Transmission of the Pathogen in the Film Contagion Essay

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Chain of InfectionClip 1: Clip Location (minutes:seconds) 0:41 - 4:24In the first clip of the movie Contagion, it appears that the pathogen is spreading through direct contact. Contamination may be airborne, spread by the woman coughing at the bar in the airport, or transmission may be through exposure of another vector, such as sexual intercourse (the woman at the bar, we learn, had sex with a partner earlier). Additionally, the woman is touching nuts and passes her credit card to the bartender for payment. Both of these objects could be fomites for carrying the pathogen. Then there is the person in Hong Kong who is shown touching handles and railings (2:18), and he appears to be a vector for the pathogen, as he is shown wobbling and being unsteady on his feet (2:24). He interacts with family and complains of fever (2:32), and it is clear that he may be acting as a reservoir of the pathogen, which is likely reproducing in him as it is in the woman. In London, similar scenes continue, with a woman at work who does not appear healthy; she sets down a folder (fomite) onto a table where the pathogen may be transmitted from one vector to another, facilitating contamination throughout the room (2:55). She is then seen dead moments later in a bathroom in a hotel, and no one in the room with her is wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and nothing appears to be under quarantine to stop the transmission of the pathogen—the problem being of course that no one realizes what the problem is: the dead woman appears to have overdosed on pills to the untrained eye, so the people are not being careful.To stop the spread of infection, we are meant to believe that PPE, contact tracing and quarantining could be helpful—but at this stage no one even knows what is happening. The movie is setting up the idea that a killer pathogen has spread around the world and no one knows about it.Clip 3: Clip Location 6:41 - 7:20In this clip, the dad is picking up his sick son from school after seeing that his wife is also sick at home. Exposure is happening at the school; the son is seen coughing, suggesting the pathogen is transmitted through the air. There is more touching of handles, no PPE use, and no consideration for fomite contamination, or transmission through direct contact. Everyone acts like it is just a normal cough or cold, which is actually normal. So there is no way to stop the spread of the disease at this point in realistic terms. This is a movie like a Hitchcock fantasy about killer birds, except here it is the killer pathogen.

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In reality, if a pathogen like this existed, people would have to live in plastic bubbles to prevent transmission. It is simply unrealistic. One could argue that PPE could be used, as Reddy et al. (2019) say it is effective in preventing pathogenesis. However, Tian et al. (2020) argue that full-body, highly-effective PPE would be needed for such a killer pathogen as depicted in the movie—so a simple face mask would not be effective, which again presses home the unreality of supposing that infection could be prevented given the scenario in the movie.Clip 8: Clip Location 25:12 - 26:54In this clip it appears that…

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…COVID—no shaking hands—because the pathogen could then be transmitted through touch; although the men are talking together and standing not six feet apart, so one has to wonder at the inconsistency of their precautions. Then the scene concludes with the handing out of the vaccine, which the movie indicates will protect everyone from the pathogen, similarly to the way Pfizer told us its vaccine would protect everyone from COVID.Clip 23: Clip Location (hour:minutes:seconds) 1:40:01 to 1:41:25This clip shows how the pathogen goes from the bat and the banana to the pig to the human, just like we were told happened in Wuhan when a person ate an infected bat and that is how the COVID spread all over the world. It is as though this movie were predicting COVID literally in its script. Maybe Hollywood should be running the CDC. But this clip basically shows Day 1, how the virus went from the bat, whose home was destroyed by the corporation clearing the woods, so it went to the barn, where it transmitted the virus to the pig, via the vector of the banana. Then the pig died and was touched by the cook, who did not wash his hands but only wiped them on his apron before shaking the hands of Gwyneth Paltrow, and that is how she got sick and spread it to everyone else. In short, it all started with the bat, so barring the eradication of fruit bats, which would probably be bad for the Asian ecology, what is the solution to preventing such contagion? Perhaps the only answer is permanent lockdown, or just trusting that Pfizer will have all the right medicines, i.e., everyone must….....

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