Contagion: A Realistically Scary Film

Beth, a Minneapolis suburban mom, becomes the presumed patient zero. She coughs at the airport while waiting for her Hong Kong flight. Two days later, Beth collapses with seizures and flatlines at the hospital. Mitch (Matt Damon), her husband, returns home, and his stepson Clark has already died from the disease. An autopsy shows abnormal results, and the CDC gets the alert. Beth's son is not the only person infected. Within ten minutes of the film, the virus spread, and total chaos began.(Gwyneth Paltrow), a suburban mom from Minneapolis, is the presumed patient zero. She starts with a cough at the airport while waiting for her flight from Hong Kong. Two days later, Beth collapses with seizures and flatlines at the hospital. By the time her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) returns, his stepson Clark has already died from the disease. An autopsy shows abnormal results; the CDC gets notified. Beth's son is not the only person infected. Within ten minutes of the film, the virus spread, causing total chaos.

Beth's cough happens on Day Two of the outbreak. This makes the audience wonder: If she is not patient zero, who is? Where did the virus start? Who caught it first?

Beth hangs up the phone at O'Hare International Airport. She picks peanuts from a bowl. The camera stays. She gives her credit card to the bartender. The camera follows the transaction between hands, then how the bartender's hands touch the cash register. Hours later, Beth is deceased.The disease spread worldwide. It was that easy.

The camera focuses on hospital doors, metal poles on public transit, lips touching restaurant glassware, and fingertips touching casino chips. A bartender coughs into his hand, then polishes a glass. A grandmother feeds a chip by hand to her granddaughter. Steven Soderbergh wants viewers to feel panic, not shock. He wants awareness. This shows how easily disease spreads. Director Steven Soderbergh gives the audience a direct visual of the advice—wash your hands, don't touch your face—that became cultural phrases in 2020.

After Beth and her son die, the virus keeps spreading. An epidemic grows in Geneva. A young man dies suddenly on a bus in Tokyo. John Neal, whom Beth slept with during her layover, is taken on a stretcher in Chicago. People globally cough, burn with fever, seize, and then quickly die. Cities turn into ghost towns before streets become bare, holding only trash and discarded clothes. Mass graves become the only way to handle human remains.

It may look staged, but The CDC confirmed.the setup is totally believable. It modeled the 2003 SARS outbreak in Asia, which spread to 13 countries on three continents in under 30 days, and the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic, which spread globally in weeks.

"Contagion"is fiction, but it uses real facts, not fantasy.

Director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns aimed for a horror-thriller. They insisted the scary parts needed real facts; reality is scarier than anything else. They hired Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, who joined the writing team.

Lipkin.Lipkin recalls asking the teamIs this going to be likeOutbreakorI Am Legend -or do you want to make a serious movie?LipkinLipkin consulted the writers, reviewed sets and costumes, watched filming to check scene accuracy, and helped make makeup (how an infected patient looks) and dialogue real. Craig Street, a senior bioinformatics analyst and Lipkin's colleague at Columbia, helped design the film's fictional virus, MEV-1. State-of-the-art lab equipment was used. Actors met people whose work they represented in labs and the field. Kate Winslet, who plays a virologist, even learned how to pipette.

The virologists inContagionVirologists track the disease to a Hong Kong casino Beth visited. They use "contact tracing" for this. This method follows the virus through social networks and interactions, a technique used often in these investigations.The CDC saysContact tracing gives health authorities a sense of exposure and helps develop the public health response in an emergency.

To track a virus's origin, investigators interview a patient, trace contacts and family, and follow the patient's path while screening people. This process takes much work and can violate privacy sometimes, but it is a vital tool for outbreak response, especially early on before the virus spreads globally.

One epidemiologist -Dr. Larry MadoffDirector of the Division of Epidemiology and Immunization at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health believes that aContagion-like epidemic will occur.In fact, 2020 brought one such event- though not on the scale of the outbreak inContagion.) Madoff says the chance that something like the Nipah virus - a pathogen shared by bats, pigs, and humans (which the film's MEV-1 virus models) - will break out and cause a global epidemic is "very believable."

Astronomer Royal Martin Reespredicts a serious biological threat will emerge, claiming at least 1 million deaths by 2020. We hope that isis not the case.

MEV-1, a paramyxovirus, attacks the lungs and brain in the film. Filmmakers sought a virus visually and cinematically more interesting than one causing only coughs and fever. Craig Street, a bioinformatics analyst, crafted the fictional disease based on a mix of the flu and Nipah, which causes brain inflammation and respiratory illness. The CDC stated such a virus could not exist because their genomes do not match.The CDC said no virus like this could exist because their genomes are not compatible.Their genomes do not match in nature, so the virus cannot exist.

Nipah.Nipah is a real disease. It killed 105 people in Malaysia in 1999. It caused two outbreaks in India in 2001 and 2007. Nipah has no vaccine. Unlike MEV-1, Nipah lacks a vaccine.

I got people, too, Dr. Cheever. We all do.

At first, it might seem a bit wild for...Mitch (Matt Damon's character).People hole up in his house with a shotgun to keep his daughter safe from the virus. Or Dr. Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) orders his wife Aubrey to evacuate before official measures start. Casualty counts rise fast. Humanity hits a breaking point. People's survival instincts take over.

Dr. Orantes (Marion Cotillard) was abducted by her liaison, Sun Feng (Chin Han), after investigating the virus's origins in Hong Kong. This happened before the vaccine released. The plan was to put the rural village where he grew up—overwhelmed with illness and mostly children—first in line. Later, a mob broke into Cheever's home while Aubrey was alone, demanding the MEV-1 vaccine, which they lacked.

The mass hysteria beats the virus itself.

Jude Law plays Alan Krumwiede, an anti-government conspiracy theorist. Krumwiede runs an InfoWars-style blog called Truth Serum Now. On Day 18, Krumwiede livestreamed. He claimed he contracted the virus and found a homeopathic cure. He dipped a forsythia plant, from the olive family, into his water and drank it. Krumwiede told the viewers if he lived the next day, the cure worked.

The next day, Krumwiede survived. The supposed cure went viral. Soon, people nationwide lined up for store-bought forsythia for hours. Suppliers could not meet the demand. Riots started. People began looting. Panic spread.

Dr. Ian Lipkin.Contagion.Its chief epidemiologist.He laments that many Alan Krumwiedes exist in real life.Krumwiedes "prey on our fears, consume precious resources, and may discourage us from pursuing real solutions." He also added, "no vaccine for stupid."

Contagion.The film ends with a final flashback. A construction crew cuts trees in a Chinese forest. A flock of bats, one infected with the virus, flies out. The bat grabs a banana piece, sits over a pig pen, and drops the banana into it. A pig eats the banana, then gets slaughtered. A chef handles the pig carcass, touches its mouth with bare hands, and leaves for the dining room to pose with Beth. A time card shows this is Day One of the outbreak.

This is a totally plausible chain of events. The scary part?The CDC says it is common..

In the case of the Nipah virus outbreaks,Nipah virus outbreaks.The virus spread to humans after contact with infected pigs in Malaysia and Singapore, and from consuming fruit contaminated with saliva from infected bats in Bangladesh and India. The 2003 SARS outbreak was traced to human contact with an animal called a civet cat.civet cat., which is widely sold for food in China.

Virologists in Contagionare able to develop an MEV-1 vaccine in about four months.Scientists can make an MEV-1 vaccine in about four months..Identifying the virus, making the vaccine, and checking health risks and side effects for a new viral outbreak takes a considerable amount of time.That takes a considerable amount of time..

A flu vaccine takes four to six months to develop each year. Imagine a brand new virus with mutated strains, scary symptoms, side effects, and everything seen in Contagion.Contagion.

Steven Soderbergh made Contagion. One main goal was to warn viewers about how easily disease spreads. Soderbergh's comment about the film's effect makes sense: "I'm washing my hands a little more."Contagion.Steven Soderbergh warned viewers about how easily the disease spreads. His admission, "I'm washing my hands a little more," shows the film's effect on him.Soderbergh said. "The hand sanitizer, according to the consultants we worked with, lasts about three minutes. Touching the face is really bad. They said during flu season, if you can avoid touching yourself above the neck, you have a better chance of not getting sick."

He is right.. The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) says that when you touch your face with dirty, unwashed hands, germs can settle in your mucous membranes and cause infection.APIC, touching your face with dirty, unwashed hands lets germs settle in your mucous membranes and cause infection.