Masks are now optional in many airports, subways and buses. But to understand why, you have to go back to 1944 when the Public Health Service Act was passed.
That’s the law that authorizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make and enforce measures that are “necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases.”
The CDC wasn’t around back then, but the Public Health Service was and so were recent memories of the 1918 flu pandemic. Professor Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University said it was around this time that health officials realized infectious diseases were one of the most serious threats and that states alone couldn’t prevent their spread.
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