Whether you’re concerned about Covid; worried about con flu; want to visit someone with cats when you have vicious allergies; or just don’t want to breathe in the coughs, farts, and sneezes of a planeful of people on a transoceanic flight...whatever the reason, you might want to wear an N-95 mask but not love the social aspects of having your mouth covered by opaque fabric. It's hard to talk when both people are wearing masks, and even worse if you're the only one. There are flat-pack masks with a window cutout, but the little mouth window looks too embarrassingly silly to wear. What I wish existed:
A reusable mask, N95 or better, consisting of a fully transparent upper part for the mouth/nose area with an anti-fog coating. The edges are lined with transparent silicone or something, soft enough to provide a halfway decent seal even against stubble or a closely trimmed beard. The filters are replaceable and seated in some kind of cartridges that sit away to the sides where they don’t obstruct facial visibility; maybe hanging down, maybe serving as anchors for the headband straps, whatever. The lower part of the mask would presumably need to be some elastic material to allow mouth/jaw movement, ideally also at least translucent. There might be a one-way valve down by the chin, preferably out of view, to reduce heating/fogging and ensure that the warm, moist air you breathe out leaves as far as possible from your glasses.
Fit would be ensured via a kind of subscription model: You sign up, get a kit to make a face mold you send back, and the company uses that to make a custom mold or 3D print; and you can order extras or replacement as they’ll inevitably fall, be sat on, get chewed up by dogs, or just turn increasingly yellow and opaque with UV exposure. And of course you have to keep buying filters, unless and until someone invents a reusable/washable N95 filter medium, and I’m not holding my breath, ahahah.
Extras and variants might include sillier things, like opaque covers, a version with a self-sealing valve for a drinking straw (you’d break the seal while drinking, but you wouldn’t need to disturb the fit), and filter cartridges with battery-powered fans to provide a very slight positive pressure; just enough that if there are slight leaks around the edges, you’re still breathing the filtered air because positive pressure ensures that minor leaks serve as egress rather than ingress for air. Filters could have a strong scent that you only detect when they need replacement. Or I guess they could have some kind of ghastly scent add-ons, for people who like such things. Built-in headphones. All kinds of different strap patterns. CPAP integration. I dunno. I'm sure once a corporation got its hand on it, they'd have all kinds of ideas to exploit it…
Drawbacks: You’d really hate to sneeze in one of these things. And I’m sure it’d be more expensive than regular flat-pack masks.
But I wish something like this existed. I'd buy some even now. Kind of surprised nothing like this materialized during the most fervent, locked-down part of the pandemic.