No one's claiming to build better versions of these things, but instead reasonable alternatives that are not unobtainium. PLA masks probably are in the category of doing more harm than good though.

But the things ARE the better versions already; they are ubiquitous, the process for mass-production (think of face masks atm) have been developed decades ago. It's a logistical problem caused by a sudden and unexpected surge in demand.

There is no shortage of toilet paper, there's warehouses full of them (https://youtu.be/wA4KS546rZo), it's just a matter of getting them to the shops. Nobody's out there making a better version of toilet paper.

There is actually a shortage of masks though. Companies that didn't even make masks before are now producing masks. That's not happening with toilet paper because everyone knows that toilet paper use has not actually gone up and demand will crash quickly.

I've seen people swear off toilet paper in favour of the bidet. Perhaps this crisis will wean us off a couple of unnecessary consumer habits.

In general, yes.

However, in this particular case we have a paper with 26 authors, mostly physicists and engineers, humbly asking for feedback from the scientific and medical community. Not a group of people arrogantly thinking they have The Solution to our problems.