Quarantines, strict hygiene rules and panic buying have been observed since the coronavirus COVID-19 started spreading. A few movies depict similar situations.
Advertisement
The typical ingredients of a Hollywood apocalyptic scenario are well known: It starts with a threat first revealed by alarmed scientists, while decision-makers aim to downplay the problem. The main protagonists aim to save themselves or their community — and ultimately the entire planet.
But do these films provide any meaningful lessons on how to deal with the outbreak of a virus?
On quarantines
In Wolfgang Petersen's thriller Outbreak from 1995 (top picture; actress Rene Russo), which was released during the real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire, a monkey imported from Africa transmits a new virus to humans. Virologist Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) and his team set up a lab in the town where the epidemic broke out. The military seals off the city. Sam Daniels tells his manager: "We can't stop it."
In the post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend (2007), a quarantine is enforced on Manhattan island and a US army virologist (Will Smith) is the last surviving human in New York. In Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, it's the entire British island that's quarantined.
Today's new coronavirus, which was first detected in China at the end of December 2019, has been spreading rapidly around the world despite initial attempts to isolate the city of Wuhan. Around half of the 11 million inhabitants of the city fled before the Chinese province was sealed off.
Hygiene tips
"The average person touches his or her face three to five times every waking minute. In the meantime, we're touching doorknobs, water fountains, each other," says Kate Winslet in the role of epidemiologist Erin Mears in Steven Soderbergh's medical action thriller Contagion (2011). The film is about a virus imported from China, which contains genetic material from pig and bat viruses. It's initially transmitted by a chef who shook hands with other people without having properly washed his own hands after handling slaughtered pigs.
In the film as in reality, the most important protective measure against the new coronavirus is to frequently and thoroughly wash hands, as the World Health Organization advises.
Panic buying
The apocalyptic TV series The Walking Dead shows that large stocks of food piled up in cupboards will not provide any protection against the actual threat.
In real life, so-called preppers have long been preparing for emergencies. Now average consumers, who hadn't thought of emergency preparations until now, are also stocking up on pasta, canned goods and toilet paper, as empty shelves in German supermarkets demonstrate.
Globalization
In recent films such as World War Z and Contagion, viruses spread globally at a rate that would have been unthinkable years ago, because of increased globalization. In World War Z, Brad Pitt travels to Israel in search of an antidote; huge walls are erected around Jerusalem, put under quarantine.
In real life, Israel has recently imposed entry restrictions on passengers from Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland due to the corona outbreak.
Some reactions to the coronavirus can also be observed in films. It might be recommended to watch a few of those movies again; as we all know, Hollywood thrillers usually end well.
Epidemics in literature
Boccaccio, Defoe and Camus: Over the centuries, many world famous writers have told stories involving deadly infectious diseases.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Hiekel
Thomas More: 'Utopia' (1516)
On a faraway island, a sailor discovers an ideal society: There is equality among the locals, it is democratic, ownership is communal. It was the opposite of life in England at the time. And: there were no epidemics, unlike England that had suffered from the plague more than once. The above photo shows Dresden Semper Opera dancers as "Utopians" in a musical theater project based on More's novel.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Hiekel
Giovanni Boccaccio: 'The Decameron' (1349-1353)
Seven women and three men flee the plague to a country house near Florence. As cruel as the descriptions are at the beginning, the 100 novellas in the collection are surprisingly entertaining. To pass the time, each of the fugitives determines a topic per day and everyone has to tell a corresponding story. Subtle or crude, tragic or comical — a whole world unfolds.
Image: picture-alliance/imageBROKER/O. Stadler
Francis Bacon: 'New Atlantis' (1627)
Bacon envisioned a utopian island by the name of Bensalem, home to the people of the lost city of Atlantis. They are very involved in research and science, and inventions including the submarine, wind turbines and hearing aids are anticipated on "New Atlantis." Foreign seafarers were initially quarantined to protect islands from possible diseases.
Daniel Defoe: 'A Journal of the Plague Year' (1722)
Daniel Defoe, five years old and whisked away to the countryside to keep him safe during the Great Plague in London, relied on eyewitness accounts and meticulous research for his description of the devastating events. Defoe tells the tale of a city in a state of emergency, faced with hysteria, superstition, unemployment, looting and fraud.
In Camus' "The Plague," a doctor by the name of Bernard Rieux describes how first rats die of the plague, followed by thousands of citizens in the Algerian port city of Oran. Everyone takes a different approach to the fight against the Black Death, but in the end, it kills the innocent and the ruthless alike.
Image: Getty Images/P.Baz
Stephen King: 'The Stand' (1978)
A mutant virus breaks out of a military research laboratory and kills almost the entire US population. Only few are immune, left to assert themselves in a depopulated world with a collapsed infrastructure. Two groups — basically the "good" and the "evil" — emerge, both headed by charismatic leaders.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Ohlenschläger
Jose Saramago: 'Blindness' (1995)
The inhabitants of a nameless city go blind all of a sudden. To prevent the spread of a potential disease, they are housed in an empty psychiatric ward, and attended to by a doctor and his wife, played by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in the 2008 film of the same name (picture). The situation quickly escalates, but in the greatest chaos, some people regain their eyesight.
Image: Imago Images/Cinema Publishers Collection
Philip Roth: 'Nemesis' (2010)
The novel is set in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944 during a severe outbreak of polio. It recreates the terror, fear, poor information and feeling of powerlessness among the population faced by a paralytic disease that mainly affected children, crippling one child after the next. A vaccine wasn't available until 1955.