There is a MaskClub.com, which is kind of like DollarShaveClub.com (but not exactly) with licensing deals with Hello Kitty and NASA and Batman, among others, so you can advertise your taste in cartoons or sports for $9.99 a month. Masks in tartan, camouflage and batik. Sparkly masks that suggest “I am ready for a party” and pinstriped masks that suggest “I am ready to work.”

Masks by Stacy Bendet of Alice + Olivia, in animal and floral print, for $12.95. Masks by Collina Strada made from deadstock with giant bows on the side for $100. A mask, pretty much, for every mood and income level.

And now that countries like Morocco, Austria and the Czech Republic, and states including New York, New Jersey and Maryland, have mandated masks in public areas where social distancing is not possible, the burgeoning industry is only going to get bigger.

According to Edited, the digital retail tracking service, there has been an almost 40 percent increase in the number of masks offered by companies in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the end of 2019. In a blog post earlier this month, Josh Silverman, the chief executive of Etsy, reported that in a single weekend, buyers searched for face masks on the site an average of nine times per second, and the number of face mask sellers had grown five times, to almost 20,000.

Experts are increasingly suggesting that masks may need to be worn for at least a year, until a vaccine is developed. And trend forecasters are predicting that, as a result, they may become a fact of daily life, donned by all of us with the same unthinking passivity as a coat and sunglasses when we leave the house.

But does that mean they should also become, like a coat and sunglasses, an individual fashion statement? Or are they, rather, a sign of something else: solidarity, and the social contract?