu fences” and “chin sails.” Gala attendees fastened theirs with gaudy earrings. Smokers cut flaps in them, and movie houses gave them away with tickets.
During the influenza pandemic of 1918, officials often advised Americans to wear face masks in public. Doctors believed that masks could help prevent “spray infections,” according to historian John M. Barry in his book, “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.” Enforced by local health officials, the facial coverings grew routine. Often, Red Cross chapters fashioned and distributed the masks that were “seen everywhere and would become a symbol of the epidemic,” Barry wrote. Americans used the masks as a method of retaining some normalcy, and as the only aspect of the epidemic discussable with any sense of play.
If directed to wear a mask, homemade worked. “Take a piece of gauze the size of a sheet of typewriter paper,” said instructions in the Atlanta Constitution. “Fold it twice, so that it will fit an envelope. Then attach strings to the four corners and tie these strings at the back of the neck. The mask covers the nose and mouth, so that the wearer breathes through four thicknesses of gauze. A clean handkerchief is just as good as the gauze.”
Now, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is debating whether it should recommend that people wear masks when they go outside. In 1918, with a different virus, it didn’t help.
[snip]
On Nov. 1, 1918, Eugene C. Caley became the first man in Oakland, California, to be arrested for not wearing a mask. He was released on bail, although similar scofflaws in San Francisco had been sentenced to up to 10 days in jail. (Departments donated revenue from fines to the Red Cross.)
“This is only the beginning,” said the chief of police, according to the Oakland Tribune. “We are going to enforce this mask ordinance if we have to pack the city jail with people. This epidemic is too serious to be taken as a joke, and men arrested … will find that it’s no laughing matter when they face the police judges.”
Some complained that the masks were “unsanitary,” and bureaucratic confusion could stymie whether they were worn. In Alexandria, Louisiana, a sanitation leader for the Army ordered flu masks be worn. But waiters removed theirs because their local public health official said that the masks prevented “free breathing,” according to the Town Talk.
PA Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 38 