Lots of people survived over the years, no seatbelts and no airbags. No ABS, no all season tires, not even a good brew of coffee. I do believe the first cars did not use air filters, certainly not oil filters.
Sometimes things do get better.
I've cleaned out a couple of CAF's that were chewed on. I'd rather pull out the rodent mess that way than have to figure out how to clean out innards of the HVAC box. I also have some wicked allergies and it can be nice to have that filter there, for whatever it good it might do.
Will say that like all other things that need servicing, they could do a bit better job at making it easy to do. The one's have had to do aren't bad, but some of it does scream "we did it on the cheap!"