PLEASE HELP QUICKLY: (FIRST ANSWER GETS BRAINLIEST) Read this passage from “The Masque of the Red Death.” What is the meaning of the phrase “pest ban”?

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal --the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

Terror of the unknown

Quickness of death

Sign of contamination