With the coronavirus pandemic still plaguing the globe (pun intended), maybe it’s no surprise that Stephen Soderbergh’s 2011 thriller Contagion is trending, nine years after its release. This film, packed with stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Matt Damon, deals with a respiratory virus outbreak that quickly spreads to the entire planet. On this episode of Next Question, Katie Couric talks with the screenwriter, Scott Burns, and his lead consultant, Dr. Ian Lipkin (a.k.a. “The Virus Hunter”), a professor at Columbia University, to talk about why they wanted to make this movie, how reliable the science is, and what it can teach us about our current situation.
This film may seem prescient, Scott says, but in fact, all the experts he consulted with to write it said the same thing: “It’s a matter of when, not if” a pandemic would hit. Scott wanted this movie to be “totally science-based,” researching viruses and pandemics for over three years to tackle not only how a virus spreads, but also the politics of handling a pandemic: what and how to tell the public, so they take the threat seriously without panicking, but also how to communicate with public officials. “It’s critical that the leadership on which we rely...respect the people that are trying to give them the best information they have,” Dr. Lipkin says. We have “fifty different state health departments, and they all operate differently...So you need a coherent program, because without that, you get this patchwork...and the virus doesn’t really care about a state border.”
In recent years, there’s been a lot of skepticism and even hostility towards the scientific community, Katie says, and Dr. Lipkin hopes that will change. “One of the large challenges we have is that people think there are ways to shortcut, for example with clinical trials” of vaccines and drugs, he says. “It’s very important that we have appropriately controlled trials...otherwise, we subject people to....risk that is unjustified.” It’ll be 16 to 18 months before we have a vaccine we can use, he says, “so this is going to be a marathon. And the American people need to be prepared for that and rise to it, like they have for every other challenge we’ve had.” Scott adds, “We’re very much in the first act of this movie,” and it can end happily, with a cure, with as many people as possible safe from harm. “We have everything we need to make that story happen,” he says. “The other version, I really don’t want to contemplate.”
Listen to the episode to hear about Dr. Lipkin’s case of Covid and how he’s recovering, whether or not people can become immune to the disease, and how Scott and the cast of Contagion is using their trending status for good, on Next Question.
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