(no subject)

[camwyn]

Watched Contagion, the 2011 movie about an extremely dangerous, rapidly spreading, worldwide zoonotic disease that originated in food animals, jumped to humans, and proceeded to rip through a significant percentage of the world's population last night. I considered it an extremely reassuring movie, because it depicted a sensible, reasonably coordinated worldwide response, the scientists behaved like scientists and were depicted as the heroic characters, the guy screaming THE CDC LIES was depicted as a self-interested self-aggrandizing scumbag despite being Handsome Jude Law, and people by and large did their best. At least, the named ones did; a lot of the unnamed background characters, not so much.

Took me a while to realize that recommending it to people who might be worried about 2019-nCoV, which as of 8 AM EST on 2/7/20 hasn't got its own name yet, might not be the greatest idea. For me, the important part was seeing doctors being doctors and scientists being scientists and working to get results, even if what they found wasn't a cure. For other people... well, it is kind of an unflinching movie and the number of deaths reported by the end of the movie has two commas in it. And the line in the credits about 'it's not if, it's when- get prepared, now', which was meant as a warning to encourage people to do the things necessary to head off a pandemic like that before it could get under way... that probably isn't what other folks would consider reassuring either.

Ages ago on Tumblr I asked people, if I was a deity or a saint, what would I be patron of. I remember a handful of answers but right at the moment I'm thinking of one I came up with on my own: patron of unpleasant and disturbing things it is sometimes necessary to know.

(That said, it really is a good movie, but you shouldn't watch it if you've got coughing, sneezing, fever, or headache, because you'll be sitting there the whole time comparing your symptoms to the ones on screen and that never ends well.)

Comments

[8hyenas]

I really liked Contagion, and am a bit of a pandemic nerd. My main takeaway from that movie was the slow motion tracking of the sickness transfers. I still see it in my head every time I get sick and am trying to track it back to where I went wrong.

[camwyn]

Ever played Plague, Inc.? It's a mobile game that came out in something like 2012, I forget exactly. You have to use a set of characteristics to design a hypothetical pathogen with the ultimate goal of wiping out the human population of Earth, and you watch its spread and transmission and govern its mutation and the like as it develops. I had it for a while a couple of phones back, but between the 'you can unlock a new feature for your pathogen now with real world money, or you can take forever and ever and ever to earn enough XP to unlock it through gameplay' aspect so common to mobile games and the fact that your victory condition is literally the end of human history, I eventually uninstalled it.

I bring it up because a few weeks ago (according to a BBC News article) it became the most popular mobile app in China. People were buying it and playing it as a means of confronting their fears about 2019-nCoV. I suspect more than a few of them may have been trying to design something that matched 2019-nCoV's behavior to see what they could really expect, rather than whatever projections the state media were putting out. It was interesting stuff, though.

(I spent a lot of time screaming at Madagascar for closing the port at Antananarivo before I could get a foothold.)

[8hyenas]

Yes! It's still on my phone and I still play it every now and then, although in the current world it tends to just cause me anxiety. I just recently downloaded another game by the same designer called Rebel Inc. which is in the same style but is more of a kingdom vs. kingdom rebellion storyline. I don't think either of them have any IAP anymore, and are just one time payments, although there may be in game optional content. I haven't played Rebel Inc. enough to be sure, and Plague Inc. I either purchased or downloaded so long ago I'm not sure about it either.