The next time you hear someone decrying the importance of face masks during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, just show them this video.
In the footage above, Gav from The Slow Mo Guys films himself counting aloud, coughing, and sneezing at 1000fps. The cough and the sneeze are as gross as you'd probably expect, but what's perhaps more unnerving is the number of particles ejected from his mouth even when he talks at normal volume.
And when Gav repeats the experiment while wearing a face mask? Barely anything escapes.
"I think what you've just shown is a graphically beautiful demonstration of the importance of wearing masks and face coverings," says guest Dr Anthony Fauci, as they watch the footage back together.
"We know now that about 40-45 percent of the people who are infected don't have any symptoms, and yet they have virus in their nasopharynx," says the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "And we know that a substantial proportion of infections are transmitted from someone who doesn't have any symptoms.
"So people have an understandable but incorrect interpretation that the only time you transmit infection is when you're coughing or sneezing all over someone. What they don't appreciate is that if you are speaking, even if you don't speak loudly — and if you are singing, which is even worse than just speaking — you have these particles that come out that can stay in the air for a period of time."
It's the same experiment seen published in the medical journal Thorax in July, which boasted a similarly vile video. You can't unsee it, can you?
