Contagion (2011)

This movie has an eerie prescience. (And the tag line makes the point clearly.)

I cannot remember any other movie I’ve seen where images similar to it are being played out in televised segments on the nightly news. That makes me wonder if the news is being ‘framed’ to trigger the greatest fear in its audience.

By now everyone should have seen Contagion so I shouldn’t need to worry about giving away the ending. But, to make sure we’re all on the same page, in scientific terms, we are talking about a disease with a R-nought of 2.5:

(Note that this was a WHO estimate in January.)

The infection rate seems low, but the death rate is even lower. Still, who wants to die?

The run on toilet paper at Costco also gives pause to why this should be and then I am reminded that this is a base chakra response (and some of you may know what that means).

I’m not mocking the disease, just our ‘knee-jerk’ responses to it. Toilet paper manufacturers were probably the earliest beneficiaries of the pandemic.

There was also an interesting meme doing the rounds on social media which pointed out a ‘strange’ correlation between epidemics and American election years.

Any time you see the word FACT (singular or plural), be suspicious. Not all facts are true.

One last point before I close the door on this discussion: the lottery in the movie for those who would get the vaccinations first was based on the same premise as the draft for soldiers in the Vietnam War, their birth dates. How astrological is that?

So, my advice?