During the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, cities and states hit hard mandated that residents wear six-ply gauze masks. One medical expert said they were too thin and porous to restrain tiny microbes. “It was like trying to keep out dust with chicken wire.” Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore (1917-1925), a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).
