KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 ― In what appears to be life imitating art, makers of the 2011 film Contagion predicted a global pandemic uncannily similar to Covid-19 that is sweeping across the globe.
The Steven Soderbergh thriller centres around the deadly fictional virus originating from bats and efforts by medical experts to contain the disease that kills 26 million worldwide as well as the loss of social order.
Scriptwriter Scott Z. Burns spent months researching the science of pandemics, seeking the help of expert epidemiologists to produce a realistic plot, South China Morning Post reported, quoting the German Press Agency (DPA).
“When I started talking to experts, they all said, ‘It’s not a matter of if there will be another pandemic, it's a matter of when,’” Burns said.
“There’s nothing uncanny to me about doing research.”
Nine years after its release, the film has become one of the most-watched films at the moment since late January on platforms such as Amazon Prime, Google Play and iTunes.
Many are treating the Hollywood blockbuster along with other pandemic films like Outbreak and 12 Monkeys as how-to and what-to-expect guide in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which has infected more than 126,000 worldwide.
The scenes that play out in the film which starred big names like Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow and Laurence Fishburne seem to mirror our waking reality.
In one scene, a US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) health investigator, played by Winslet, explains that the virus spreads through sneezing and coughing.
Her character also describes the particles landing on doorknobs and lift buttons which transmit the virus when people touch their faces and that those not displaying symptoms can infect others.
Burns said the movie was inspired by his father who had concerns about bird flu morphing into a human pandemic.
The scriptwriter sought the expertise of epidemiologist Dr Larry Brilliant who is credited for spearheading efforts in eradicating smallpox globally.
Brilliant said circa 2009, the public reacted strangely to news of the swine flu where they seemed almost disappointed that it wasn’t as severe as health officials warned.
“We all started talking about the fact that modernity didn’t know what a real pandemic looked like,” he said.
In the film, the fictional MEV-1 virus originated from a bat displaced from its home due to deforestation.
It then infects a pig and then transmitted to a person to reflect the CDC’s findings that 75 per cent of new human diseases were contracted from animals.
The virus spreads rapidly from Hong Kong to Chicago to Minneapolis, elucidating the inevitability of infection thanks to global travel.
According to Columbia University epidemiology professor Dr Ian Lipkin who served as the film’s primary scientific consultant, the film had an important social message.
“It was not going to be pure entertainment ― it was actually going to have some public health messaging,” says Dr Lipkin, who helped Winslet and fellow actress Jennifer Ehle prepare for their roles.
“The idea was to make people aware of the fact that emerging diseases will continue to emerge and re-emerge.”
The scene where Titanic actress Winslet explains the contagion rate known as an R0 ― which quantifies the number of cases an infected person can generate ― is still used today in public health and biology classes.
“I thought I'd died and gone to heaven,” Brilliant said about that scene.
Just last month, Paltrow, who was famously killed off in the first 10 minutes of Contagion, took to Instagram for some important pointers.
“I’ve already been in this movie,” the actress said.
“Stay safe. Don’t shake hands. Wash hands frequently.”
