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If you have something better, you don’t need to do both — because the better supersedes the other.

The surgical mask is actually one of the highest tech accessories one should always have around. Survivalists know that; they know you can live a long time without eating, and even a long time without water, but air is critical to one’s survival. That’s why when you see those guys fighting wildfires, they’d be overcome by the smoke without that filtration — of even a towel.

The lungs are that critical. First they said that masks don’t work — when it is obvious, it works for many applications besides protecting against viruses. If you work around toxic chemicals, you need to wear a mask. If you work around a lot of dust and debris, you need to wear a mask. Many people around the world wear it because of the air pollution from traffic.

The surprising thing is that it helps to wear even during exercising — because it acts as a portable air purifier — just like a regular air purifier works. So the rationalization that one is only breathing in bad air trapped under a mask does not hold up. It’s actually filtering the air — and one of the objectives of exercise, is to get as pure air as possible deep into one’s lungs.

Most people are not aware of how much the air is polluted — because there are many people sharing that air — and it is not automatically cleaned once it gets out into a larger space — but actually lingers, and why we can smell cigarette smoking from quite a distance — or any smoke for that matter.

Some of the better masks have an extra layer of carbon specifically to eliminate odors. But what really gives them an advantage is the ease of putting them on and off — rather than improvising them from scratch each time. As for there being only a limited supply, it is probably the easiest thing to make — and if a premier productive society cannot produce it as a priority, it deserves to die.