Unless it’s an N95 it’s not going to protect you. Wearing cloth masks and the like is something we do for each other. For it to be effective everybody, or almost everybody, has to do it. Unfortunately some people can’t get their minds around a concept like that.

But yeah dentist with halitosis? Gross. There’s another kind of gross dentist; the hairy fingered kind. While most dentists I’ve been to during my adult life have worn gloves when poking around in my mouth so the hairiness of their fingers hasn’t mattered, the dentist I had to suffer with as a child didn’t wear gloves — latex gloves were not a thing then — and he had very hairy fingers. I still remember it, that’s how gross it was.