The Connection Between the Movie "Contagion" and Covid-19

Pandemic Movie Analysis
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Abstract
A global pandemic, more so an airborne viral attack, is usually the worst fear that any citizen or government can imagine. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic we currently face, the world has experienced massive losses in lives, livelihoods, and economies. In the movie Contagion debuted in 2011, the director Steven Soderbergh accurately predicts the situation we are currently facing. A virus with its roots from China spreading all over the world in a short time with serious, devastating effects. Healthcare professionals play a crucial role in the film's pandemic. They are the frontline soldiers combating the virus—a clear depiction of what healthcare workers are currently facing in the COVID-19 pandemic. While connecting the movie, Contagion and the COVID-19, this essay explores the challenges faced by healthcare frontline workers, particularly nurses.
Contagion Movie Analysis
Steven Soderbergh kicks off the film by casting business executive Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returning home from her Hong Kong business rendezvous. She returns with an unsuspicious mild cough that later turns out to be a sequel to the worst pandemic. Soon, her son Clark (Griffin Kane) dies, and she follows. In disbelief, the doctors inform her husband Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon) of the shocking news. They, too, do not comprehend the cause of her death. Mitch, ostensibly immune, is worried about the devastation that death could portend to his family. He is more determined to safeguard his daughter Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron) amidst the developing virus paranoia fueled by blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law). Additionally, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) work for CDC and are trying to find a cure alongside WHO's Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard). The movie's major theme is around the rampant global spread of a deadly airborne virus and the consequent loss of social order and panic during a pandemic. The setting is mainly in Atlanta, with earlier recordings in Hong Kong, Chicago, Minnesota, and London and San Francisco. Hence, the purpose of this assignment is to address the importance of public health workers and healthcare institutions in containing a pandemic.
The movie is realistically portraying a global pandemic in an understandable and unsensational way. It doubles as a thriller that is frighteningly speculative on how an unprecedented airborne virus spread through fomites could affect humanity and blow out in such a short period. It depicts a familiar scenario like the past swine flu, the Spanish flu, and currently the COVID-19. There are various healthcare professionals in Contagion like emergency room doctors, doctors at disease control centers like CDC and WHO, scientists, bio-safety experts, and epidemiologists who are tirelessly attempting to develop the vaccine. Nurses are conspicuously absent in this movie either by omission or commission, save for the only nurse onset donning a nun's habit.
Having a natural biological immunity, Mitch Emhoff, as the main character, witnesses the crumbling of the social order as the epidemic worsens while defending the victimized individuals. Over the course of the movie, h...