It’s
okay if you feel a bit anxious about the news. Yesterday the U.S. passed China
for the most confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in the world, and social
distancing has quickly become a fact of life. It’s understandable then that
folks have turned to entertainment to contextualize their anxiety, if not fully
distract from it. Indeed, Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns’ Contagion
has become one of the most digitally rented and streamed films of the last
several months. In February alone, it shot up from Warner Brothers’ 270th most
rented movie to their second most.
A cold and clinical vision for a world brought to its knees due to a fictional strand of novel influenza (called MEV-1) spreading across the globe, Contagion’s realistic depiction of a pandemic is arguably only getting its full due now. We ourselves have noted the eerie prescience of Soderbergh’s vision, right down to its depiction of demagogues and conmen sowing confusion for their own benefit.
Now,
nine years after Contagion’s release, the cast and stars of the film have
reunited for a series of public service announcements while COVID-19, the
disease caused by coronavirus, spreads. You’ll note much like the film they lack
the cheeky humor of other recent celebrity PSAs, but they are refreshingly
direct about facts—something we could all use more of.
“So a few years ago a bunch of us did this movie called Contagion, which we’ve noticed is creeping its way back up on the carts on iTunes for obvious reasons,” Matt Damon said in his video. “So the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University reached out to the cast and asked if we would have a virtual reunion to do some PSAs for everyone, that might be helpful…. So everything you hear from us has been vetted by public health experts and scientists.”
For
Damon’s part he stressed the importance of social distancing.
Said
Damon, “People can have COVID-19 and have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at
all. So even if you think they’re healthy or you think that you’re healthy, don’t
take that chance, it is not worth it. Every time that you pass this virus to
someone else, you are actually giving it to three or four other people as well,
and then those people are going to do the same. So before long that one person
turns into hundreds, which turns into thousands, and that’s how we got into
this situation in the first place.”
Jennifer
Ehle, who plays the CDC scientist who discovers a vaccine in for the fictional
MEV-1 also had some wise words for those who are attempting to manipulate
COVID-19 for political reasons, or attempt to dismiss and downplay its danger.
“First,
this is not a Chinese virus or a virus that has no effect on the young and
healthy,” Ehle said. “It is what they call a novel virus, and that means our
immune systems have never seen it before. So until we have a treatment or a
vaccine, every single one of us, regardless of age or ethnicity, is at risk of
getting it.” She goes on to note scientists currently speculate that a vaccine
will take anywhere between 16 and 18 months. “Scientists and doctors are the
people we need to be listening to right now, they are the experts. That means
tuning out the voices with other agendas no matter how powerful they might be.”
In
the below video she goes on to talk about the process of testing and verifying
a vaccine’s effectiveness and safety…. While also noting the reason, ahem,
vaccines are useful.
Kate Winslet, meanwhile, walks you through the reasons it is crucial to wash your hands for 20 seconds.
Remembering
her time on Contagion, Winslet says, “To prepare for the role, I spent time
with some of the best public health professionals in the world. And what was
one of the most important things they taught me? Wash your hands like your life
depends on it, because right now, in particular, it just might. Or the life of
someone you love, or even the life of someone you might not know but is still
deserving of your consideration.”
While Laurence Fishburne, who played the very active head of the CDC in the movie, reflected on one of the film’s most memorable scenes in which his character talks about the history of handshakes:
“You
extended your hand and showed the other person you were meeting that you didn’t
have a weapon, that you weren’t carrying one. Well now the way we are living is
like we’re all carrying a weapon and we don’t even know it. What we do know is
that the virus travels through human contact, that is one of the ways it
travels. It needs us to survive, so let’s not give it any help.”
We
recommend watching all four videos, which are filled with some common sense information
but also context and added clarity that feels reassuringly vetted in these
times of misinformation. Kind of like the film. Remember that the world did not
end in Contagion. It was not a movie about the apocalypse, but the story
of a world responding to a crisis and surviving it.
As
Damon astutely observed at the end of his segment, “Please do your part. Other
generations have been asked to do extraordinary things. We’re being asked just
to stay at home. We’ve got this. Please let’s respect and protect our elders.”
The post Contagion Cast Offers PSAs Amid Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on Den of Geek.
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