The Atlantic

We’ll Be Wearing Things on Our Faces for a Long Time

You can choose between a mask and a face shield, but you can’t choose nothing.
Source: Stephane de Sakutin / Getty

If you think about it, “the face mask is the condom of our generation,” says Brian Castrucci, the president of the de Beaumont Foundation, a public-health nonprofit. Castrucci spent a decade working in state and local health departments, and he remembers when the HIV epidemic made condoms mainstream in the United States. No one was especially thrilled about it, but as the dangers of unprotected sex became clear, people came to accept them.

The same can now be said of face masks, which have gone from seeming them. Pool-goers might . There’s even a that lets you eat with one on.

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