Assessment of Containment Strategies in the 1918-1920 Pandemic (2006)
hsdl.org
hsdl.org
This was a detailed investigation of how various containment strategies played out in several particular US communities. If you are interested in the history of the Spanish Influenza pandemic, it is worth reading because they identified several inaccuracies in the standard accounts.
The Markel report was one of the most frequently cited documents in early 2020, when officials were debating how to respond to COVID-19. Some people believe that officials deliberately misled the public when they said there was no benefit to public mask-wearing, but they appear to have been honestly relating what they read.
From the executive summary of the report:
...we have reached two major conclusions:
(1) Protective sequestration (the shielding of a defined and still healthy group of people from the risk of infection from outsiders), if enacted early enough in the pandemic, crafted so as to encourage the compliance of the population involved without draconian enforcement measures, and continued for the lengthy period of time at which the area is at risk, stands the best chance of protection against infection...
(2) Available data from the second wave of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic fail to show that any other NPI (apart from protective sequestration) was, or was not, effective in helping to contain the spread of the virus...Moreover, we could not locate any consistent, reliable data that would support the conclusion that face masks, as available and as worn during the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic, conferred any protection to the populations that wore them.
They also published a brief summary: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17326953/