WITHDRAWN: To wear or not to wear? Adherence to face mask use during the COVID-19 and Spanish influenza pandemics

During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks have been employed as a public and personal health control measure against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Their use is intended as personal protection to prevent infection and as source control to limit transmission of the virus in a community or healthcare setting. Yet the wearing of masks has become a catalyst for political conflict, an arena where scientific evidence is often viewed through a partisan lens. The way that anti-maskers chafe at the mask requirement evokes a time when people were advised to wear a mask during the 1918 pandemic. As the Spanish flu swept through the world causing global devastation in 1918 and 1919, face masks became ubiquitous to help in preventing the spread of disease. A century apart, medical authorities urged and urge the wearing of masks to help slow the spread of disease. Nonetheless, people were and remain resistant to this simple and common sense advice. The purpose of this article is twofold: to provide a brief literature review on the unequivocal scientific evidence that masks reduce community transmission in view of the current pandemic, review mask use in children and to compare and contrast attitudes to mask wearing during the Spanish flu and the COVID-19 pandemic, and analyse where these attitudes stem from.
Highlights • Unequivocal scientific evidence that masks reduce community transmission. • Mask adherence is highly contingent on the communication of risk and the perceived ability to make the change. • Resistence to mask adherence evokes a time when people were advised to wear a mask during the 1918 pandemic. • Three concepts: individualism versus collectivism; trust versus fear; and obeying social distance rules. • Shifting the narrative to cultivate an ingrained sense of responsibility and civic duty.