Jeri (azpaints) said:

But when one is simply walking, where one might greet someone in passing (or not) the "difficult to talk" is not applicable and a mask should be worn.

Being a ham radio operator, putting a microphone underneath a mask is a fairly trivial undertaking. And having been a pilot at the age of 17, communicating clearly in a high noise environment is something I learned is pretty easy to do, although it might not be intuitive.

In a noisy airplane cockpit, we used noise cancelling microphones even in the 1970s. In fighter jets, they have used throat microphones also since that era. These are contact transducers. You strap it on your neck, and it touches you at two separate points that it directly picks up the vibration of your vocal cords. When you talk, that electrical signal goes through an amplifier circuit into the other aircrews' headsets, and vice versa. You're plugged into a sort of "party line".

Then if you are pilot in command, your audio feed also goes into a box that will feed the radio when you key the microphone, so Air Traffic Control can clearly hear you say something like "Lubbock approach, Bonanza Three two six three Bravo, radial two one one DME seventeen"

Heck, YouTubers have been using very high quality and tiny microphones for years that work quite nicely under a mask.

For a public speech, it can even be a wireless mike. They put a small radio receiver somewhere near the stage, maybe with a diversity reception antenna system, probably circularly polarized, so the speaker can walk around. The signal is then fed into the venue's public address system, and to any television and radio media outlets, including on-line streaming, via distribution amplifiers, or by different media outlets just having their own radio receivers tuned to the wireless microphone frequency.

It simplifies setting up the sound in a venue, and the sound quality is excellent.

So that's not even new technology. Today we also have digital signal processing that can clean up movement of microphone element rubbing against the mask, do dynamic range compression, and other processes to really get the sound top notch quality.

That would get attention.  Masks don’t look good on people or people don’t look good in masks.  There is something creepy about not being able to read facial expressions or see smiles.  I heard an ICU nurse talking about treating nonverbal children, babies and toddlers, wearing masks where they can’t see smiles.  The children don’t recover as quickly and don’t connect to their caregivers.  It’s even worse now if parents are not allowed in and the child is alone with a rotating group of masked strangers.

With an astronaut helmet, one could read facial expressions. They can even use an anti-reflective coating on the visor, and put LED lights inside to further illuminate the face, like the space suit helmet design depicted in the Stanley Kubrick film "2001: A Space Odyssey".

What would be hilarious would be for a politician to take the podium wearing one of those, then his first words were (doing a sound check) "Hal. Open the pod bay doors, Hal."

and someone out of sight then says through the PA system "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."

although of course the plot in that scene was Dave had left his helmet behind and not taken it with him into the pod - something every would-be astronaut (and actual astronaut / cosmonaut) has likely pointed out is an absolute no-no in any real space mission as a serious breach of basic safety protocol.

The politician could then deviate from the famous script by saying something like "Then I'll come in the airlock - as you can see, I remembered my space helmet".

weather update. 45.6 degrees C. It's dry enough though that stepping out in 114 degree heat if you soak your T shirt in water first, only feels like maybe upper 80s - at least for the first 5 minutes until it dries out.

I saw a segment on TV about a local group that is making masks with clear plastic inserts for ASL so lip reading is possible.  Maybe something like that?

That is assuming politicians have a sense of humor and understand cultural references. Or that voters do.

I saw those! I didn’t realize why they were for Deaf people. That makes sense.

Bet it would help with kids, too.

It would help if they can see experessions.

Yeah. Even fewer would get the morphed skit someone else once did

The Hal vs Dave dialog, then Dave pounds on the door and says "It's Dave! Open up the <bleep> door!"

Hal: "uh, Dave's not here."

(2001 morphs into Cheech and Chong)