Should face masks be beautiful?

With all due respect to medical illustrators, the singular symbol of the COVID-19 pandemic will not be the digital rendering of a red virus spore that floats in the background of newscasts like a nightmare balloon. No, the definitive visual of the pandemic is the face mask. It's on the cover of Vogue Spain and on the faces of a papparazzi-ed Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas strolling through L.A. Like your keys, it's the thing you don't leave your house without. Home sewers the world over are making masks from spare cloth and evoking a wartime effort of pitching in. Many of us are wearing our masks dutifully - and complaining about fogged-up glasses and pinched ears in the process. Life Science Intelligence, a medical tech analysis firm, puts mask sales at 305 per cent higher than pre-pandemic estimates.