FOUR THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE CONTAGION AND ITS LESSONS FOR NOW

Scott Z. Burns, the writer of Contagion, speaks about the many parallels between his screenplay and what is unfolding today.

1 HOW DID THE IDEA COME TO YOU?

I had been having conversations with my father, whose background was as a scientist, about the possibility of something like bird flu jumping into the human population. I was curious about what would happen ... and how the way we live could be used by any sort of virus to get a foothold. I asked epidemiologist Larry Brilliant if he thought the movie’s idea was outside the bounds of scientific possibility. And he said, “Well, it’s not even a question of if there will be another pandemic; it’s just simply a question of when.”

2 What are people asking you?

It is frustrating because people still don’t seem to grasp the situation and how it could have been avoided by properly funding the science around all of this. I didn’t have a crystal ball — I had access to great expertise. So, if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence in the public health experts. People also want to know what I think will happen next. My sense is that we are still very much in the first act.

3 Are you bracing yourself a bit because you are now seeing the scene you put on paper in the news?

I worry most about the time it could take for us to find an effective vaccine, and that places that have relatively low case counts right now may not fully appreciate what is about to happen to their communities. How long will people really stay vigilant?

4 They did come up with a vaccine in Contagion.

One of the criticisms by the scientific community was that we came up with a vaccine too quickly. I’m not a scientist, but my understanding is that coming up with a vaccine itself is only a part of the battle and not even the hardest part. To kill the virus in a petri dish is one thing. To make a vaccine that will not hurt people, that is safe, that does what we need it to do without it doing things we don’t want it to do is a painstaking process well before you scale up production.