Scientific advisor on ‘Contagion’ says the movie was a warning sign
The 2011 film “Contagion,” featuring an all-star cast of Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne, has seen a resurgence. People are rewatching the movie and comparing the fictional outbreak to the current coronavirus pandemic. Veterinary pathologist Tracey McNamara, who served as a scientific adviser for the film, tells Yahoo Entertainment, “The movie rings so true.” She explains that director Steven Soderbergh got a lot of stuff “very, very right.” The film shows how quickly a virus can spread and how it can spread from an animal to humans. “There are many people who have been sounding the alarm for many, many years about a threat of infectious diseases,” McNamara says. She adds: “Up until now we have dodged the bullet.” Another thing she feels the movie got right is how long it will take to develop a vaccine and that there won’t be enough for everybody.
Video Transcript
ERIN MEARS: It's quite possible you've come in contact with infectious disease and that you're highly contagious. Do you understand? I want you--
- OK.
ERIN MEARS: --to get off now.
- OK. I'm getting off.
ERIN MEARS: And stay away from other people.
- No, no one with me.
ERIN MEARS: Don't talk to anyone. Don't touch anyone. That's the most important thing.
KEVIN POLOWY: How did you become involved in "Contagion"?
TRACEY MCNAMARA: The director of the film, to his credit, wanted to create a film that was very much based in science. And so he reached out to those of us who had been involved in the West Nile virus discovery. I was the only veterinarian involved. We kicked around ideas very early on about storyline, what would be plausible, what would sound silly, what should they not do. And I think that's why the movie rings so true.
- We've exhausted our supply of meals ready to eat for today.
- What?
[COMMOTION]
- What's going on?
KEVIN POLOWY: How did you respond when you first heard the premise for the film? Were you like, oh, that-- that would never happen? Or was it more like, oh, this-- this is a-- this is a real threat. This could be our future?
TRACEY MCNAMARA: There are many people who have been sounding the alarm for many, many years about the threat of emerging infectious diseases, almost all of which have been zoonotic-- Hendra virus, Nipah virus, SARS, monkeypox, MERS, Zika. It just goes on and on. Up until now, we have dodged the bullet. We haven't really been heavily impacted by these pandemic threats. That has changed.
It was so based on science, and so much of what they showed in the film has come to pass.
KEVIN POLOWY: So you saw the film as a warning at the time?
TRACEY MCNAMARA: Oh, yes. They got a lot of stuff very, very right. They showed how quickly the virus can spread. We're seeing that now. They showed you how a virus can spread from the Chinese cook to Kate Winslet. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and how it just spreads so quickly. In the past two decades, the time span between novel emerging infectious disease threats has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter, and the hits just keep coming.
And then Kate Winslet-- you know, the dedicated CDC epidemiologist who's doing her best to try and contain the outbreak, doing what they're all doing right now, and she dies. That kind of self-sacrifice of the-- our health care providers and researchers, that is-- that's what's happening right now.
ELLIS CHEEVER: So we have a novel virus with a mortality rate in the low 20s. No treatment protocol and no vaccine at this time.
- That is correct.
KEVIN POLOWY: What would you say are the key similarities there or uncanny resemblances between the virus that's depicted in "Contagion:-- I think it was called MET-1-- and COVID-19.
TRACEY MCNAMARA: At the end of the film, you see bulldozer knocking down trees in some forest. You see bats taking to the sky looking for new habitat. The bats fly to where the pigs are. The bats eat the fruit and poop and pee on the fruit. It drops to the ground. It infects the pigs. That piglet ends up in the restaurant being handled by that chef, who just wipes his hands on his apron, comes out, and shakes hands with Gwyneth Paltrow. That's real. That's exactly what happened.
KEVIN POLOWY: When you go back and revisit "Contagion," Laurence Fishburne actually uses the term "social distancing."
ELLIS CHEEVER: Right now, our best defense has been social distancing.
KEVIN POLOWY: Has been a term that has been around disease in scientific circles for that long, or was it introduced around the time of that movie?
TRACEY MCNAMARA: Yes, because, you know, when you're talking about viruses and if you're talking about, you know, droplet spread, if someone can sneeze on you, how far can that virus travel? And that's how they come up with that social distancing, six feet. People who are concerned about, oh, my spring break is being interrupted, and, oh, I still want to go and have a party, people need to wake up. This is a time where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
I'll be more blunt. Stop being so stupid and selfish--
KEVIN POLOWY: Yeah.
TRACEY MCNAMARA: --because your behavior is going to kill people.
- Unfortunately, she did die.
MITCH EMHOFF: Right.
- I'm sorry.
MITCH EMHOFF: OK. So can I go talk to her?
- Mr. Emhoff, I'm sorry, your wife is dead.
KEVIN POLOWY: In terms of your contributions to "Contagion," are they quantifiable? Can you see recommendations that you made along the way or things that were changed from, you know, maybe early versions of the script to what's on the screen? Can you see those sort of results?
TRACEY MCNAMARA: In our early conversations, they were thinking racehorses at a racetrack or something, and I was like, nah, no, that won't work. Now, there's a vaccine for horses. So that wouldn't really work, so that kind of scientific input had a redirect towards swine and bats, and that was all based on known science about existing, you know, past pandemic outbreaks at the time.
I think in the film where they showed how long it'll take to develop a vaccine and that you won't have enough for everybody-- there'll be honorary system. I thought, well, yeah, that will probably happen.
KEVIN POLOWY: There is a sequence in "Contagion," where they're showing the grocery shelves emptying, and they're showing people get water and crackers and soups and flashlights, hand sanitizer, but no toilet paper. [LAUGHS] So they did miss that. They didn't predict that. They didn't predict everything.
TRACEY MCNAMARA: That's funny.
