These jeans do not fight the virus that causes Covid-19, but they look a lot like ones that claim to. | Getty Images

Diesel and other brands are rolling out antimicrobial clothes. Experts say they miss the point.

Are we asking too much from our jeans? Maybe. They’re expected to wick sweat, sculpt our behinds, and provide full-body motion for squats and lunges, all while exuding a cool-but-not-trying-too-hard vibe. And now, in these After Times, they’re also supposed to keep the coronavirus — the same one that has killed more than 1 million people worldwide and sent whole economies crashing — at bay. Possibly.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, but that isn’t stopping denim brands such as Diesel, DL1961, and Warp + Weft from promoting jeans purported to squelch any traces of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, that presume to