Masks and "social distancing" are nothing new. Over the centuries, Americans have suffered terribly from smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, pellagra, influenza, polio, and other pandemics.
As much as nine-tenths of the indigenous population of the Americas died in less than a generation from European pathogens.
In Boston, where one in six was dying of the plague, the great preacher battled for a new and radical idea.