Contagion (2011 film) - Wikipedia
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Returning from a Hong Kong business trip, Beth Emhoff meets with her former lover during a Chicago layover. Two days later, back home in suburban Minneapolis, Beth's husband, Mitch rushes her to the hospital when she suffers a seizure. She dies from a previously unknown virus. Returning home, Mitch finds that his stepson, Clark, has also died. Mitch is isolated but found to be naturally immune. After being released, Mitch protectively keeps his teenage daughter, Jory, quarantined at home.
In Atlanta, Department of Homeland Security representatives meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over concerns that the disease may be a bioweapon. Cheever dispatches Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis where she traces everyone having had contact with Beth. She negotiates with reluctant local bureaucrats to commit resources for a public health response. Soon after, Mears becomes infected and dies. As the novel virus spreads, several cities are placed under quarantine, causing panic buying, widespread looting, and violence.
At the CDC, Dr. Ally Hextall determines the virus is a combination of genetic material from pig and bat-borne viruses. Scientists are unable to discover a cell culture to grow the newly identified MEV-1. Cheever determines the virus too virulent to be researched at multiple labs and restricts all work to one government site. Hextall orders University of California researcher Dr. Ian Sussman to destroy his samples. Believing he is close to finding a viable cell culture, Sussman violates the order and identifies a usable cell culture, from which Hextall develops a vaccine. Scientists determine the virus is spread by respiratory droplets and fomites, with an R0 of four when the virus mutates; they project that 1 in 12 of the world population will be infected, with a 25–30% mortality rate.
Conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede blogs about the virus. He claims to have cured himself of the virus using a homeopathic cure derived from forsythia. People seeking forsythia violently overwhelm pharmacies. Krumwiede, having faked being infected to boost sales of forsythia, is arrested for conspiracy and securities fraud.
Hextall inoculates herself with the experimental vaccine, then visits her infected father. She does not contract MEV-1 and the vaccine is declared a success. The CDC awards vaccinations by lottery based on birthdates. By this time, the pandemic's death toll has reached 2.5 million in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide.
Earlier in Hong Kong, World Health Organization epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes and public health officials comb through security video tapes of Beth's contacts in a Macau casino and identify her as the index case. Government official Sun Feng kidnaps Orantes as leverage to obtain vaccine for his village, holding her for months. WHO officials provide the village with earliest vaccines and she is released. When she learns the vaccines were placebos, she goes to warn the village. Mitch stages a home "prom" for Jory, as life begins to return to normal.
In a flashback to the spillover event, a bulldozer from Emhoff's company clears rainforest in China, disturbing bats. One bat finds shelter in a pig farm and drops an infected piece of banana that is then consumed by a pig. The pig is slaughtered and is prepared by a chef in a Macau casino, who transmits the virus to Beth via a handshake.
How do you suppose they'll get nearly eight billion people down to a couple hundred of million?
