What is Contagion ?

“It’s true there is a constant vulnerability. We are so susceptible to an attack from a pandemic virus, and a novel virus could easily wipe out millions of people,” said Walsh, who recently helped the Chicago Department of Public Health plan its emergency response to an outbreak of the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus.

“People have been working on Ebola vaccine for how long?” she continues. “But there is still no vaccine.” Respiratory syncytial virus—which is a paramyxovirus just like Nipah and the fictional MEV-1—has been studied for more than 40 years, yet scientists still haven’t found a vaccine.

“With H1N1, people may have gotten a false sense of security because it was so mild. Some thought the CDC overreacted, but you never know what a virus like this can do. If a new virus attacks, we have no immunity.”

The only way a vaccine could be on the shelves in a few months is if researchers had anticipated future outbreaks by creating vaccine candidates in advance that had already gone through several safety and efficacy trials, she says.

Ed Tanzman, who leads the emergency preparedness team at Argonne, thought the film exaggerated a few things, such as how quickly they replicated the vaccine. But, he says, ​“Contagion was a pretty accurate depiction of how public health officials would react in real life if a pandemic virus hit their cities.”

“The best solution to these things is to be vaccine prepared,” she adds, so that if there was such a catastrophic outbreak, “at least we are prepared to make a vaccine on a fast track.”

According to Walsh, ​“if you can figure out the source, you can figure out where the virus came from. This is something practiced in everyday epidemiology—they always want the source.”

According to Walsh, ​“if you can figure out the source, you can figure out where the virus came from. This is something practiced in everyday epidemiology—they always want the source.”

Before they can make a vaccine, researchers need to figure out how the virus itself works. First, they need to grow the virus and observe how it kills its host cells; then they can move on to finding out how to stop it. The actors in Contagion portrayed the part of researchers without artifice, Walsh thought, and used the correct language of epidemiology without falling back on the tired stereotypes of science and scientists.

Contagion also demonstrated how a deadly virus can overcome the best containment efforts. Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) is infected by ​“fomites,” or inanimate objects (like clothing or hair) that can host infectious organisms long enough for them to transfer from one person to another.

This may have made you leave the theater with the urge to sterilize everything—but it also highlighted how challenging virus containment can be, particularly if it’s an unknown type. (Perhaps it also made you want to wash your hands; if so, all the better—the CDC touts this as a top method of preventing transmission of both viruses and bacteria.)

Tanzman was also struck by how poignantly the movie captured the nature of humanity in the face of such a horrific doomsday scenario.

During a prolonged pandemic, it’s likely that many aspects of society would break down, especially as resources dwindled and basic necessities disappeared. But with the help of experts like Argonne’s Dan Walsh and Ed Tanzman, cities like Chicago can run emergency drills to prepare for the worst-case scenarios.

“What I took away from that movie, apart from its excellent attention to detail,” Tanzman said, ​“was that it did an outstanding job of showing the heroism of people in government and public health. If put in a situation like this in real life, I believe many of them would do the same things.”

the virus was said to mutate very quickly, which is fine and typical of viruses that use RNA as their genetic material. However, the activity of the human population seemed to bounce back very quickly in the film once a vaccine was found and administered.

This is why finding solutions to combat HIV/AIDS has been so difficult; HIV is quite good at evolving and evading our efforts to control it.

As for the overall impact of the virus on the human population, numbers used in Contagion (~26 million) were very realistic. Just for comparison, approximately 40 million people died from the Spanish flu (1918/1919), in fact, more soldiers died from the flu during World War I than they did from combat. Some have predicted that there will be 100 million deaths from the avian flu, if it ever takes hold in the human population.

The film’s description of how quickly the disease spread around the globe was certainly not exaggerated. In 2003, SARS spread from the Guongdong Province in China to many countries in very short order. Even in the 14th century, Black Death (the plague; a bacterial disease) moved relatively quickly by ship and by land to kill nearly 25% of the people in Europe.

I also believe Contagion conveyed the human response to the contagious disease fairly well, though at times the individuals seemed a bit too calm given the circumstances.

The Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will need to play their cards carefully if we have a real Contagion (e.g., avian flu that is easily transmitted from human to human) in the future. A rapid spread of hysteria would seriously undermine efforts to control the disease.

Nevertheless, there are generally some positives you can take from even the most dire circumstances. Although the 14th century plague epidemic killed one out of every four individuals, it is believed that the Renaissance emerged because of it. Laborers were in such short supply that creativity and design (e.g., printing press) had to come to the rescue. What a 21st century pandemic would bring, only time will tell.

Alan B. Hale, Ph.D., Professor of Biology and Director of the Global Diseases Program at Cedar Crest College. His laboratory research is focused on the use of viruses in combating pathogenic bacteria, especially those that cause intestinal diseases in humans.

At Argonne National Laboratory, emergency preparedness analysts like Dan Walsh work with public health departments to make sure they could quickly respond to a Contagion-like outbreak.

Science Behind the Fiction critiques the science portrayed in popular films and literature. Today Argonne emergency planning experts review ​“Contagion,” the 2011 hit movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, which follows the spread of a killer virus in modern-day society.

Sure, a killer virus set on destroying humanity makes a good pitch for a movie. But whether the audience is on the edge of their seats or rolling in the aisles depends entirely on how the movie balances fact and science fiction. 2011’s Contagion, however, proved that a thriller can be creative without compromising scientific integrity.