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- The coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, has killed at least 2,800 people and infected more than 84,000 since December.
- In the two month since public-health officials reported the first coronavirus case, many people have streamed the 2011 movie "Contagion."
- The film depicts a fictional pandemic that spreads from animals to people in Hong Kong, then kills tens of millions worldwide.
- Here's how the pandemic from the movie differs from the coronavirus outbreak.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The 2011 film "Contagion" opens to the sound of a woman coughing.
The universal sound of sickness, the cough is heavy and full of mucous. It comes from Beth Emhoff, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who is patient zero in a pandemic that kills at least 26 million people worldwide in less than a month.
The fictional pandemic in "Contagion," called MEV-1, is a portrayed as a hybrid of influenza and the deadly Nipah virus that emerged in Malaysia in the late 1990s.
At the end of January, because of the current coronavirus outbreak, Google searches for "Contagion" skyrocketed, as did the number of Twitter users mentioning the movie. "Contagion" is currently one of the top thrillers on iTunes.
The spread of MEV-1 in the movie and the coronavirus epidemic differ in many ways. Importantly, the World Health Organization (WHO) doesn't consider the coronavirus a pandemic yet. Since December 31, the virus has killed at least 2,800 people and infected more than 84,000, mostly in China. It has spread to 56 other countries.
Still, there are some notable parallels between the scenario in "Contagion" and current events. For one, the movie's MEV-1 virus is a zoonotic disease, meaning it jumped from animals to people. In the film, it spreads from a bat to a pig sold at an outdoor Chinese market, before hopping to Emhoff. According to experts, the new coronavirus is also zoonotic disease that started in bats. It likely jumped to people via an intermediary species.
Here are all the ways "Contagion" differs from reality.
The movie's ending scene is revealed to be "day one" of the MEV-1 outbreak. It shows a logging company disturbing a bat, which flies out of the forest and into a pig farm, carrying a piece of banana.
Romeo Ranoco/Reuters
The bat drops the fruit (presumably infected with the virus), and a piglet eats it. The pig is later sold to a market vendor, who then sells the butchered swine to a casino restaurant in Hong Kong. The chef prepares the pork before shaking hands with Emhoff, infecting her and kick-starting the pandemic.
This is akin to the way the Nipah virus spread to people in Malaysia and India.
The 2003 SARS epidemic, which killed 774 people, started in a similar manner. Chinese horseshoe bats passed the virus to civets. People then caught it from civets sold at a wet market.
De Agostini/Getty
In the case of the new coronavirus, the process was likely similar.
Genetic studies have all but confirmed that the coronavirus originated in bats. Experts aren't sure which animal species served as the virus' intermediary between bats and people, but pigs, civets, and pangolins are the most likely.
The opening scenes of "Contagion" depict day two of the virus' spread. A man in Hong Kong, China is the first to die from the illness, but a man in Tokyo and a woman in London die, too.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
The first person to die of the new coronavirus, a 61-year-old Wuhan resident, died 11 days after the first case was reported. The virus didn't spread outside of China until January 13, two weeks into the outbreak.
Cases have since been documented in 56 countries beyond China.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- Both the new coronavirus and SARS outbreaks likely started in Chinese wet markets. Photos show what the markets look like.
- The new coronavirus has killed nearly 3 times as many people in 8 weeks as SARS did in 8 months. Here's how the 2 outbreaks compare.
- We're in an 'age of epidemics,' a scientist says. More diseases like the coronavirus will jump from animals to people.
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