Craig Schneider at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contacted me last week regarding his story about how culture had been impacted by ebola and other biological scares. This, of course, was in response to bringing two victims of ebola to Atlanta for treatment. The concern among residents in Atlanta was evidenced in many comments to the articles, Craig told me. I had the opportunity to talk about my new book, The Things That Keep Us Up At Night, the human fear response and the movies that use that fear as a plot device. Here's the article When Ebola Met Hollywood. They used quite a bit from my book including the reference to The Satan Bug, a 1965 movie about a laboratory accident with a bioweapon. (I asked him why they used the movie since it wasn't about ebola and he said they liked the title!) That said, I also told him which movies used ebola (see Chap 8) as the bioweapon or disease, and since he didn't use it, I will list them here, as described in the movie, for my blog readers:
Contagion (US, 2002) "Level Four Ebola Virus"
Global Effect (US, 2002) particularly virulent ebola virus
Azaan (Bollywood, 2011) Ebola variant, bioweapon
Ebola is surely one of the devastating viruses causing buzz throughout the world. But the fact that this virus spreads only in direct contact, I would not worry about it too much so long as WHO does their work to contain it. Liberia, African country, announced that they ordered their soldiers to kill anyone illegally crossing their border.
ReplyDeleteIn your review of Contagion (US 2002), you discussed a scene where Dr. Landis informed Dr. Amos that the sample she was analyzing under the microscope was "ebola." After hearing this, Dr. Amos put "her latex gloved-hand on her face and mouth." This scene highlights the importance of biosafety protocols in the hospital setting, and I hope that all the medical professionals at the Emory hospital have the appropriate biosafety training when dealing with this virus.
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