CONTAGION MOVIE GIVES VIEWERS MIXED FEELINGS

MBABANE – Is it awareness, entertainment or we are being over flooded with unnecessary information about COVID-19?

As news of the coronavirus pandemic intensifies, two camps of people have emerged: those who are taking comfort in feel-good films and those who binge-watch movies about viruses and pandemics.

Social media shut down on Sunday evening when South African broadcaster SABC 3 showed a film that had similarities to the current pandemic.
Contagion is a 2011 American thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh and its ensemble cast includes Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, and Sanaa Lathan.

The plot concerns the spread of a virus transmitted by fomites, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease, the loss of social order in a pandemic, and the introduction of a vaccine to halt its spread.

Returning from a business trip in Hong Kong, Beth Emhoff has a layover in Chicago and meets a former lover for sex. Two days later, in her family home in suburban Minneapolis, she collapses with seizures. Her husband, Mitch Emhoff, rushes her to the hospital, but she dies of an unknown cause. Mitch returns home and finds that his stepson Clark has also died. Mitch is put in isolation but is later found to be immune; he returns home to his teenage daughter Jory.

express

In Atlanta, representatives of the Department of Homeland Security meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and express fears that the disease is a bioweapon intended to cause terror over the Thanksgiving weekend. Cheever dispatches Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis to investigate. Mears traces the outbreak back to Beth. She negotiates with local bureaucrats, who are reluctant to commit resources for a public health response. Mears later becomes infected and dies. As the novel virus spreads, several cities are placed under quarantine, and looting and violence break out.

discover

At the CDC, Dr. Ally Hextall determines the virus is a mix of genetic material from pig- and bat-borne viruses. Work on a cure stalls because scientists cannot discover a cell culture within which to grow the newly identified MEV-1. University of California professor Dr Ian Sussman violates orders from Cheever to destroy his samples, and identifies a usable MEV-1 cell culture using bat cells.

Hextall uses the breakthrough to begin work on a vaccine. Other scientists determine the virus is spread by fomites, with a basic reproduction number of four when the virus mutates; they project that one in 12 of the world population will be infected, with a 25-30 per cent mortality rate. Conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede posts videos about the virus on his blog. In one video, he claims he has cured himself of the virus using a homeopathic cure derived from forsythia. People seeking forsythia overwhelm pharmacies. During a television interview, Krumwiede discloses that Cheever secretly informed friends and family to leave Chicago before it was quarantined. Cheever is informed he will be investigated. Krumwiede, having faked his illness to boost sales of forsythia, is arrested for conspiracy and securities fraud.

identifies

Using an attenuated virus, Hextall identifies a possible vaccine. To cut out the lengthy time it would take to obtain informed consent from infected patients, Hextall inoculates herself with the experimental vaccine and visits her infected father. She does not contract MEV-1 and the vaccine is declared a success. The CDC awards vaccinations by lottery based on birthdate.

By this time, the death toll has reached 2.5 million in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide.
Earlier, in Hong Kong, World Health Organisation epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes and public health officials comb through tapes of Beth’s contacts in a Macau casino and identify her as the index case. Government official Sun Feng kidnaps Orantes as leverage to obtain MEV-1 vaccine doses for his village, where she remains for months. WHO officials provide them with vaccines and she is released. When Orantes learns the vaccines given to the village were placebos, she runs to warn them.

In a flashback, a bulldozer knocks down a banana tree in a rainforest in China, disturbing some bats. One bat finds shelter in a pig farm and drops a piece of banana, which is eaten by a pig. The pig is slaughtered and prepared by a chef in a Macau casino, who shakes hands with Beth, transmitting the virus to her.

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