by Kara Machowski
If you’re anything like me, you’re guilty of watching the movie “Contagion” within the last few months (or twelve times in the last three months), so it was only appropriate that CNN invited the writer, Scott Z. Burns on air on Friday afternoon. If you haven’t seen the movie, the plot is about a pandemic that is spread by ill handling of food in China, which infects an American (Gwyneth Paltrow) who spreads the virus through out China and on her way back to the states she infects passengers on her airplane, a man in Chicago and her own family. She subsequently dies roughly 48-72 hours after being infected. Through out the movie we follow her husband (Matt Damon) who is immune, and after loosing wife and step-son, he is super protective of his daughter (who was away at the time). The movie also follows the head of the CDC (Laurence Fishburne) and Epidemic Intelligence Service officer (Kate Winslet) while they attempt to understand and grapple the disease, which kills 1 in 4 people who become infected.
Throughout the movie the social affect of the virus as well as how society deals with the country having to shut down is one of the key focuses. There are minor differences from the movie's pandemic and our current situation with coronavirus, which actually bodes in our favor, well most of them. We’ll start with the positive. The virus in “Contagion” is much deadlier than our novel virus, and kills much faster. In the movie it typically takes someone 48-72 hours after being infected to succumb to the fictional disease. The virus in the movie also begins as a heavy cough and destroys the lungs, then shifts to neurological and ultimately the victim has a seizure before they die.
Covid-19 has a far less mortality rate, roughly between 0.66% to 10% according to differing experts. What is also interesting in the movie is the fact that certain experts try to dismiss the validity of the deadly disease. The country does have to shut down as well, but in the movie, grocery stores and pharmacies close, while we are lucky that we are able to keep those much needed services open. Subsequently the country is forced to wait for help from the government who is ill-prepared to supply citizens with food as well as a lack of a drug that could help combat the virus and those who seek either risk being infected each time they go out, which is a reality that we do face.
So what did Scott Burns have to say on the topic? Many people have written to the screenwriter over the last few weeks asking how he knew so many key factors that would happen during a pandemic and he stated that he simply spoke to experts. When he asked epidemiologist, Larry Brilliant, if his movie was a plausible situation, Brilliant answered that it wasn’t a matter of if a pandemic could spread, it was when. The same expert analysis is how Burns was able to portray “social distancing” and the fact that the virus was spread by a bat. When Burns was asked what he sees coming next he said that we’re still in the first act of the story and that in no way did he predict the federal government acting so poorly in response to the pandemic. Burns also stated “I thought our leaders were sworn to protect us”. A sobering fact as Burns did leave out any presidential response in his movie.
Burns went on to explain that he never thought of inserting a “bad guy” in the movie, but it seems that humanity plays both roles as enemy and leader during our real-life pandemic. The reality that both the movie and we currently face is the manufacturing and distribution of a vaccine, not just a drug to help fight it. In the movie, Matt Damon's character and his daughter display the length that they were forced to social distance for (Of course the teenage daughter has a boyfriend she tries to see multiple times) and it seems as if they are locked down for roughly a year. The time that it could take to find a vaccine may very well be the only end to the pandemic and our social distancing lockdown.
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