Introduction
The movie ‘Outbreak’ came out in cinemas in 1995 shortly after the discovery of the Ebola HF virus in the late 1970s. This movie dramatizes the Ebola HF virus and portrays it as the fictional Motaba virus, it shows in a dramatic Hollywood way how the US would react to a deadly disease outbreak. Of course, being a Hollywood movie there are some facts and many fallacies in the finer, more scientific aspects of the disease. The biosecurity facilities used to control the spread of the disease are not accurately portrayed and the evolution of the disease is ridiculous and very inaccurate.
Scientific Information
Viruses In and Out of the Movie
A virus is a non-living infectious agent that is too small to be seen by regular light …show more content…
They have proven to be very effective against many types of viruses such as; smallpox, influenza, tetanus, measles and polio. They have been around ever since their discovery in the mid-18th century and many advances have been made in that time in order to make them safe and effective against many types of viruses as well as parasites and bacteria. In the move Outbreak the disease Motaba is cured using an antiviral that is slightly different from a vaccine. The antiviral attacks the virus instead of preventing the patient from contracting it. This process is what we call curing the disease, whereas vaccines use the body’s own immune system in order to inoculate against the disease.
Compare and Contrast
Motaba and Ebola
The movie centres on the fictional Motaba virus that is based off the real, and deadly Ebola HF virus. They are identical in structure and should therefore have the same statistics, i.e. incubation time, mutations, transmission, etc… However, Motaba is very different from Ebola HF and this is one of the ways the movie deviates from reality. Firstly, the mutation patters of both viruses are very different, the Motaba virus is highly unstable and seems to mutate often despite the stable structure of Ebola HF from which it is based. The structure of the disease prevents common and erratic mutations of the virus.
The transmission
The movie ‘Outbreak’ came out in cinemas in 1995 shortly after the discovery of the Ebola HF virus in the late 1970s. This movie dramatizes the Ebola HF virus and portrays it as the fictional Motaba virus, it shows in a dramatic Hollywood way how the US would react to a deadly disease outbreak. Of course, being a Hollywood movie there are some facts and many fallacies in the finer, more scientific aspects of the disease. The biosecurity facilities used to control the spread of the disease are not accurately portrayed and the evolution of the disease is ridiculous and very inaccurate.
Scientific Information
Viruses In and Out of the Movie
A virus is a non-living infectious agent that is too small to be seen by regular light …show more content…
They have proven to be very effective against many types of viruses such as; smallpox, influenza, tetanus, measles and polio. They have been around ever since their discovery in the mid-18th century and many advances have been made in that time in order to make them safe and effective against many types of viruses as well as parasites and bacteria. In the move Outbreak the disease Motaba is cured using an antiviral that is slightly different from a vaccine. The antiviral attacks the virus instead of preventing the patient from contracting it. This process is what we call curing the disease, whereas vaccines use the body’s own immune system in order to inoculate against the disease.
Compare and Contrast
Motaba and Ebola
The movie centres on the fictional Motaba virus that is based off the real, and deadly Ebola HF virus. They are identical in structure and should therefore have the same statistics, i.e. incubation time, mutations, transmission, etc… However, Motaba is very different from Ebola HF and this is one of the ways the movie deviates from reality. Firstly, the mutation patters of both viruses are very different, the Motaba virus is highly unstable and seems to mutate often despite the stable structure of Ebola HF from which it is based. The structure of the disease prevents common and erratic mutations of the virus.
The transmission