[BoxOfRain]

>Why do you feel so strongly about this?

From a practical point of view I think that the plastic ones are probably going to be horrible from an environmental perspective - especially to the marine environment which is where a lot of plastic litter ultimately ends up. I'll admit there's also an element of iconoclasm involved in why I'll be keen to see the back of them when their times comes. From a purely symbolic point of view (ie regardless of their effectiveness) they're quite a dystopian thing in my opinion, it's a signal of "be afraid of disease" or worse still "my fellow human beings are disgusting plague vectors". I can't help that feel that making hiding our faces a permanent social norm would lead to society becoming even more atomised than it already is which is also fairly dystopian.

On a purely personal note, I also don't like that they give every moral authoritarian and insufferable busybody yet another thing to harass strangers about, especially when legal penalties for non-compliance exist.