Slo-Mo Film Captures Sickening Sneeze in 4K Slow Motion, Fauci Reacts

The Slow Mo Guys — a team of YouTubers — have filmed another video about the COVID-19 coronavirus, showing how a sneeze looks in 4K video with an educational clip of Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

While unsettling, it's worth the watch for those concerned about how easily the COVID-19 coronavirus may spread.

RELATED: SLOW-MOTION VIDEO CONTRASTS MASK EFFECTIVENESS AGAINST SPREAD OF COVID-19

Fauci watches slo-mo film with sickening sneeze

The YouTubers emphasized two main methods to visualize how sneezing can spread the COVID-19 coronavirus. First was, of course, slow-motion footage. The second emphasis was what always succeeds on social media: making ordinary things look really gross.

The YouTubers used a harsh backlight on a mouth and filmed with a Phantom camera to show "disgustingly clear footage of how many particles can leak out of someone's face," according to the video.

Masks prevent disgusting particles from leaving mouth

The man (named Gav) starts with a cough, and then counts to five in loud English.

The image of a man coughing in slow motion is interesting, but unfailingly gross — which is presumably the appeal (it will get worse).

With a mask, however, there is nothing to see — as one should expect.

The sneeze, Anthony Fauci's COVID-19 commentary

Using pepper to induce a sneeze, we can see a seemingly endless stream of absolutely disgusting globs and strings of human snot blow out and around Gav's silhouetted face.

Fauci described the footage of counting as "a graphically beautiful demonstration of the importance of wearing masks and face coverings, because as the film shows now — you're saying the same thing [...] and very little is coming out from the mask."

"One of the reasons why it's so important to wear a face-covering [mask] is that we know now that about 40% to 45% of the people who are infected don't have any symptoms, and yet they have [the] virus in their nasopharynx," added Fauci.

Face coverings important when they feel least needed

"People have an understandable but incorrect interpretation that the only time you transmit infection is when you're coughing and sneezing all over someone," added Fauci during the YouTube interview. "What they don't appreciate is that even if you are speaking — even if you don't speak loudly, and if you are singing [...] you have these particles that come out that can stay in the air for a period of time [...] some of them are aerosolized and can hang around the air for a period of time."

"For that reason it's so important to wear face coverings, particularly" when it seems safe because no one is sneezing or coughing around them, explained Fauci.

When asked whether a large number of people refusing the vaccine will alter the effectiveness of forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines, Fauci replied "absolutely."

Helping communities move beyond COVID-19

"You want to do it in a scientifically and ethically sound manner where you actually prove definitively that a vaccine is safe and effective," he explained. "If you get only a small proportion vaccinated, the virus still has the capability of spreading around to those people who are not taking it."

Fauci hopes the vaccines undergoing trials will rise above the 50% and 60% effectiveness rate seen in already-promising candidates — to somewhere above 70%. Combined with certain social health measures like masking, this could help communities move beyond the COVID-19 coronavirus, he explained.

With all precautionary COVID-19 bases covered, Gav and Fauci closed up the interview with a mutual note of gratification. Sadly, Fauci was not subjected to the disgusting clip of stringy snot flying across our now unclean computer screens.