The Killer Virus Movie

It seems like movies have inspired words in this blog lately.  The movie Contagion was destined to cause a reaction from the first time that I saw the trailer.  This movie hits a little close to home in that it involves a killer virus and a bunch of epidemiologists.  Being an epidemiologist and knowing a bunch of CDC EIS officers, I must be a little nit-picky about this movie.  Otherwise, the producers did get a lot of things right.

From the trailer, you get the impression that there is some kind of sub-plot involving an intentional release of a nasty virus that causes devastation throughout the world, but that is not the case.  Actually, that would have made the movie a little more believable.  As it stands, the virus is supposedly an extra virulent strain of Nipah that originated in a bat and somehow infected a single pig, where the virus failed to infect other pigs, and went straight to Gwyneth Paltrow.  Yes, this is a thinly veiled attempt to talk about Influenza virus without implicating Influenza.  The origin, or ‘day 1’ scenario that this movie paints is not really believable.  If such a virus existed, then pig farmers, abattoir workers and the chef handling the pig would all have contracted the virus long before the unsuspecting tourist.

Okay, so let’s forget about the whole origin of the virus and assume that it exists and causes badness on a scale depicted by this movie.  If the supposed patient 0 was spreading virus at a Hong Kong casino then there were at least two plane loads of exposure that wasn’t accounted for at the start.  In other words, there would have been many more cases by the time that Gwyneth Paltrow’s character dies.

The other thing that bothers me is that the State Department of Public Health (in this case Minnesota) was treated as a bunch of moronic bureaucrats, when in fact; they are educated epidemiologists and not in need of pages of exposition by the main characters.   The whole government response to this outbreak seems uncoordinated.  In most cases, I believe that there would have been more done to get in front of things. 

If the virus burns through the population as fast as all that, then why are public services not totally disrupted?  Apparently in the world the movie paints, you have looting at grocery stores, no trash pickup, but you still have electricity, cable, internet, and cell phone service.  Additionally, once the virus burns through an area, those left behind should be assumed to have some degree of immunity, so the whole sub plot with the WHO worker who was kidnapped in order to secure vaccine for a village in the epicenter of the outbreak makes little sense.

What does make sense from this movie?  It does show how quickly we can get behind an outbreak and does give a worst case scenario to a government response.  The movie touches on some issues such as the speed at which we can respond to a novel virus and the misinformation and potential profiteering that could accompany such an outbreak.

For me, the devil is in the details, and it’s much easier for me to dismiss something where a few nit-picky facts are wrong than a total suspension of belief (i.e., a virus from outer space, a la Andromeda Strain).  Are we prone to such a disease outbreak?  Sure, but there will be signs and mini-outbreaks before it explodes as a pandemic.  The more terrifying plot that isn’t explored by this movie is that we are more likely to ignore the threat of a newly emerging virus than to totally be blindsided by a virus that latches on to one international traveler.

Sex Religion and Politics

I’m posting this a couple of days after seeing the latest film by Kevin Smith called Red State.  I plan on rambling on a bit, so if you want to cut to the chase, just see this movie.  It’s a fun ride.  There, got that out of the way so I wouldn’t bury the lead. 

I’ll start off by saying that I am a fan of Kevin Smith.  He’s one of the more interesting celebrities out there right now.  He’s kind of an anti-celebrity.  Yes, he made his mark as an independent(ish) film maker, with Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma, but he’s also first and foremost a storyteller.  Kevin Smith has an amazing ability to take a simple topic and run off with a 20 to 30 minute cognate and entertaining stream of consciousness that never seems to lose focus.  Say what you will about the man, but he is truly gifted as a storyteller.  He is also a P.T. Barnum of our time.  He has found innovative ways to market to and profit from a niche audience.  This is not a slacker/stoner who slides by on his past laurels.  He is a smart businessman and entertainer who is not content with established norms.

I say all this to lead up to the movie Red State, a film that will more than likely turn many people off, but ultimately speaks well to the world we live in.  Red State is tagged as a horror film, but it really isn’t.  It’s the kind of film that really can’t be pigeon holed.  It’s more like a big graphic novel with moving pictures and sound.  I say that because the movie is lean.  It is cut to the bone and only offers the basic information that we need to move forward with.  Personally, I would have liked more, but I understand and appreciate the approach to this film. 

Smith took the three things that you don’t talk about in polite conversation; sex, politics, and religion and he wove them together as a snapshot of how America feels right now.  The story has foul mouthed teenagers, fanatical zealots, and a dysfunctional government all coexisting in a world that is a sum of all of those perceptions. 

It’s good when a film can expose our world as grayer than just black and white.  The only problem I see is that the people who should see this film won’t or they will be turned off by the language, which is foul by some standards (but appropriate in this context). 

We live in a world where Muslims are vilified as extremists, but many fail to see that all belief systems have the zealous extremists.  Christianity has a long tradition of killing those who don’t believe, but extremism goes beyond the caricature. 

Any belief system that refuses to acknowledge another person’s point of view is toxic and can morph into sociopathic behavior.  The key is to not try and forcibly impose your belief system on people that don’t want to accept that version of reality.  A much better approach, one espoused by a radical by the name of Jesus (pronounced hey-zeus if you want to sound more subversive), is to lead by example.  If your life and your actions are inspirational, then others may want to emulate those beliefs.

It’s very simple really.  This world would be a much better place if people stopped worrying about what other people are doing and worried more about what they were doing.  I entered the middle of a conversation at work yesterday when the first thing that I heard from the doorway was that this country was moving more toward socialism and away from free enterprise.  I was dumbfounded.  We live in an adult society, but people are being conditioned to think in terms of black and white (I blame FOX news, and the 24 hour news cycle, but that’s fodder for another rant).  Why can’t people realize that there are some things that work well in a free enterprise system and others that are more effectively managed in the public sector. 

This immediately brought up health care as an issue.  My contention is that since insurance companies are out to make a profit, that health care is more effectively managed by a public sector that does not have a monetary motive.  Our current system is in denial.  We treat millions of people for free in emergency rooms around this country and subsidize that cost with higher insurance premiums.  We have a whole segment of the population that relies on ‘socialized medicine’ known as Medicare, but many of those people don’t see the hypocrisy in defending the currently broken system.

At any rate I’m rambling.  See what watching a provocative movie will do for you?  It makes you actually think and talk about issues that you would rather not discuss in polite conversation.  Yeah, you could look at Red State as a crude thriller, but it at least made me want to extend my blog with this wall of text, so I’ll give Mr. Smith some credit for that.