People in Latin America debate the use of face masks

House keys, wallet or purse, mobile phone and .... oh, yes: face mask. Reluctantly for many, but also inexorably in the face of a deadly invisible enemy, small rectangles of flimsy yet live-saving tissue have in mere months joined the list of don't-leave-home-without-them items for billions around the world.

Not since humans invented shoes or underwear has a single item of dress caught on so widely and quickly from Mexico City to Melbourne, Beijing to Bordeaux, spanning borders, cultures, generations and sexes with almost the same Earth-shaking speed as the coronavirus that has killed more than 600,000 and infected more than 15 million.

But rarely, also maybe never, has anything else worn by humans sparked such furious discord and politicking.

As such, like other human habits, the mask has become a mirror on humanity.

Across Latin America, like the rest of the world, the wearing of masks has divided opinion.

Some, like Mexican housewife Paulina Ramirez, feel wearing one should be mandatory.

"People who don't use them should be fined," she said.

Nineteen-year-old student Graziele Vieira lost her great-grandmother to COVID-19 and puts it down to people were not wearing masks for the reason she caught the virus.

"You can infect another person in addition to yourself. We need to take care of the lives of others beside your own."

But others aren't so keen to cover up.

Speaking from Brazilian city Rio de Janeiro, one of the countries which has been hardest hit by the pandemic, writer Dalila Kopp said she didn't recommend wearing masks.

"I would not recommend (to wear a mask) because the carbon gas (people breathing their own carbon gas) acidifies the lungs and the blood, and that becomes an open door to get any other kind of disease."

Also muddying and fueling global debate has been mixed messaging from government leaders who flip-flopped on the utility of masks and advised against their public use when stocks were so lacking that health workers cared for the sick and dying without adequate protection.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would immediately wear a mask if it helped get the country's economy back on track.

"But it's not like that," he added. "I follow the recommendations of the doctors, of the scientists."