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People Are Taking the Wrong Lessons From Contagion
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The movie Contagion
Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 movie about a deadly pandemic has regained popularity due to the ongoing virus outbreak.
The movie is as much about the way disease gets amplified by people’s relationships to the truth, as it is about viral transmission.
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Fear and manipulation
Contagion's subplots is about one man’s manipulation (Alan Krumwiede) of a climate of fear in order to make money. But it’s also about the way that the social conditions of the pandemic create an opening for the him o rise.
He spreads misinformation in service of selling a homeopathic “cure"; he pretends to be sick and takes the so called cure, to prove that it works.
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Lessons not learned
It has become clear that the parts of the movie Contagion that probably mattered most have taught us nothing.
Compared to a single blogger selling a “cure,” the misinformation (fake cures, conspiracies, etc.) we’re facing today is far worse.
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The influenza pandemic of 1918
It is often referred to incorrectly as the “Spanish flu.” Between 50 and 100 million people are thought to have died, representing as much as 5% of the world’s population. Half a billion people...
The origins of the "Spanish" flu
The so-called Spanish flu did not originate in Spain. The geographic origin of the flu is debated to this day, though hypotheses have suggested East Asia, Europe, and even Kansas.
The influenza pandemic from 1918 got this name most likely because of the WWI context: The major countries involved in the war were keen to avoid encouraging their enemies, so reports of the extent of the flu were suppressed in Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. By contrast, neutral Spain had no need to keep the flu under wraps. That created the false impression that Spain was bearing the brunt of the disease.
The end of mankind
The 1918 flu spread rapidly, killing 25 million people in just the first six months. This led some to fear the end of mankind and that the whole thing was caused by a form of super-virus.
Recent studies show that the high death rate can be attributed to crowding in military camps and urban environments, as well as poor nutrition and sanitation, which suffered during wartime.