The virus will not destroy us .. Is what Hollywood planted in our minds true?

Jasmine Adel

Epidemics and viruses plots began to attract filmmakers beginning in 1957, and the Swedish movie "The Seventh Seal", which achieved remarkable success at the time, even ranked 155th on the list of "IMDB" artistic website, which is What developed over time and continued until the present time.

This is how we used, for many years, to watch the international movies whose heroes fight epidemics, enjoying them, thinking that it is science fiction. .

However, now that the Corona virus has spread around us, and the nightmare has become a reality beyond imagination, so that America has turned into a "joke" circulated by the whole world because of its inability to protect itself and control the virus, to the degree that caused its citizens to top the lists of the number of worst cases, bypassing China itself and Italy as well, and it became necessary to ask: How far can what we have seen in films be similar to reality, or be accurate, so we can learn from it or even give us some hope?

Judging from the above, and for more accuracy, we decided to choose the two most famous films of the intended category as an example, in order to ensure no generalization, and more detailed points methods.

The end of the world in the nineties
The first movie, "Outbreak", was released in 1995, starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, and his story is adapted from Richard Preston's best-selling book.

The events of the work centered on a deadly pandemic similar to Ebola, and it appears in one of the African forests in the late sixties, but one of the American officers destroys the camp in which the virus appeared, thinking that by this act he had eliminated it.

The virus remains hidden until the beginning of the nineties, before it reappears and spreads among the countries of the world, especially as it is transmitted by sneezing and coughing.

Among the attempts of the US Army Medical Research Institute to find a cure, and others seek to use the virus as a biological weapon serving their own interests, the events continue.

Peter Anceletti, the doctor and associate professor at the Nebraska Virus Center, commented on the work, saying that filmmakers usually skip their partial work on how the virus itself works, or offer it with some superficiality, while highlighting the idea of ​​isolation and hearts with the utmost fear.

He also stressed that what we saw in the laboratories is incorrect, because the treatment can not be for one person, on the ground many steps are taken, and the discovery of the vaccine passes a lot of clinical trials and approvals, before it becomes permitted and available for use.

Corona's prophecies
The second movie is Contagion, an American action movie directed by Stephen Soderberg in 2011, which starred as Jude Law, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Brian Cranston. What is interesting about this movie is how similar it is to what we are living in now, so that this period ranks fourth for the most rented movies on "iTunes".

The story of the movie revolves around a woman who traveled on a working visit to Hong Kong, and there she deals with something that has been contaminated by a consecutive act, starting with a bat, then a banana, then a pig, reaching the heroine. She dies within hours. And if the virus spreads with lightning speed, especially as it is transmitted with just a touch, before it ends a pregnant life, the countries of the first world start searching for a treatment before it is too late.

And about this movie, Peter Angleti stated that the accidental reactions through which the virus was transmitted, as happened in the movie "infection", is an accurate picture of what is really happening, hence the competent authorities begin to search for and develop a treatment to break those interactions.

As for the difference, it is the amount of time, whether it takes to spread the infection globally, or even find a cure. Filmmakers often ignore this, reducing the time required for one of the two things, as both take a much longer period on the ground.

The worst case scenario
For his part, Guido Vanham, a doctor and former head of virology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, commented that he feared that the films are not completely realistic, as it is not so tragic, and this is not the end of the world as the movies portray us, so given the situation in China now It seems under control, as the virus was contained quickly once the country was completely closed, unlike the situation in the United States, which seems too late compared to the Chinese.

Although the virus spreads quickly between people, so that every infected person can infect three others, making the epidemic a steady growth; in the end it will end, and this is only a matter of time, which may take several weeks or months, and in the end this virus is not deadly, In the worst case scenario, even if all the people of the world are affected, 98% of them will survive, according to Vanham's forecast.