Bad news for blokes who love their facial hair: Your moustache might mean the difference between sickness and health.

The Centre for Disease Control in the United States has released an extremely detailed poster that advises facial hair-growers which styles won’t allow a respirator to properly protect them from airborne coronavirus.

Do you know someone with facial hair? Best to forward them this poster. Photo: CDC

Some 36 styles are covered – and they’ve all got very detailed names.

As well as those who are clean shaven, people sporting side whiskers (side burns, surely), a pencil (two styles) and handlebar moustaches – among others – are safe.

If you’ve got a horseshoe, villain, goatee, anchor or balbo, just be sure the extremities of your ‘do don’t cross the seal of the respirator.

The lumberjack look really took off a few years ago.

It’s probably time to phase it out, and there’s no better reason than safety – anything from stubble to full beards will absolutely impair a wearer’s ability to don an effective face mask.

This could have been a great chance for the CDC to deliver a good deed, and rid the world of the soul patch forever.

It would have been a white lie to mask that unsightly growth as highly unsafe.

But, alas. It lives on.