Alexlemayscience.files.wordpress.com



Contagion Science vs. Entertainment: AccuracyName ____________________Highlight important facts about accuracy and inaccuracies in the movie as you read then answer the questions at the end. such a calamity really occur? To find out, we invited three Alice Huang, a virologist at Caltech; Dr. Peter Katona, an infectious disease expert at UCLA who did a two-year stint in the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service; and Dr. Arthur Kellermann, an emergency medicine physician and director of Rand Health in Santa Monica to weigh in.Let's start with the basics. Is any of this scientifically possible? The virus kills Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) in less than a week, but her husband, Mitch (Matt Damon), never even gets sick.Alice Huang:?I found it a little hard to believe that the incubation period and the disease manifestation would be so quick. It was virtually within 24 hours. Several days would be more typical. But they wanted to make this virus a really scary one, and that did it. After that, everything that they presented seemed very realistic.The fictional MEV-1 virus begins to spread when an infected bat drops a piece of banana that is eaten by pigs. Could that really happen?AH:?It could, yeah. This was based on the Nipah virus, which can travel from bat to pig to human. If the virus in the movie were that virulent, it wouldn't take many virus particles to spread.Arthur Kellermann:?They did a wonderful job of dramatizing interspecies transmission and recombination in an animal cooking vessel — which is often a pig — and then making the jump to humans. They made a complex biological concept understandable to the public.The other thing they did beautifully was emphasize the potential for rapid virus spread in a globalized society. Beth Emhoff got sick in Hong Kong, and by the time she was on a plane home, people she had contact with were sparking outbreaks around the world — even before she was symptomatic.Peter Katona:?Assuming the vaccine would work right away was a little misleading. Vaccines take a bit of time to kick in — a few days or a week.AK:?Right. You've got the dose, you're immune to go out that night — it doesn't work that way.PK:?Transmission was a little bit of an issue for me too. They kind of implied there was respiratory transmission at the beginning, but the virus seemed to be passed through contact. Things don't live on glass and surfaces very long. I think they took a little bit of liberty with that.AK:?I had a science question for the two of you. When they told Mitch Emhoff he had natural immunity, I thought, "Oh, come on." Even before they had characterized the agent or understood the biology, they declared that he couldn't get the virus — that he was the 1 in a zillion that was naturally immune. It's a heck of a coincidence that he happened to be the husband of Patient Zero.AH:?They didn't make that very clear. Almost all viral diseases have what we call the iceberg effect. Many people get infected but they have no symptoms. Others get infected and they have some symptoms but not very serious ones. And then a smaller number get infected and it's very acute. Only a very few of those will die.So you think Mitch Emhoff may have been an asymptomatic case?PK:?Yeah. In the movie they said that three-quarters of people get it and don't die. He was lucky — a run-of-the-mill survivor.Did the symptoms seem plausible?PK:?A little rapid. I thought those seizures looked pretty good.AK:?The first seizure didn't, but the second one was spot on. Generally that stuff was well done. The cough, the headache, the encephalitis [swelling of the brain due to infection].And the laboratory scenes?AK:?A little "CSI"-ish, but yeah.AH:?I just saw the new lab at the National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana. The one in the film was quite realistic.The movie also took a close look at public health officials, such as CDC deputy director Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne). Investigators like Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) and others work to fight the disease. How accurately did the film depict their work?PK:?They did a good job with Winslet's character — though Epidemic Intelligence Service officers are usually not the ones who go into a stadium to set up emergency facilities — that's usually local people who make that decision, not federal people.At first I kind of wondered if the CDC should have sent more than one officer. Sometimes they'll send more than one if they think the thing is big or about to be big. But they wouldn't have known that yet. They got on it in five days. That's pretty quick. That may have been a little on the unrealistic side that they got to it so fast.The doctor in the emergency room who told Mitch Emhoff that Beth had died seemed a little cold.AK:?That was really over the top. I've worked in some of the busiest ERs and Level 1 trauma centers in America, and we would never stand in the middle of a public hallway and tell a husband that his wife had just died. With anything like that, it would be a private room and there would be a chaplain. It's one of the most profound moments in clinical medicine. We just don't work that way.PK:?The workers mentioned a shortage of body bags at one point. But they didn't mention that these respiratory devices they're wearing — called powered air purifying respirators, or PAPRs — were going to run out real fast. We hardly have any of them.How about food? "Contagion" shows people fighting over emergency rations, but the principal characters seem to remain well-fed. Would there be enough to eat?AK:?Not with the infrastructure collapsing.PK:?If you cut off the entire food supply to a city, you have five days. Five to seven days for gasoline. So, yes, that's an issue.AK:?That was hinted at, but they focused more on social panic than on the fact that this very complex, just-in-time economy we now have would absolutely fall apart.Jude Law plays Alan Krumwiede, a blogger who questions the CDC's statements, pushes a questionable natural "cure" for the virus and otherwise makes life difficult for the public health team. In one scene, he faces off against Cheever during a TV interview. What did you make of him?AK:?He was a caricature, but it was well done and he illustrated a really important public health concept. He's influencing millions of followers who are just grasping at the first thing they read on the Internet. An outbreak, more than any other time, is when you need to trust authoritative sources, like the CDC. That's another important object lesson here.AH:?The movie certainly is anti-blog.PK:?The blog represented misinformation.AK:?I wanted Cheever to really go at that guy on television. We can't have public health leaders be wimps when they're dealing with people like that, who are a public health threat. You're going to take on powerful forces and venomous critics. Public health is a contact sport.So what's your final verdict?PK:?I liked the movie a lot. Some of the reasons had nothing to do with science. I thought the public health people were portrayed as being kind, benevolent people — which I think they deserve. A doctor is beloved for saving a life, but public health people are behind the scenes, and they don't really get as much respect as they should.I also liked the fact that the movie took the disruption of society and laid it against the non-disruption of society. They could still go home and do things. People think that when all hell breaks loose, everything falls apart — it doesn't. Certain parts of society do and certain parts don't, and I think they portrayed that well.AH:?It's refreshing to see a movie that tries to be as authentic as this one. I thought it was really good at depicting the real situation. It's very nice to see a movie where scientists aren't the evil ones. And I also must admit I was really pleased to see women who were strong and capable and who showed leadership qualities.But when they were in the village in Guangdong — I objected a little bit to the caricature of the Asian being very selfish and only worried about his village.AK:?As opposed to the Americans who were tackling each other and stealing their drugs and their food and shooting people in their houses?There was some caricature, but this film effectively conveyed public health concepts: the importance of infrastructure, the importance of personnel, the notion that germs don't care about your politics or your ideology.Hats off to Hollywood. What makes this movie scarier than the typical horror film is that it could happen. The errors in the film weren't errors; they were poetic license. I'd want every medical student to see this movie.AH:?More would become epidemiologists! Now I wish they'd do this for basic science. blockbusters are not normally known for their scientific accuracy. So how realistic is the new disaster movie Contagion, which depicts the spread of a killer virus across the world?'Too late to contain swine flu',?'Sars virus 'mutating rapidly',?'Bird flu fear as mutant strain hits China and Vietnam'.These are not lines from the film. They are all real headlines from the past decade.They all relate to illnesses which it was feared could spread around the globe and kill millions.But, while each has claimed lives, none has become the feared "modern plague".So how realistic is the depiction of the spread of the fatal infectious disease in Contagion?According to one scientist who has already seen the film, the answer is very.Prof John Edmunds, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who looks at how best to tackle epidemics of disease, said: "It's obviously a worst-case scenario."He added: "We can't rule it out as a possibility. And the science in the film was very good."Contagion begins with Gwyneth Paltrow on a business trip in Hong Kong. It then shows how a virus she contracts spreads from person to person as she travels back home to the US and the chain of transmission begins.Prof Edmunds said it was possible to "quibble" about some of the scientific detail and the speed at which some things, like the development of a vaccine, happen in the film, which also stars Matt Damon, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Ehle.But he added a great deal, such as the epidemiology - the investigation of the outbreak - and the involvement of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was accurate."For example the 1918 flu pandemic was at least as severe as what's represented in Contagion."And in 2003 we had Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) - that was close to becoming a Contagion-like scenario."There were just two things that stopped it. People with Sars weren't infectious until they were showing symptoms, and by then they were in hospital. Also the hospitalisation and isolation provision was good."But he said if those two things hadn't happened and the virus had spread more quickly and to places which didn't have the same healthcare systems, it would have been a different story.The one we watch particularly is flu Prof Mike Catchpole, Health Protection AgencyAnd he said: "Aids is another example of a virus that has spread around the world. The only difference there is the mode of transmission."When people think about viruses spreading around the world though, they tend to think of flu.Bird flu - H5N1 - first appeared in 2003. Experts had been predicting that the world was due a major flu pandemic that would kill millions - and bird flu was seen as a likely candidate.In the event, it has killed about 330 people since then, according to official statistics. But these were overwhelmingly people who farmed birds, or who had them in their own home.At the moment it is self-defeating. It cannot spread easily between people because it kills its hosts quickly, thereby preventing its spread."Bird flu is extremely lethal," says Prof Edmunds. "About half the people with it have died. What has stopped it is it's not transmissible between humans, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it could become transmissible."And then there was swine flu.Sars - 2002-04 - originated in China - 10% of the 8,100 infected died.Bird flu - 2003 onwards. H5N1 has infected 565 people globally, more than half of whom died. Reports in August suggested a mutated strain had been seen.Swine flu - emerged in Mexico in 2009. H1N1 affected millions, and almost 16,000 died.That first emerged in Mexico in 2009. It spread from country to country extremely quickly, because it was a new form of flu - H1N1 - that people did not have any resistance to.By the end of February 2010, the pandemic had caused 15,921 deaths worldwide. However, by summer last year levels of the virus were falling and the World Health Organization (WHO) was able to declare the pandemic over.But H1N1 was the prevalent strain of flu in the UK last winter, and it will be present again this year. It is different to most flus, in that it kills previously healthy adults. But for most, it is no worse than a normal flu.It therefore has the capacity to spread like Contagion's virus, but isn't as likely to be fatal.So, if Contagion depicts a possible, if worst-case, scenario, what's the most likely real-life candidate?Well the scientists say it could be any of the things they know about, if they change or mutate in some way.Prof Mike Catchpole, of the Health Protection Agency, said: "The one we watch particularly is flu. You only need to look back to the 1918 pandemic to see it can cause a huge number of cases - and a huge number of deaths."And we just don't know when or where the next pandemic flu will come along."Or, perhaps more likely, the next global disease could be something that no-one has thought of yet.chicago/tv/how-realistic-is-contagionWhen the producers of?Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s disaster-by-germs thriller shot partially in and around Chicago, needed to borrow books as set dressing, they called Dr. Jorge Parada. The director of infection prevention and control at Loyola University Medical Center had just the right library, stocked with page-turners like?Topley and Wilson’s Principles of Bacteriology, Virology and Immunity. In September, when?Contagion?opened, we attended a screening with the doc and got his professional opinion on its scientific plausibility.In the film?A deadly, unknown virus rapidly spreads across the globe.In reality?“That a naturally produced, mutant virus can appear among a hugely susceptible population, get transmitted around the world quickly and have a high lethality can happen. We saw it happen on a smaller scale with SARS [in 2002–03]. And the H1N1 2009 swine flu pandemic showed our astounding ability to identify a novel virus, gear up vaccine production and get it out. We dodged a bullet because H1N1 turned out to be a wimpy virus.”In the film?The virus turns healthy people into convulsing, frothing-at-the-mouth zombies in just a few days.In reality?“That makes for good cinema, but there are not a lot of bugs that have such a short incubation period. Most bugs need to cook for a little while for you to get sick enough that you have enough virus and it’s in your bloodstream and you’re coughing it out.”In the film?The mortality rate among the infected is around 20 percent.In reality?“That’s one thing that sets?Contagion?apart from?Outbreak?and other films in which a disease has a 100 percent mortality rate. It is very, very uncommon that a disease is so lethal that everyone who catches it dies. Even the devastating 1918 flu pandemic that killed an estimated 20 to 40 million people had a mortality rate only as high as around 20 percent.”In the film?Illinois’s governor shuts down the airports before the quarantine of Chicago.In reality?“That absolutely is a possibility. An airport is a great way to spread infection across the whole world. If a terrorist sprays something in a busy area in O’Hare that 100 people can catch, those people could be going to San Francisco, Georgia, London, Japan, everywhere—and there’s the seed of your pandemic.”In the film?Kate Winslet’s CDC detective risks her life, exposing herself to infected people to track the virus.In reality?“There are people like that. Carlo Urbani, the World Health Organization official working in Vietnam, blew the whistle on SARS after noticing a cluster of patients getting a deadly respiratory illness. A month later [in March 2003], he came down with SARS and died.”In the film?As people start dropping like flies, society breaks down: Stores get looted; absenteeism spikes in police and fire departments.In reality?“This is to be expected. You get a bad, lethal pandemic, why is the fireman going to show up for work? I remember during H1N1, we were trying to think about how we could keep the hospital running. What are we going to do if nurses don’t show up to work? In Chicago, there are plans for emergency response that include shutting down all the exits on the main highways so the Centers for Disease Control and army convoys can get in and out—but you can’t.Based on the three articles, what was true science (or at least based on true science) in the movie?What things were film exaggerations or not scientifically accurate?Did the articles disagree on anything bout the film? Which source are you more likely to believe and why?How could inaccurate science in movies dangerous? ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download