Dr. Paul Carson: Why coronavirus pandemic is worse than the film 'Contagion'

Paul Carson, M.D., is a Pittsburgh physician.

I rewatched Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film “Contagion” last night starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The film goes like this:

When Paltrow returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, she is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband, Matt Damon, initially they have no idea what caused it. During the course of the film they eventually figure out it’s a respiratory virus from Hong Kong.

It’s a cautionary tale considering what we are facing today. While the film is fiction and along with that comes dramatic cinematic effect, I think it’s worth taking a closer look at the pandemic depicted in the film.

In the film, the virus depicted was determined to be highly contagious, transmitted easily through surface contact to where it was widely spread on public transport and through casual urban contact. It had the common respiratory droplet transmission as well. They determined the virus to have a very high R0 value, which is the average number of people who will catch the disease from a single infected person. All of this so far is very consistent with what we know about covid-19.

That’s where the comparison ends though.

In the film, the virus had a very short incubation period — that is, hours. Also, in the film, the fictional virus had a very high fatality rate. This made for great onscreen gore, excitement and drama — but diverges from what we believe about covid-19. While this may sound good, it is in fact not.

In the film, due to the nature of the virus, people died quickly. Paltrow was dead by the first 10 minutes of the film. By dying, she stopped her own transmission of the virus to others. The host died, the virus died with that transmission. Much like Ebola, the high death rate helped contain the virus.

While I am not wishing death on anyone, it’s actually a built-in containment mechanism. Unfortunately, with our virus, we don’t have that “benefit.” What we know about covid-19 is quite the opposite. This is also why it’s so much more dangerous.

With covid-19 infection, most will walk around for near a week without feeling any symptoms, unknowingly spreading the virus. When we do finally feel sick, if you are lucky enough to get a test, then and only then are you asked to “quarantine.” By then, if you were not already sheltering in place prior to the testing, you probably spread it to a whole bunch of people.

If you got this far reading this, I commend you. You are probably already sheltering at home. The world thanks you.

My hope, though, is that this gets shared with the people who are not taking this seriously. This is real and we can make a difference in how we act.

Theoretically, if every person in the world could stop interacting completely with any other person for 14 days, this would end the pandemic in its tracks. For real. No more new cases, the existing cases would burn out (recover or die).

We know this is not possible, though, but we can get close with everyone’s efforts.

What you do now will affect the world, your country, your family and loved ones.

Be smart. Be safe. Share.