Contagion

Recently I watched the movie Contagion, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It goes along perfectly with my major and is an interesting hypothetical anecdote of what would happen should the world be infected by a seemingly incurable virus.

See trailer below:

Generally, the gist of the movie is that Gwenyth Paltrow's character came in contact with a pig-bat hybrid virus while on a trip to China.  This virus had never been seem before and mutated very easily, scientists had a very hard time growing samples of the virus or finding an anecdote.  Paltrow's character  spread the epidemic to everyone she came in contact with while in a hotel in China and on her journey home (which was comprised of a diverse group of foreigners over a holiday weekend) spreading the infection worldwide.

Eventually the world goes into a state of hysteria, thinking that they are all going to become infected and die. The CDC and WHO attempt to contain the infected areas and people panic.  The high levels of emotion running through citizen's minds lead to mob raids on the government, turning over vehicles, breaking windows, robbing stores, threatening and attacking people, and setting things on fire.

A perfect case of mob mentality is when an official from the CDC announced that there would be no more anecdotes handed out that day to a very long line of people.  One man ran towards a woman holding the last anecdote, stealing it from her and knocking her down, and the crowd follows creating a domino effect of hysteria.

What to learn: Don't touch your face.