Thomas Schlich and Bruno J. Strasser
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is best known as a vaccination skeptic, but he is also skeptical about using masks for infection control. At the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC in May 2024, Kennedy Jr. recalled being asked during the pandemic whether he was scared of dying of COVID-19 since he wasn’t wearing a mask. His answer at the time was: “There’s a lot worse things than dying,” including “living like a slave”. The audience broke into applause.
Such an opinion is not new. A century earlier, during the influenza pandemic, citizen Frank Bobich told a Sacramento police officer that he would rather “be killed or hanged” than cover his face with a mask. Bobich had a mask in his pocket but refused to comply with the city-wide mask mandate. These blusterous statements reveal that for many people masks mean much more than protection against infectious diseases. They are not about health, but freedom. For this reason, the history of masks – and opposition to mask mandates – offers a unique window into the tense relationships between scientific expertise, medical authority, and state power.

Bruno J Strasser & Thomas Schlich’s new book, The Mask, is out now with Yale University Press
Continue reading