Viruses; Who is the Beholder?
The greatest threat to humanity can’t be seen by the untrained eye. It could lay dormant for millions of years and evolve into the most terrifying form of itself. These infectious viruses create worldwide terror. The 2011 film Contagion by Steven Soderbergh does an incredible but also frightening job of revealing how a lethal virus would impact the Earth. The deadly virus started in nature, transported around the world through fomites and living creatures, and then the world reacted in positive and negative ways attempting to combat it. This three part series of actions is eerily similar to how an outbreak would unfold in reality and that is why the film was incredibly effective.
“A tentative earlier formulation …show more content…
The movie does an incredible job with conveying all of the fomites to the audience by focusing on these inanimate objects as they come in contact with the virus. The screen actually stops and focuses on such things as poles on a subway train or a doorknob whenever someone infected with MEV-1 touches them. The animals fostered the virus, people contracted it, and then the people and fomites spread it the entire way around the world. “Both SARS and the fictional MEV-1 first emerged in a remote location in China, both were carried to Hong Kong by infected persons, and both spread globally from Hong Kong via air travelers. Further, both SARS and MEV-1 viruses are spread person-to-person via airborne droplets produced by sneezes or coughs, as well as by viruses deposited on "fomites",” (Zilinskas). In the movie and real life the viruses spread rapidly through many means with fomites and humans being the major transporters. Once again the film toppled the apocalypse style movie industry with their immense research and the result is a film that is scientifically accurate and terrifying to the unsuspecting audience. Without the audience doing research into infectious diseases and fomites, the degree of spread and high body count might seem outlandish and that of your typical zombie thriller. However, after seeing the facts behind the scenes, it proves that all of these pieces of the film are believable and a plausible apocalypse
The greatest threat to humanity can’t be seen by the untrained eye. It could lay dormant for millions of years and evolve into the most terrifying form of itself. These infectious viruses create worldwide terror. The 2011 film Contagion by Steven Soderbergh does an incredible but also frightening job of revealing how a lethal virus would impact the Earth. The deadly virus started in nature, transported around the world through fomites and living creatures, and then the world reacted in positive and negative ways attempting to combat it. This three part series of actions is eerily similar to how an outbreak would unfold in reality and that is why the film was incredibly effective.
“A tentative earlier formulation …show more content…
The movie does an incredible job with conveying all of the fomites to the audience by focusing on these inanimate objects as they come in contact with the virus. The screen actually stops and focuses on such things as poles on a subway train or a doorknob whenever someone infected with MEV-1 touches them. The animals fostered the virus, people contracted it, and then the people and fomites spread it the entire way around the world. “Both SARS and the fictional MEV-1 first emerged in a remote location in China, both were carried to Hong Kong by infected persons, and both spread globally from Hong Kong via air travelers. Further, both SARS and MEV-1 viruses are spread person-to-person via airborne droplets produced by sneezes or coughs, as well as by viruses deposited on "fomites",” (Zilinskas). In the movie and real life the viruses spread rapidly through many means with fomites and humans being the major transporters. Once again the film toppled the apocalypse style movie industry with their immense research and the result is a film that is scientifically accurate and terrifying to the unsuspecting audience. Without the audience doing research into infectious diseases and fomites, the degree of spread and high body count might seem outlandish and that of your typical zombie thriller. However, after seeing the facts behind the scenes, it proves that all of these pieces of the film are believable and a plausible apocalypse