Despite searching on google, I have yet to find the "Ode to the Anti-Mask League".
1. Your article partially answers the memory-hole issue: wartime censorship.
2. Your article points out part of the problem but then fails to address it: fatigue. The fatigue mentioned in 1919 was after less than a year of restrictions. We are going on 2. It just handwaives the issue away with a "suck it up and stop being selfish" message.
3. Your article points out part of the problem comparing 1919 to now: the virus whipped through vulnerable populations and became endemic. One of the things our measures might have done is just postponed certain deaths. The true measure of what we saved would be people who are vaccinated and whose lives were otherwise spared because of the vaccine but that's not, as dad 4 blithely like to claim, everyone who died of corona.
4. This is democracy. The public has some input on the cost/benefit of measures. Public officials in a democracy don't get to ignore those preferences because they think they know better. When they do, as Virginia pointed out, there are consequences.
Wartime censorship is why it was known as Spanish Flu, which I have known for at least 40 years.
You're more likely to have a successful Google search if you don't restrict yourself to looking for things you just made up. For example --
