Contagion

The movie Contagion was a wakeup call in many aspects regarding how the possible spread of a deadly disease can play out around the world. Although the virus called MEV1 in the movie was fictional, the actual content behind the virus was based on events that have occurred. In fact, the movie's fictional pandemic virus, MEV-1, is based on the very real Nipah virus, according to W. Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist and virologist at Columbia University. The Nipah virus suddenly and surprisingly jumped from pigs to humans in Malaysia in 1999, causing more than 100 deaths before it was controlled by quarantine. It is a respiratory virus which causes brain infection (encephalitis); many of the movie's symptoms were accurate (fever, headache, vomiting, muscle aches, trouble breathing, coma, and death). There is no vaccine and currently no effective treatment. Though the Nipah outbreak may have influenced the script writers, the course of the fictional pandemic in Contagion more closely resembles that of another real-life emerging infectious disease: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which was first reported in Guangdong Province, China, in February 2003 and within a few months affected populations throughout the world. Additionally, the response of various agencies to find a cure like the WHO and the CDC were accurate. They ultimately decide to brew up a live attenuated vaccine to end the spread of the disease. A live attenuated vaccine is a (weakened) form of the “wild” virus (H.D. slide 50). The immune response to the weakened form of the virus is similar to that of the “wild” infection. In the end, the body will know how to attack the virus when it should come in contact with the “wild” form. The movie also describes how a respiratory virus can spread easily by coughing and even touching (fomites). In the movie, I was reminded of how often we touch our faces during the day and how much we touch each other. Contagion also had a pretty realistic