The "next" virus.
A movie has already told the pandemic story
I have friends who live for the news — unidentified virus outbreak in a village in “X”. They grab their pre-packed backpack and head for the airport. These are the Virus Hunters as they are called, and I can bet there are a few on the way to India, right now.
The outbreak in India is a known virus, Nipah, but Nipah is the virus that we have all feared would be the “next”. The clinical signs are fodder for a horror movie:
Distinctive clinical signs included . . . involvement of the brain stem and upper cervical spinal cord. Brain stem dysfunction and neurological clinical signs include abnormal doll's eye reflex, reflexes, vasomotor changes, and myoclonic jerks. Cerebellar dysfunction was seen . . .34 percent of the cases had convulsions.
The fatality rate is 60-80%.1
“Long Nipah”, in the 20-40% who survive, involves recurrences of seizures up to nine months or years after a severe infection.
Vaccine Preparedness?
CDC and FDA are in clinical trials for a Nipah Virus Vaccine using mRNA as the vaccine platform, it was announced in July 2022.2 They take the basic model used in the COVID vaccine and find a new protein to target that is susceptible to targeting on the Nipah Virus. It cuts the time for development of a vaccine, substantially, by using the same platform.
Half of America will give credit to the federal government for planning ahead for the next possible pandemic; and the other half will see this as a setup for big Pharma to sell massive orders of vaccine. This will inevitably lead to the question of whether any Nipah outbreak or pandemic is either caused by Mother Nature or whether it is a “plan-demic”. I am going to bet on neither and predict it will be an accidental lab release.
Where will it come from?
Nipah is a zoonotic virus meaning it can move between animals and humans. The possibility of bat droppings contaminating the food of a mammal like a pig or cow that we eat, is real. The accidental release of the virus from a laboratory with substandard compliance with safety or just an accident is also a very real risk.
CDC predicts it will be a natural outbreak.
While COVID is contagious, too; Nipah has the aspect of affecting the brain, with seizures and a much higher fatality rate. In 2011, a movie was released that told the story of how a pandemic might unfold using Nipah as the model for the deadly virus.
Contagion (2011), the movie
This movie was written in consultation with CDC. So do not be surprised to find that the CDC characters are the heros, with one doctor who defies the rule of law, to do what it takes to save the world, and is of course, a hero for doing so. Spoiler alert, the disease is modeled after the Nipah virus.
The following is an excerpt from my book, The Things That Keep Us Up at Night: Reel Biohorror — Biohorror, Biothriller Movies, the Law and Science.3
In the opening, Matt Damon, the husband of Elizabeth Enhoff, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, sees his wife and son die in the first few minutes of the movie. His wife who travels the globe carrying out the capitalist investment strategy of her company has returned home sick from her travel to Macau and Hong Kong.
The Biological Agent
The most creative part of this movie was probably the choice of a real virus that turned into a pandemic based completely on a CDC scenario. To the Director and Producer’s credit, they utilized some top research scientists in biodefense as consultants. Ian Lipkin, research scientist from Columbia University and co-researcher on a major National Institutes of Health biodefense research grant, was one of the experts used. In the scene where Ian Sussman, hero for his work in developing the humanity-saving vaccine (probably no coincidence that his first name is also “Ian”), the real-life scientist, Ian Lipkin has a cameo appearance in the on-looking crowd watching him receive his award.
From the first mention of diagnosing the disease, the physician walked through the logical steps of making a diagnosis. First, the emergency medicine physician who was there for Beth’s emergency visit which ended in her death, said he didn’t know what killed her. He guessed encephalitis or meningitis, first, both having symptoms not unlike those shown by Beth. Then he guessed maybe West Nile Virus, another disease that affects the central nervous system and would cause seizures. He added that the autopsy probably would not tell them anything, but they would probably ask his permission to do one.
[During the autopsy of Elizabeth Enhoff, the index case, the two coroners see something unusual in their view of her brain.]
Coroner 1
I want you to back away from the table.
Coroner 2
Should I call someone?
Coroner 1
Call everyone.
---Contagion (2011)
The diagnosis of the disease takes days as the death toll continued to rise. The Department of Homeland Security staff asked whether it could be a weaponized bird flu. The CDC responded , “No one has to weaponize it. The birds are taking care of that.” But it is determined not to be a bird flu. The virus is compared to all known viruses and they find there are none that match with this one, finally concluding it is a newly emerging, and horrific disease.
This is a realistic depiction of the steps that would be used to diagnose the disease from patient zero.
The disease is finally described in the last three minutes of the movie by showing the probably way that it evolved and emerged. Beth’s company is clearing rain forest in Hong Kong to build a new facility, causing the bats to flee to shelter, having had their habitat destroyed. The bats take shelter in a barn housing pigs, and as the bat droppings are picked up by the pig and ingested, the viruses of both the bat and the pig meet. When the chef in Hong Kong is interrupted from his preparation of the pig for the restaurant, he simply wipes his hands on his apron and goes out to meet Beth, shaking her hand in another one of those understated horrifying moments when the deadly virus is passed to Beth as the first human infection.
CDC’s Influence in the Movie
The use of “social distancing” is now well known, but not so much in 2011. In this movie, public health authorities use it as a method of reducing the spread of the disease. Social distancing was accomplished voluntarily by the 300 million people in the United States, and no one complains. There are quarantines of cities and the National Guard is deployed to enforce control. No one is angry, they are all compliant.
The Unethical Heros
Dr. Hextall, one of two research scientists working tirelessly to develop a vaccine is clearly a hero; however she decides to speed up the vaccine development process by injecting herself with the experimental vaccine that seems to be effective. Although immunity takes time after vaccination, she became protected almost immediately in movie time. She immediately challenges her vaccine by visiting her sick father and removing her respirator to the horror of her father. But she explains to him her actions, attributing her decision to the story her father told her of the Nobel prize winning Barry Marshall who intentionally infected himself with H. pylori to demonstrate that the bacterium caused stomach ulcers. Ignoring the rule of law is heroic.
Dr. Cheever, a CDC physician is the unethical hero that CDC tells us is altruistic, unselfish and yes, heroic. His first unethical move is leaking in advance news of a citywide quarantine in Chicago to his finacee who lives there and tells her to flee immediately and come to Washington. (Quarantine for thee, but not for me.) Though sworn to secrecy, she tells her best friend. This communiqué ends up quoted and attributed to Cheever by his fiancées best friend in Chicago. This results in a censure Cheever’s agency and a promise of a federal investigation. But into what, it is not clear, other than an ethical violation.
A civil servant would normally be guarded about further temptations to engage in unethical conduct, but not our Dr. Cheever. No sooner than he has been assured that his federal hearing and investigation has been scheduled, does he proceed to use his insider influence to get a vaccine for his fiancee as well as the custodian in the building, that they would have had to wait months to get.
Ignoring the rule of law is noble and caring, according to the CDC consultants.
This is the message: Physicians and healthcare workers do not need laws or regulations or even ethical guidelines, but instead will deem themselves the arbiters of good and they alone will make the right decision outside of the constraints of some predetermined guidelines.
The International Health Regulations (IHR), which the United States signed and ratified and agreed to be bound by in 2005, effective 2007, is ignored. During the early days of COVID-19 China was criticized for failing to report the outbreak in a timely manner. This outbreak of the first case should have probably been reported under the IHR. The failure to recognize this international agreement in the beginning portended the lack of importance of the “rule of law” in this story.
It is pretty clear no lawyers were consultants on this movie.
Ending
The ending was a return to normal, with everyone appearing to be going about their daily routine. One of the last scenes was that of the armory-like building marked “MEV-1 vaccination center” guarded by uniformed military personnel each holding an AK-47.
Postscript
The postscript explains this is likely what happened to trigger this pandemic. The scene shows in the tropical rain forest that is being cleared, how the disease jumped from a bat leaving its habitat to a pig on a local farm to a human in a restaurant. Explaining how pandemics start from naturally emerging diseases is a theme throughout the movie.
Any of this sound familiar?
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/what-is-nipah-virus-that-killed-two-india-how-is-it-treated-2023-09-14/
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trial-mrna-nipah-virus-vaccine
https://a.co/d/5956vtK
I have corrected that, thank you!
I think you are referring to Ian Lipkin, not Ian Rivkin. I recall he was not shy about telling everyone he was in the movie and served as a consultant!