If people get fed up with masks, one option might be to use face shields: clear-plastic guards attached to a headband. These at least allow you to see your interlocutor’s face, and for the hearing impaired, they allow for lip-reading. For people working in jobs that require a face covering, face shields might simply be more pleasant to wear all day. “I can imagine that if you were bagging groceries six hours a day that it would be probably much more comfortable to wear a face shield,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University.
No studies have yet compared whether masks or face shields are more effective at preventing coronavirus transmission, but it’s possible that shields might keep us safer. Michael Edmond, a University of Iowa epidemiologist, has written that face shields reduce exposure to more than 90 percent of flu droplets from a cough, and unlike masks, they have the added benefit of keeping viral droplets out of a person’s eyes. People wearing masks might also be tempted to scratch or touch their face, but people wearing shields physically can’t.
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