CLAIM: A study co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci showed that “most of the deaths” during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic were actually due to infections from face masks.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The study in question made no mention of masks. Instead, it found that many of the deaths were likely caused by a secondary bacterial pneumonia that followed influenza infection. There is no evidence masks were responsible, Fauci told The Associated Press.
THE FACTS: As new COVID-19 variants circulate, social media users are again spreading false and misleading claims about mitigation measures such as masks.
Some are erroneously claiming that a study written by Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, found that mask-wearing was responsible for the wave of deaths seen during a pandemic a century ago.
“Even back to the 1918 Spanish Flu, it was shown in a paper written by Fauci that most of the deaths that occurred during the Spanish flu, were not the Spanish flu — the virus — it was actually secondary infections due to wearing those stupid cotton masks,” a man claims in a video clip shared on Instagram. “So people need to be aware.”
The paper actually didn’t mention masks at all.
Fauci and two NIAID colleagues published the 2008 study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, examining lung tissue from autopsies and other data and concluding that “the majority of deaths in the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic likely resulted directly from secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory-tract bacteria.”
But that doesn’t mean the flu wasn’t to blame.
In describing the study’s findings in 2008, the National Institute of Health noted that “most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following influenza virus infection.”
It added: “The pneumonia was caused when bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat invaded the lungs along a pathway created when the virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs.”
In other words: “Certain people who developed primary viral pneumonia also had a secondary complication of bacterial infection that contributed to their deaths. However, the primary culprit was the influenza virus,” Fauci said in an email to the AP.
“The 1918 influenza pandemic was caused by the H1N1 influenza virus,” he wrote.
Fauci called claims to the contrary, or that the deaths were attributable to masks, “nonsense.”
There is “absolutely no evidence that masks had anything to do with contributing to bacterial pneumonia,” Fauci added.
Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study, concurred, saying that claims the flu were unrelated to the deaths in 1918 “is a gross misreading of the paper.”
Deaths from secondary bacterial pneumonia were “quite common for most flu deaths in the era before antibiotics,” he said in an email.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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