Contagion, The Pandemic May Soon Be Upon Us
September 2, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
Disease transmission by direct or indirect contact. Contagion.
The Warner Bros. movie opening Sept. 9 looks to be an interesting one. This type of thing, an invisible organism, virus, bacteria, a pandemic, so easily spread, is truly something to be fearful of. It has happened before, and is most definitely going to happen again, given our modern world of global distribution, travel, and a largely uneducated public as to the dangers of a spreading deadly virus and the ramifications of an ensuing global pandemic.
Preparing for such a disaster is a situation where your mission will be to minimize or eliminate going out in public near other people, meaning, you’ll need an abundance of supplies to make it through. At least until it’s over…
With the flu season approaching, and as most living in the northern hemisphere will be beginning to hunker down for the winter in a few months, a time when viruses flourish among cooped up humans, a timely cinematic preview is hitting the silver screens in a theatre near you. No clue if it will be a good one, or not, but the trailer looks intriguing.
Not that Warner Brothers doesn’t have enough money already, and not that I’m getting a cent to point out this movie (although I used to work in this industry), but, this movie might actually be worth the price of admission.
Stay tuned for related posts (pandemic) as the season comes upon us…
Speaking of outbreaks, check out this map, Health Map.
Update, Having received communications from TakePart.com, who have built a ‘go-to’ hub with the film’s co-producer, Participant Media, I had a look at it – and it appears interesting and helpful regarding questions that some may have about the subject. http://www.takepart.com/Contagion
Maybe they’ll send me a nice framed movie poster for posting this on our site 
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Already four confirmed cases H5N1 bird flu in Canada….
The message is often in the movie. Think about it, are you prepared for it?.
Omg so want to see this flick.
The true pandemic is going to come out of a vastly overpopulated area such as India, Africa, or some other Asia country. The bird flu is no big deal because it is deep inside the lungs of the infected person, for a true germ to spread it has to be coughed up easily like the standard flu. The pathogens that worry me the most are Marburg and Lassa Fever. Marburg survives much easier in air than Ebola and has a fatality rate of 50-75%. Lassa Fever known as the most contagious germ that there is with only a few individual virus particles able to infect someone and has a similar death rate as Marburg. Smallpox it takes several hundred individual virus particles to make someone sick from it as an example.
Then there is of course some virus that no one has ever seen before that nature has ready to spread. Nature does this ALL the time with species on this planet. Human beings are no different than the other life forms that have been infected by germs for hundreds of millions of years. It is thought that disease could have been what killed out the dinosaurs after the asteroid hit 65 million years ago.
Then there is the possibility of some psycho biologist that has come up with some sort of doomsday virus. The most dangerous country for a release of a virus that no one has ever seen before is North Korea. This country is believed to have Smallpox and EVERY type of virus known and not known to man ready and loaded in their missiles, much like the USSR had ready to go in case of war. North Korea also has every type of chemical weapon ever made on top of a nuclear arsenal. It would be a lot easier to load a few hundred pounds of some horrible virus into an ICBM and explode it a few miles above the ground over what North Korea considers the enemy, the U.S., in a war type situation. North Korea and other countries such as Syria understand that weapons of mass destruction keep dictators in power much longer than those without. This should scare people a lot more so, an ICBM loaded with God knows what deadly pathogens, than even an EMP attack.
All very true, BI. For a good read you may enjoy, The Last Gasp. Forgot author, roughly published 1982 maybe, about $2 on Amazon.
@cossack55. I will look for this book. One book EVERYONE should read is “Biohazard” by Ken Alibek, – The chilling true story of the largest covert biological weapons program on the world- told from inside by the man who ran it. This shows that countries like the USSR are capable of ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.
From the thoughts of most people that find biological weapons as terrible as mankind can get, there are individuals in these secret countries like North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, etc. that think up the most horrible means of killing as many people as possible. These countries are ALL capable of selling or just plain giving terrorists these weapons to hurt the West as much as they can. This book talks about how the Soviet Union in war with the U.S. was not only going to use nuclear weapons, but also the worst possible biological weapons to finish off anyone left after being throughly nuked. People MUST realize that they are NOT safe, and there are absolutely horrific weapons floating around out there ready to be used. The old saying is that with a biological weapon they get more bang for their buck (dollar). Everyone should go out and get this book that is interested in survival and preparing for the worst, because biological weapons are the worst of weapons of mass destruction and the easiest to attack with.
Bring it on! I ain’t afraid of no bugs!! Oh, wait… yes I am.
This disaster wouldn’t be too bad if I was able to spend it with either Gwyneth Paltrow and/or Kate Winslet! hee-hee!
But, then you’d have to change your name.
Was watching Dr. Oz today about deadly pandemics and there was much that was not discussed with the head of the CDC that should have been. There was mentioned about smallpox and it was said that if smallpox cases turned up it was an attack. I entirely disagree with this. The smallpox virus does not seem like a dead end type of virus because of how well it had survived through the air for long periods of time when there were outbreaks. No one mentions the reservoir in which smallpox could lay dormant for a long time, decades. What worries me is the digging up of graves of people that died from smallpox decades ago for building purposes in this country or other countries. You would think there could be a danger of the virus suspended waiting for a new host. I would be concerned about especially dry areas, like the desert regions in which bacteria and viruses remain in an almost mummified state, waiting. Smallpox I think could pop up naturally one day like Ebola does every few years from some reservoir that nobody thought of, even from some animal possibly.
It kind of reminds me of the Poltergeist movie in which rich developers simply moved all the tombstones and sent ghosts into a fury. This time though someone digs up some graves of people that died from smallpox back in the old west days for land development, like in the Southwest, and they release a real horror. Nature has ways of releasing bad viruses in strange ways. Everyone then blames North Korea or some other country like Iran for an attack, when in reality it was stupidity and a sacrilegious act of distrubing some cemetery. The scary thing about this is that MOVING of graves happens all the time in the name of greed. Also could be someone that died of something like the 1918 swine flu.
Another part of the show that bothered me a lot was the stressing of a vaccine for any pandemic. A vaccine works wonderful for those not infected, but what about the survival of someone already sick. A flash type of pandemic like the movie The Stand, a vaccine would be useless because there would be no one left to vaccinate. There should have been talk, and more research on very intense anti-viral agents that would allow someone to fight off the disease long enough to give the immune system a chance to kick in. They did talk about something called Andrograph, I think that is the correct spelling, that someone can take naturally to boast the immune system. Still research should be on attacking the pathogen and preventing it from replicating itself in people already infected with something.
Dr. Oz comes out with wonderful advice, but this show was lame and did not get enough into the real dangers and prevention of pandemics.
DEFINATELY A GOOD MOVIE!!!