Epidemics and pandemics of various viruses have plagued humanity throughout our existence, but before COVID-19, the only major pandemic was the HIV outbreak in 1980. This was a time when the world was not as globally interconnected, and people primarily obtained information about diseases from state-controlled sources (Piret & Boivin, 2021).
However, today, the world is more connected than ever before. Many people have the opportunity to travel anywhere in the world, almost everyone has access to the internet for most of the day, and everyone has the chance to express their opinion on any issue and be heard by a large audience from diverse countries and cultures. The pandemic depicted in the film is the first pandemic of the 21st century and, as a result, the first experience of fighting a virus in a highly interconnected world, a fight for which humanity was unprepared.
In the film, because the first people infected were from different countries, the virus spread simultaneously in different parts of the world so quickly that health organizations had too little time to analyze and localize the threat and, as a result, had little information about the threat on which to base their decisions. Such extreme conditions require extreme solutions, which can often prove politically and economically unpopular, leading governments to choose to keep people calm for as long as possible by providing the bare minimum of information. Furthermore, later in the film, it is revealed that those in power use the information and resources at their disposal to protect specific individuals. All this ultimately led to panic and mass unrest, because the virus spreads faster than information about it, and people cannot help but notice this. Contagion shows how easily order and everyday “normality” crumble in the face of a global threat. Fear and uncertainty overwhelm people; they lose trust in the authorities, who, in an attempt to keep everything under control, do not disclose important information and do not take timely measures. In an attempt to find comfort and possible salvation, they turn to unverified information on the internet, which leads to the spread of misinformation and, as a result, more deaths and greater panic, forcing governments to introduce tougher measures and spend far more resources. This conflict is explored through the character of Alan Krumwiede, who spreads false information that a homeopathic remedy made from Forsythia cures the disease, because it cured Alan himself, although in reality, this is not true, and in his case, it was just a coincidence. However, hundreds of people who had lost faith in the government responded to this idea, and as a result, Alan’s blog caused many deaths.
However, in my opinion, the most remarkable thing about Alan’s storyline is that he sincerely believed in what he was saying, and this reveals another important theme of the film. Behind every decision and every organization are ordinary people. This idea is accompanied by the use of hyperlink narrative. Not only does it give the viewer a sense of the global nature of the threat and the general disorganization, as we are constantly thrown to different characters in different parts of the world, which in turn creates a slight feeling of confusion, but it also follows people of different statuses, from members of the WHO and CDC to ordinary citizens. The story is presented to us from different perspectives, conveying one important idea. All the main characters are ordinary people with their own fears and needs, suddenly faced with a threat that no one knows how to deal with. We see that behind every decision are people who do not have a clear plan of action and do not have time to develop one, so they act irrationally and impulsively. Governments and international organizations are not mechanisms, but gatherings of people, and every number in the death statistics is someone’s tragedy.
References:
Piret, J., & Boivin, G. (2021). Pandemics Throughout History. Frontiers in Microbiology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.631736
Soderbegh, S. (2011). Contagion. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Shay P.
I am confused by your opening statement that HIV was the only other pandemic before COVID-19. There have been hundreds of major-scale categorized pandemics within the last hundred years–admittedly, many of those are located in the global south and therefore unremarked upon–but some notable ones that have caused immense global death and impact are: H1N1, HIV, Russian Typhus, Spanish Flu, and the third plague, which was only noted to end in 1960. Even the article cited disproves that statement, unless I am misunderstanding its purpose.
Your observation that the people behind the decisions are simply that–people–is appreciative. Characters are written with flaws because we as humans are flawed, we make msitakes, we misjudge, we are wrong. The characters in places of power are compelx and relatable not because we see ourselfs explicitly, but because we can recognize the faults and the imperfect nature of existing in such a scary time, especially after going through the COVID-19 pandemic.