If you need convincing how wearing a face covering prevents the spread of coronavirus droplets, these dramatic pictures taken by a microbiology expert show what happens when you sing, talk, cough or sneeze.
In two simple experiments, Dr Davies, Clinical Microbiology Lab Director at Providence Sacred Heart, showed how a mask or cloth face covering blocks respiratory droplets coming from your mouth and throat.
In his first experiment, Dr Davies sneezed, sang, talked and coughed towards an agar culture plate both with and without a mask.
When wearing a mask, the results showed hardly any bacteria made it to the culture plate. But when he didn’t wear a mask those plates told a different story, with lots of bacteria growing on the plate.
The second experiment aimed to show how far respiratory droplets could travel when wearing a mask compared to when not.
Dr Davies explained: " I set open bacteria culture plates 2, 4 and 6 feet away and, while wearing a mask, coughed hard for 15 seconds. I repeated this without a mask.
"As seen by the number of bacteria colonies, droplets mostly landed less than 6 ft away, but a mask blocked nearly all of them."
Dr Davies pointed out that because he only tested his theory on himself, the experiments can't be used as a model for how coronavirus actually spreads. But it’s convinced me!