Of masks and pandemics
Children for face-toface education were returning to my wife’s Connecticut elementary school. She told me about the colorful masks they were wearing, some with animal face drawings on them. It occurred to me that some entrepreneurs had seized on the pandemic to make a buck on “designer masks.”
The children’s mask wearing reminded me of “The Durango Kid” character from my youth. With a black bandana wrapped around his nose and mouth, he flailed against wrongdoers in comics books and Western B movies. Other defenders of peace and justice like Zorro and The Lone Ranger, chose to cover their upper faces using mysterious black masks with cutouts for their eyes.
The following day in flipping through channels on my TV streaming service, I tuned in to a past episode of a show listed as “The Mask Singer.” On stage a panel of judges was trying to guess the identities of the masked singing celebrities. Shrouded in wacky and whimsical costume (turtles, robots and llamas) these camouflaged performers belted out songs as the audience joined in the guessing game.
Over that weekend I also saw a rerun of the recent Emmy awards program. Among the top winners was a series called “Watchmen.” Here, the main character was Sister Night, an African American woman superhero, bandana-masked, and fighting against injustices.
Now my curiosity antenna was fully extended. I thought of those children with their cute facial coverings, my Western heroes and The Masked Singer and Watchmen programs. And I knew I had to research the history of mask wearing and past pandemic outbreaks.
Supposedly the oldest mask ever found was from 7000 BC. Over the centuries masks have been worn to exorcise evil spirits from the sick, during fertility rites, and at weddings. Once on a business trip to Cairo, Egypt, a couple were married on my hotel’s band stage. Belly dancers swirled around our restaurant tables, each dancer sporting a decorative mask.
Today throughout the world masks are still worn at yearly festivals. Here in the U.S. we will soon, once more, celebrate Halloween. Which originated from a Celtic festival. No doubt people in other countries are as fascinated about this day of “treat or trick” mask wearing as we are of their traditions.
Ancient Egyptians covered the faces of the dead with masks during burial ceremonies. It was a means of frightening away evil spirits and protecting the deceased. It led me to recall a saying I had repeated countless times as my two daughters were growing up, “Children must be protected against themselves.”
In so far as pandemic and epidemics are concerned, humans have been riddled with hovering infectious diseases seemingly since the beginning of time. In Constantinople, circa 541AD an epidemic that started there wiped out half of the world’s population. I could find no citing of any protective mask wearing during that or other plights centuries later. It appears that doctors first used such masks during the 17th century bubonic plague in Europe.
A Madame Rowley is credited with inventing the first facial mask in England during the 18th century. That invention may have been groundbreaking because it was referred to as a “face glove,” a mask that helped preserve the complexion of people’s skin. My guess is that it may have been a form of ointment treatment to hide facial imperfections. Perhaps we should dub Madame Rowley as the “Mother of pre-Botox.”
Today some Americans are averse to wearing masks as was the case during the 1918 flu. Named the Spanish Flu, it’s estimated it took between 50 million to 100 million individuals. Americans resisting mask-wearing back then were called slackers. Resistance to masks was also prevalent in Canada that year; historian Janice Dickin McGinnis has written that masks there “were widely unpopular.” People would let their masks sag and pull them up as the police came by.
Mask aversion (and other odd behaviors related to masks) can be experienced in commonplace circumstances. On an Amtrak train several weeks ago a young lady had her mask strapped around her chin. As the conductor came up and down the aisle, she’d pull it up. That didn’t bother me as much as the gentleman who leaned away from me each time he walked by my seat. As we were both robustly masked, I wondered if he feared that droplets would seep through my N95 mask and rise to infect him.
Everyone hopes a vaccine will be developed soon, and this coronavirus will finally be tamed. On my bucket list is a future visit to my wife’s school to see smiles on those children’s mask-free faces. As of now the only time they take them off is during mask breaks outside the school building.
One other lesson learned from my reading about mask wearing and pandemic scourges is that as bad as things may seem today…folks of yore had it far worse.
Juan Negroni, a Weston resident, is a consultant, bilingual speaker and writer. He is the chairman and CEO of the Institute of Management Consultants. Email him at juannegroni12@gmail.com.