Just watched the movie “Contagion”

Posts
9,496
Likes
52,091
Actually saw it when it came out in 2011, but it certainly seems even more relevant now. And it scared the hell out of me. Looking at my vintage Omega collection is way more fun.
 
Posts
244
Likes
2,227
It’s obviously fiction because it vastly overestimated the populous’ rational response to seeking out vaccinations to mitigate risk 🙁
 
Posts
9,496
Likes
52,091
It’s obviously fiction because it vastly overestimated the populous’ rational response to seeking out vaccinations to mitigate risk 🙁
Agreed. I feel so much better now. 😲
 
Posts
10,610
Likes
51,753
Isn’t that the one were the contagion originated with a bat? Hate to say it but i watched a lot of those movies during my quarantine time rewatched a bunch of zombie apocalypse stuff as well for good measure.
Edited:
 
Posts
17,508
Likes
36,663
Isn’t that the one wear the contagion originated with a bat? Hate to say it but i watched a lot of those movies during my quarantine time rewatched a bunch of zombie apocalypse stuff as well for good measure.

Wasn't it a little monkey a sailor bought back from exotic lands?

Or was that another prequel to 2020/2021/2022?
 
Posts
16,307
Likes
44,981
Wasn't it a little monkey a sailor bought back from exotic lands?

Or was that another prequel to 2020/2021/2022?
I think that was outbreak with Dustin Hoffman last century…not using the web, just going from memory
 
Posts
17,508
Likes
36,663
I think that was outbreak with Dustin Hoffman last century…not using the web, just going from memory

I think you may be right 👍.

That was the one where they dropped an FAE from a C130 (?).

I remember popping a small one (20 litres) during training once, it was rather spectacular.
Big boy's toys courtesy of the ADF 😁.
 
Posts
16,853
Likes
47,845
Watched it.....mate we have been living it for 2 years 😗
 
Posts
215
Likes
297
Don’t go too far down the doomsday movie rabbit hole…these are unprecedented times! Lots of good still in the world 😀
 
Posts
16,307
Likes
44,981
The point @crd humorously made me think and gave me a bit of a chill. The politicizing of this disease and vaccine has fueled not only massive distrust of this vaccine, but I fear all vaccines in general. “Anti-vaxxer’s” were a fringe band of nut-jobs on the web (lead by Gwyneth Vagina Candle) but now it’s mainstream! Could we see polio, mumps, smallpox, and measles ramp back up in pandemic proportions again? Will all of who were vaccinated as children for these “extinct” diseases require boosters in the future?
 
Posts
4,473
Likes
44,734
The point @crd humorously made me think and gave me a bit of a chill. The politicizing of this disease and vaccine has fueled not only massive distrust of this vaccine, but I fear all vaccines in general. “Anti-vaxxer’s” were a fringe band of nut-jobs on the web (lead by Gwyneth Vagina Candle) but now it’s mainstream! Could we see polio, mumps, smallpox, and measles ramp back up in pandemic proportions again? Will all of who were vaccinated as children for these “extinct” diseases require boosters in the future?

Ignoring my throwaway WWZ comment , the Contagion movie is scarily accurate in its portrayal of what actually has been happening with this very mild Covid Pandemic, a case of reality mirroring fiction.
 
Posts
192
Likes
178
Ignoring my throwaway WWZ comment , the Contagion movie is scarily accurate in its portrayal of what actually has been happening with this very mild Covid Pandemic, a case of reality mirroring fiction.
I watched this about 12 months ago and my thoughts were exactly the same as yours
 
Posts
2,552
Likes
3,662
Could we see polio, mumps, smallpox, and measles ramp back up in pandemic proportions again? Will all of who were vaccinated as children for these “extinct” diseases require boosters in the future?
We already have seen a rise in these and others. Whether it gets to pandemic proportions or not remains to be seen. But at the rate un-immunized people are being allowed into the U.S. (legally or not) these previously all but eradicated disease’s will increase. Just my thoughts.
 
Posts
29,141
Likes
75,304
The point @crd humorously made me think and gave me a bit of a chill. The politicizing of this disease and vaccine has fueled not only massive distrust of this vaccine, but I fear all vaccines in general. “Anti-vaxxer’s” were a fringe band of nut-jobs on the web (lead by Gwyneth Vagina Candle) but now it’s mainstream! Could we see polio, mumps, smallpox, and measles ramp back up in pandemic proportions again? Will all of who were vaccinated as children for these “extinct” diseases require boosters in the future?

The good thing about Contagion is that she carked it pretty early on in the movie...but yes, this whole thing has given the Andrew Wakefield followers of the world a lot to rejoice about. We will be living with the results for a long time I suspect.

Back to entertainment - we just finished watching the Station Eleven mini-series, and it was very good. Highly recommended.
 
Posts
244
Likes
2,227
Back to entertainment - we just finished watching the Station Eleven mini-series, and it was very good. Highly recommended.

Yes! I’ve had the book in my queue to read for years and just never got around to it. The mini series reignited my interest, so it’ll be my next start for sure.
 
Posts
4,693
Likes
17,769
There is a BBC article which holds out some hope (in the Andromeda strain frame) currently we are hoping to be on the way out but there is much luck and the risk of other variants. I have copied that below.

In terms of vaccines (this is not anti vaccination or anti medical as I use both and it has saved my life) things can go wrong and it is good to have balances and control groups. They are now finally paying compensation for the 2009 swine flu vaccine after a long fight. For sure even that vaccine helped more than it impacted but we need a keen eye on any issues. To be clear I am sure the current vaccines help more as well, but we should not be blind to the risk potential for some people, and like the automotive and aviation industries Pharma do not have the best track record of reacting to issues if it might impact profits. The challenge is balancing that fact with a simple public health message to enhance take up IMHO.
-----------
Norwegian study links flu vaccine to narcolepsy risk
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has found an elevated risk of narcolepsy among children and young adults who were vaccinated against the swine flu seven years ago. Some who did not take the vaccine against the pandemic of 2009 also developed this severe sleeping disorder.
------------

This is the BBC article - a lot down to luck and location plus the UK vaccination rate but hopefully it hold out some hope / we might be on the upward curve.

Endemic Covid: Is the pandemic entering its endgame?
Who hasn't let out an exasperated "Is the pandemic finished yet?" or a "When can I just get on with my life?" over the past two years? I know I have. The answer to those questions could be... very soon. There is growing confidence that Omicron could be hurtling the UK into the pandemic endgame. But what comes next? There will be no snap of the fingers to make the virus disappear. Instead, the new buzzword we'll have to get used to is "endemic" - which means that Covid is, without doubt, here to stay. So, is a new Covid-era truly imminent and what will that actually mean for our lives?"We're almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK," Prof Julian Hiscox, Chair in Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool, tells me."I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic."What's changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help.
The result was like taking a flamethrower into a fireworks factory. Covid spread explosively around the world - but that fire cannot burn at such high intensity forever. There were two options - either we would extinguish Covid, as we did with Ebola in West Africa, or it would die down but be with us for the long term. It would join the swarm of endemic diseases - such as common colds, HIV, measles, malaria and tuberculosis - that are always there.For many, this was the inevitable fate of a virus that spreads through the air before you even know you're sick. "Endemicity was written into this virus," says Dr Elisabetta Groppelli, a virologist at St George's, University of London. "I am very optimistic," she says. "We'll soon be in a situation where the virus is circulating, we will take care of people at risk, but for anybody else we accept they will catch it - and your average person will be fine."Epidemiologists, who study the spread of diseases, would consider a disease endemic when levels are consistent and predictable - unlike the "boom and bust" waves so far in the pandemic. But Prof Azra Ghani, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, says other people are using it to mean Covid is still around, but that we no longer need to restrict our lives. She thinks we'll get there "rapidly", adding: "It seems like it's taken a long time, but only a year ago we started vaccinating and we're already an awful lot freer because of that."The only major curve ball would be a new variant that can outcompete Omicron and cause significantly more severe disease.It is important to remember that endemic does not automatically mean mild. "We have some huge killer diseases that we consider endemic," says Prof Ghani. Smallpox was endemic for thousands of years and killed a third of people who were infected. Malaria is endemic and causes around 600,000 deaths a year.But we are already seeing the signs that Covid is becoming less deadly as our bodies become more familiar with fighting it.In the UK there has been a vaccination campaign, a booster campaign and waves of Covid involving four different variants of the virus. "When Omicron has finished and moved through, immunity in the UK will be high, at least for a while," says Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist at the University of Edinburgh.The high level of infections has come at a price, with more than 150,000 deaths in the UK. But it has left a protective legacy in our immune systems. That immunity will wane so we should expect to catch Covid in the future, but it should still reduce the chances of becoming seriously ill. Prof Hiscox - who sits on the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group - says that means most people won't be badly affected."Should a new variant or old variant come along, for most of us, like any other common cold coronavirus, we'll get the sniffles and a bit of a headache and then we're OK."There will be people - mostly the old and vulnerable - who will die from endemic Covid. So there is still a decision to be made about how we live alongside it."If you're willing to tolerate zero deaths from Covid, then we're facing a whole raft of restrictions and it's not game over," Prof Hiscox explains.But, he says, "in a bad flu season, 200-300 die a day over winter and nobody wears a mask or socially distances, that's perhaps a right line to draw in the sand."Lockdowns and restrictions on mass gatherings will not come back and mass testing for Covid will end this year, he expects. The near certainty is there will be booster vaccines for the vulnerable come the autumn in order to top up their protection through winter. "We need to accept the fact that our flu season is also going to be a coronavirus season, and that is going to be a challenge for us," says Dr Groppelli. However, it is still uncertain how bad winters will be as the people who die from flu and Covid tend to be the same. As one scientist put it, "You can't die twice."
Prof Riley thinks we won't be compelled to wear face masks after Omicron, but they will become "a much more common sight" as they are in parts of Asia as people choose to wear them in crowded places.
She adds: "The likely scenario is life won't look much different to the autumn of 2019, when we all turned up for our flu vaccines."While the UK is ahead of most of the world due to a combination of vaccines and a large number of infections, the planet is not remotely close to seeing the end of the pandemic. Poorer countries are still waiting for vaccines to give to their most vulnerable people. Meanwhile countries that kept Covid at arms' length have had very few deaths, but also have less immunity in their populations. The World Health Organization has been clear the world is a long way off describing Covid as endemic. "For the world it is still a pandemic and an acute emergency," Dr Groppelli concludes
Edited:
 
Posts
719
Likes
2,848
Isn’t that the one were the contagion originated with a bat? Hate to say it but i watched a lot of those movies during my quarantine time rewatched a bunch of zombie apocalypse stuff as well for good measure.
You have to be ready to fight, at least at the Starbucks line.