We’ve been flip-flopping on the use of face shields all week. It’s on and off from one day to the next. What is the deal with face shields? After a meeting with lawmakers, including Senate President Vicente Sotto III, at Malacañang last week, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte had agreed that the wearing of face shields should only be mandatory at hospitals. It was Senator Sotto who broke the news. He, along with Manila Mayor Isko Moreno Domagoso, had been most vocal in urging the government to reconsider its face shield policy. Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque later confirmed the news, adding that “what the president has decided, then that’s policy.” But policies are not set in stone, not at a time as uncertain as this pandemic. As quickly as it was announced, the policy was reversed, the President yielding to the advice of health experts that, in view of the more infectious COVID-19 variants, it was in our best interest to keep our face shields on. Apologizing for the confusion, the President said on June 21, after being told that four more Filipinos had been infected by the more easily transmissible variant from India, bringing the total number of Delta infections in the country to 17, that “(the wearing of face shields) is a small inconvenience” we would need to undergo to prevent a disaster. What inconvenience? In mid-2020, as COVID-19 swept across the world, the face shield became a new protective trend in places like the US and China, across Europe, even here in the Philippines, where we wore it with colorful beads, flower cutouts, even Swarovski crystals. Back then, it was seen not as an extra precaution but as an alternative to face masks—bulkier but more convenient because we could speak through it with our faces visible beneath the transparent barrier, more effective in keeping us from touching our faces and also because it provided eye protection, and more environment-friendly because, unlike the single-use surgical mask, it could be cleaned with plain soap and water. In the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, a 2014 study found that a face shield, a lifesaver for health workers like surgeons and dentists, could reduce 96 percent of inhalation exposure to cough droplets or blood sprays, although its author, a biomedical engineer in Washington D.C., did say it was no match, compared to a cloth mask, against a virus. Guidelines from both the WHO and the CDC have since warned against the use of a face shield in place of a face mask. Worn with a face mask, however, while practicing social distancing and regular handwashing, a face shield expands our arsenal against SARS-COV-2. According to a DOH report in late 2020, proper wearing of face masks with face shields and physical distancing provides 99 percent protection against COVID-19. On a related note, contrary to some of our politicians’ claim that nowhere else but here are face shields in use, the global face shield market, according to Reportlinker, a Lyon-based tech company that uses artificial intelligence to deliver market forecasts, “is expected to grow from $2.60 billion in 2020 to $2.86 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 9.8 percent.” Among the countries covered in this report were Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the UK, and the US.