Contagion

The movie Contagion was released in 2011 and follows the events that unfold surrounding a worldwide pandemic as healthcare professionals rush to seek a cure. Watching this movie in 2020 almost leaves you speechless as this fictional film has suddenly become a very scary reality. An incredible number of similarities exist between Contagion and the state of our world. Just to list a few; the virus originated in an Asian nation, transmission occurred incredibly quickly especially through travel, a zoonotic origin, chaos as stores are closing down, and this list goes on (Vasanthi, 2020). It almost seems as if this movie was a glimpse into the future for viewers in 2011 and if this movie were real life, I think it’s only about halfway over. The most notable difference I recall while watching this movie is that the Contagion global pandemic lasted for about 2 hours whereas this one has lasted for officially 221 days.

The main character, Beth, goes away on business to Beijing and (you don’t know until the very end but) she shakes hands with the chef at a casino who was working with a pig and he didn’t wash his hands. Beth is at the airport in China making her way to Minneapolis and connects through Chicago and when she arrives home she collapses eating at the counter and starts foaming at the mouth where she ends up passing away. Her husband, Mitch, has to quarantine because of this and their son had already been dropped off at school and exposed so he spread it to the school. Meanwhile, it’s spreading around Beijing and many other places because of people flying (this thing is fatal for everyone). Their son also ends up passing away later that day but Mitch, for some reason, is the only person immune. The CDC starts working on a vaccine but the media is crazy and everything is shutting down. Grocery stores and pharmacies are being raided for something called forsythia which this radical blogger advertised himself “getting better” with this drug but it’s not approved and they’re still doing testing. Eventually a vaccine comes out and a few more crazy events unfold but in the end, all is well and the vaccine is released.

In Contagion, you eventually find out that the virus contained strains from pigs and bats because the pigs were being kept and processed where there were a ton of bats who either pooped or spit on the pigs food which they ate. So many unknowns remain in terms of the origin of COVID-19 but according to Hayat Ouassou and his colleagues, it is highly speculated that the origin of this virus is zoonotic in natures and comes from either bats, seafood, or pangolins. In the movie Contagion, researchers were able to discover very particular events and areas that led to the transmission of this virus and it would be incredible if one day we had answers like this regarding the Coronavirus. Another important similarity is like Covid-19, MEV-1 (the virus in the film) is a respiratory disease borne by expelled saliva droplets from sneezing or coughing or other secretions. When those droplets hit the eyes, nose or mouth of an uninfected person, they spread directly between individuals. The film virus is spread by fomites, or surfaces that have been infected with contaminants after they are contacted by sick humans. I really enjoyed this movie and am honestly shocked that I had never seen it before. I’m sure in light of our current situation, many people watched this movie while in lockdown.