Fact Check: Viral 1900s Photograph Shows Women Wearing Mask Due to Spanish Flu

As the world battles the coronavirus pandemic, people on social media are putting the Spanish flu back into the limelight to compare the two outbreaks and to see what changed in the past 100 years when it comes to protocols in pandemics. A photograph started circulating on Twitter and it showed two women wearing masks in 1919, during the height of the Spanish flu pandemic.

Wearing flu masks in 1918

The said photograph is genuine. However, sources say that it was not taken in 1919 during the Spanish flu pandemic, and the masks were worn for fashion and not for medical purposes. The image is available through Alamy and presented with the caption "Ladies' fashion from 1913." The image is also attached to a description in German that explains the trend imitated traditional veils work in Turkey.

According to the translated caption, the peculiar fashion emerged from the Balkan War and women wore the nose veil that has been used in Turkey for centuries.

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Even though the particular photograph shows two fashionable women, people were encouraged to wear masks during the Spanish flu pandemic. There are 1918 pictures circulating in social media that shows how people dealt with the pandemic back then. It was even announced that police officers patrolled the streets to make sure that people were wearing flu masks.

The 1918 pandemic infected around 500 million people, which was a third for the world total population back then, and it resulted in an estimated 50 million deaths, 675,000 of the said deaths were in the United States. People wore protective masks as protocol mandated by countries infected with the disease.

According to CNN, America led the world in mask wearing during the pandemic and in some areas of the country, the citizens were required to wear masks in public for protection.

The Spanish Flu

Three months after the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, it has spread around the world and more than one million people are now infected, with 108,837 deaths. The virus as brought the world economy to a near-grinding halt.

Scientists estimated that millions will die before COVID-19 runs its course. There are numerous infectious disease specialists and scientists that still do not know about the virus and how deadly and contagious it could be, as all of those aspects are still a matter of debate.

This is not the first time that the world suffered from a pandemic, in 1918, the Spanish flu infected and killed millions of people. And now the experts are comparing the two to show the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. According to experts, the coronavirus has a mortality rate of 4.5% and the Spanish flu had a mortality rate of 2.5%.

The 1918 Spanish flu was one of the most horrific pandemics of the 20th century, hitting those ages 20 to 40 hard, according to WHO. As for the coronavirus pandemic, those who are high-risk are the elderly and those with previous health issues. This means that the COVID-19 or coronavirus is more infectious than the 1918 flu.

In order to help stop the spread of the virus, health experts are asking people to wash their hands, avoid touching their face and to practice social distancing and self-isolation.