NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin,
Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)),
I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF
DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation
is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes
reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of
mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
My
wife and I have been watching our DVD collection during our state’s Shelter-in-Place
order these past few weeks. I suggested “Contagion” and to my surprise, she
said, “yes.”
One
of the reasons I wanted to watch it again is that writer, Scott Z. Burns is a
graduate of our sister high school (I’m a school counselor). Part of the story takes
place in our state, and the school district I work in is the only one actually
named in the movie as “Closing”…
Doing
some reading about this, I found this on Wikipedia: “Renewed popularity:
In
2020, the film received renewed popularity due to the coronavirus pandemic,
which bears some resemblance to the pandemic depicted in the film. By March
2020, “Contagion” was the seventh most popular film on iTunes, listed as the
number two catalog title on Warner Bros. compared to its number 270 rank the
past December 2019, and had average daily visits on piracy websites increase by
5,609 percent in January 2020 compared to the previous month….”
This
is only one of some 90 films made all over the world that depict pandemics, even
one “1918” about the great Flu Pandemic a bit over a hundred years ago. In that
one, between seventeen million and a hundred million people died – and the
total killed by World War I itself (which was being fought at the same time)
was seventeen million…that’s a LOT of people dying.
In
“Contagion”, the virus is incredibly fast-acting and kills, eventually one out
of every four who catch it. The current number for COVID-19 is reported in two
ways on World-o-meter. One is the number of cases, split between Active Cases +
Closed Cases (at this writing the total of both is 579,892) and Closed Cases /
Deaths (at this writing, 26,519). The
latter gives a staggering death toll of 17%, fast approaching the 25% of the
Influenza Pandemic of 1917-1920.
However,
if you take total deaths divided by total corona virus cases (The last century
pandemic gets its mortality percentage that way – though you could argue that
all the cases are closed), the percentage is FAR smaller: 5%. (Is that because
it’s less dramatic for headlines or is there are reason to do it the first way?
17% seems far more media-hype-friendly…)
As
well, there are conspiracy theories gushing from the fervid (or should it be
fevered?) minds of those who love such things. I am a conspiracy theory dabbler
– for example, I live a short bike ride from the FBI Headquarters that oversees
Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota operations. Driving past the place,
you see a parking ramp and a white building with a massive, black arch over it
as well as an iron fence, cameras, and a garage – in front of which are often
parked the black Chevy Suburban SUVs we see on TV all the time. As a conspiracist,
I frequently point out that the building with all of its TV memes can’t
possibly be the real thing. The acres across from the alleged FBI building are
covered with warehouses. I put it to anyone who will listen that the “FBI”
building is just a shell and that the REAL FBI are housed in the warehouses and
have exits and entrances in the basements of everyone in the area!
At
any rate, current COVID-19 hysteria aside, I sometimes feel like I’m living in
a movie, or better yet, a short story. The news is consistently grim, but if
you click on the Wiki link below referring to historical epidemics, you can see
clearly that they are neither “new” things nor are they without lessons.
From
each epidemic came a new understanding of disease. “After the cholera epidemics…public
health boards were established…provid[ing] for the improvement of streets,
construction of drains and sewers, collection of refuse, and procurement of
clean domestic water supplies…considerable efforts were channeled into
controlling infectious diseases, particularly hookworm and malaria, in many
countries under colonial domination.” From the 1918 Flu Pandemic when added to
late 20th Century gene sequencing science, the identity of the
disease was made clear – and led to an entire classification system of viruses.
Hence, it’s clear that COVID-19 is not related in any way to the 1918 virus, in
fact, it’s in a completely different family. The virus in 1918 was what was called
“a novel influenza A virus” which was spiked with different proteins and which was
shaped in a particular way.
The
COrona Virus IDentified in 2019 (hence COVID-19) was from an entirely different
family that was spiked with different proteins and look different from the 1918
virus:
An
article on National Public Radio’s website on six weeks ago on February 10
points out that fictional epidemics bring to light “How we see people who are
afflicted by disease. [and] How we respond to them in terms of human empathy.”
Watching nightly news or local news has, after a role call of disaster, shines
a tiny ray of light on people going out of their way to help. These instants of
humanity – or God in the lives of some of the people featured in the stories –
do what science fiction can do best: make us think beyond our current dark
situation and past our personal grief to see that we might all do good, no
matter how bad things get.
From
a purely historical reflection on what Christians did in the past during
epidemics leads me to hope that the Church today will do the same. If it does
NOT…well…then maybe things are far worse than they appear to be – https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/4-lessons-church-history/
I have absolutely
no doubt that there will be an explosion of science fiction stories talking about
viral plague. Excuse me while I get to work and see how many ideas I can come
up with that have nothing to do with viruses.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemicshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_viral_outbreaks,
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11740/
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