Okay, fine, this was an old movie, but I hadn't seen it before it was screened in Biosoc camp.
And anyway before I begin this short post, Happy April Fools' Day :D
Okay, so..
Contagion is about the horrors of what can really go wrong in our current world, increasingly interconnected via so many ways - by airplanes, ships, and cars and buses, etc.
When a virus passes from a bat to a pig, and then to a human, the virus decimates every cell it infects. But in the short amount of time it takes to kill a person, the period of time when a person is a carrier leads to many more infections happening. The movie introduces a term called "R-nought" - for example, with an R-nought of 2, the number of infected people increase like so: one squared equals two; two squared equals four; four sqaured equals sixteen; and so on and so forth. Imagine the number of people infected within just a couple of months. The movie introduces that possibility and makes it a very real threat.
The virus hence progresses rapidly from an outbreak to an epidemic, then a pandemic. An what' even more devastating is the fact that human behaviour, as it so often does, leads to catastrophe. Self-serving people who only tell loved ones what's happening cause hoarding of food. Then they tell their own loved ones, and pretty soon new media, like calls, social networking sites, blogs, SMSes spread the message like wildfire and everyone rushes to grab whatever they can. Medicines, food. A return to the basic needs. Riots happen and there is widespread looting. Anarchy is a terrible thing.
I feel tempted to discuss the movie more but there really isn't enough time... So I'll just leave it as, the husband of the original carrier is immune, is very protective of his little (teenage) girl after his son died as well, and forbids her meeting her boyfriend... but love will bloom no matter what, and once a vaccination is found by a brave biologist who uses herself as the test subject, things start to return to normal slowly, and the girl dances with her boyfriend in her house on prom night. The movie concludes shockingly with how the virus went from bat to pig to a chef to the first human carrier, the mother of the girl.
This movie, to me, is a powerful reminder of how things can quickly degenerate when people are self-serving in the midst of a crisis, and gave some insight as to how grave a disease outbreak really is. While enjoying ourselves and going about our daily lives, one must not forget to be cautious.
But of course, that's no cause for OCD and things... like being saliva consious.. (;
And anyway before I begin this short post, Happy April Fools' Day :D
Okay, so..
Contagion is about the horrors of what can really go wrong in our current world, increasingly interconnected via so many ways - by airplanes, ships, and cars and buses, etc.
When a virus passes from a bat to a pig, and then to a human, the virus decimates every cell it infects. But in the short amount of time it takes to kill a person, the period of time when a person is a carrier leads to many more infections happening. The movie introduces a term called "R-nought" - for example, with an R-nought of 2, the number of infected people increase like so: one squared equals two; two squared equals four; four sqaured equals sixteen; and so on and so forth. Imagine the number of people infected within just a couple of months. The movie introduces that possibility and makes it a very real threat.
The virus hence progresses rapidly from an outbreak to an epidemic, then a pandemic. An what' even more devastating is the fact that human behaviour, as it so often does, leads to catastrophe. Self-serving people who only tell loved ones what's happening cause hoarding of food. Then they tell their own loved ones, and pretty soon new media, like calls, social networking sites, blogs, SMSes spread the message like wildfire and everyone rushes to grab whatever they can. Medicines, food. A return to the basic needs. Riots happen and there is widespread looting. Anarchy is a terrible thing.
I feel tempted to discuss the movie more but there really isn't enough time... So I'll just leave it as, the husband of the original carrier is immune, is very protective of his little (teenage) girl after his son died as well, and forbids her meeting her boyfriend... but love will bloom no matter what, and once a vaccination is found by a brave biologist who uses herself as the test subject, things start to return to normal slowly, and the girl dances with her boyfriend in her house on prom night. The movie concludes shockingly with how the virus went from bat to pig to a chef to the first human carrier, the mother of the girl.
This movie, to me, is a powerful reminder of how things can quickly degenerate when people are self-serving in the midst of a crisis, and gave some insight as to how grave a disease outbreak really is. While enjoying ourselves and going about our daily lives, one must not forget to be cautious.
But of course, that's no cause for OCD and things... like being saliva consious.. (;
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