Disease Expert Breaks Down Pandemic Scenes From Film & TV | WIRED

the virus mutates then to the Latin call CDC my name is brian hammond brian is an ecologist for the CDC specializing in infectious diseases today I'm breaking down clips from movies and television about pandemics I'd like to go on record that I love all these movies I don't want to come across as I'm not a fan because I am small-town outbreak from the movie outbreak this one has so many flaws you see people shaking hands and that doesn't occur in an outbreak area if there is some kind of a greeting it's usually elbow to elbow the PPE personal protective equipment is is reasonably accurate we don't go into a place wearing helmets and hazmat suits like that but the peppers air purifying respirators that they have on their waists are our peppers that we have used in the past and the whole point of the powered air is that you have positive pressure inside the head cover it's pushing air out and nothing can come in they go from this right here with a full hazmat suit and a helmet two guys with surgical masks you notice that she's not wearing any eye protection and the guy directly behind her is so one of the little details that if this were truly a fever virus outbreak and this was an isolation ward they would all have a face shield or eye protection some gloves not some others without gloves it's total chaos it's a mess that's pure Hollywood fiction apparently they all go to the movies here smallpox er when do the rashes are three days ago [Music] follow me quickly what is it it's just a precaution excuse me coming through here suitcases smallpox oh my god dunt dunt done this is a tad on the far-fetched side because smallpox was eradicated in 1980 if a vaccine for now the CDC should have a stockpile of all the smallpox that exists in the world are in freezers in really secure labs smallpox has been eradicated I heard the Russians had some on ice if a terrorist group got old and for this to actually have happened there would have to have been some kind of a very very serious breach in security damn I should have called in sick day we're gonna look at a couple of scenes from contagion and here's where they explain the spread of the virus here is a model of the virus and how it attaches to its host the blue is virus and the gold is human and the red is the viral attachment protein and the green is its receptor in the human cells it is available this computer software isn't is able to form sort of a three-dimensional image of the virus itself and they can identify through sequencing which parts of the virus are the receptors where it binds to the human cell which parts are coding for certain proteins that cause illness or replication and we've sequenced the virus and determined its origin and we've modelled the way it enters the cells of the lung in the brain very accurate in terms of being able to pinpoint certain areas of the genome that will have certain effects on the human or on the virus or even the cell that it's affecting the virus contains both bat and pig sequences in the bottom right and here you can see the crossover event that pig back yeah I haven't heard the term crossover when the virus leaves the host and enters an organism that's not a host it's called spillover as the spillover events occur and with the multiple times this virus is replicating they're looking at these mutations as this thing has been going along that's actually something they can do animals spreading disease contagion very accurate especially the not hand-washing thing there was an in bowl of rest and outbreak in the Philippines at a pig farm we now have evidence that bats are our possible hosts for resting virus flu to the pig farm and then it was found in the pigs in a sample that was shipped to plum island outbreak has a ton of problems let's take a look at the scene with the monkey monkey deserves an Oscar I don't know where to begin what can I talk about the fact that that's the South American monkey that they caught in Africa well it's something at least maybe it's enough part of my job at the CDC is to catch animals take samples and test them for viruses the monkey is a capuchin monkey not found in Africa it would be some other green monkey like a vervet or something else like that we wouldn't use a live person as bait let alone a child we actually study reservoir ecology know their habits know their habitat and know how to catch them you know a monkey could technically bite someone and have virus in the saliva but generally speaking they're so sick and they just kind of lay there and die in contagion they really got it right here they did not virus choosing the host World War Z he's infecting himself with another pathogen in hopes that this zombie would pass him by or the virus in the zombie would pass him by I like the idea it gets to essentially the goal of a virus it wants to find a host that it can continue to replicate its genetic material indefinitely that's not the question we're really asking is it it's fiction of course because a virus isn't going to smell if a guy sick be able to tell if this guy has cancer and therefore I don't want to infect that it can't choose global pandemic and dawn of the Planet of the Apes source of the virus was traced back to drug testing done at Genesis laboratories in San Francisco location showing signs of what's being dubbed the simian field CDC is projecting a fatality toll ranging from 5 million to a 150 million in the next six to eight theoretically that's how things will happen those red lines look kind of like you know air air travel pathways and then having interactions with individuals within an airport you can't avoid some type of personal space invasion it's a very plausible scenario now known as patient zero was accidentally exposed to retrovirus 8lz 113 in this clip they say patient zero and that's not something that we typically use in my field we tend to use what we call an index patient the individual that has first been identified to have whatever virus it is or disease caused by whatever virus it is this clip is about virus mutation from the television show house an infant picks up a regular old measles virus it's a rash it's extremely uncomfortable as a wicked fever but he lives well the animation is not extremely accurate why do people lie to me because the measles virus is an RNA virus and that's a piece of DNA can we get off my screw-ups and focus on theirs once every million or so times the virus mutates this explosion is not accurate again why are we getting hung up on what I did what happens is just sort of an error in the copying of the nucleotide bases instead of Dan having a fever and a rash the virus travels to his brain and hides for 16 years some acute sclerosing pain encephalitis daus's disease is an actual disease and it is basic sort of a leftover from having a measles virus infection so that that part is true it's a sick brain zombie infection the walking dead by scan forward to the first event scanning to first event there's no artificial intelligence at the CDC there are auditoriums at the CDC but they don't look like this the brain goes into shutdown then the major organs it invades the brain like meningitis meningitis is more the condition when here they're making it seem like it's some sort of a pathogen scan to the second event I've never used the word event just shell driven by mindless instant in severe accidents I would imagine that that's possibility I think technically you'd probably be declared brain dead that there'd be some electrical activity there I don't think you could see it like that what was that this looks like pure CGI to me we protected the public from very nasty infection in the hospital in the movie outbreak dr. Daniels yeah there's something I think you should see this way the patient was admitted a week ago after a car accident he's had no contact with anyone in isolation you started that there because he just now had contact with that individual and isolation truly this guy should know better the guy pokes his head into the isolation ward says doctor pulls the guy out they walk down a clean hallway directly into a patient's room with Ebola outbreaks it would be an entire disinfection process before you even came out of that probably get sprayed down some sort of a disinfectant take all of the PPE off possibly even shower depending on where he were by doing this they just walked in with filthy PPE and potentially contaminated everything in the hallway that they just walked out that would never happen it said one if you're dealing with a virus that's similar to one that's already known and you know how its transmitted there would be a lot of things to go check before you just say it's airborne I would be very suspicious protective gear in pandemic so if you see not lately I have a rational fear of dying this goes up and over hope you feel happy this is obviously the military and not CDC but the personal protective equipment is similar to what we use we have coveralls as well there there Tyvek they're impervious to water and other fluids and that face shield keeps you from sticking your dirty fingers in your eye or in your ear you know whatever the case may be this looks similar to what we wear in the field now let's take a look at ET Elliot thinks its thoughts no Elliot fears his feelings the part where they decontaminate before coming in doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense you want to decontaminate coming out and I've I've never been decontaminated with fog it's usually a chemical shower to make sure that you get you are decontaminated if you get more information with swans in these hoses would technically be connected to some sort of a fan that would draw air through a filter and put clean air into their hoods I don't see the hoses connected to anything not a respirator or anything you can imagine I'm not saying it's real there's no cover-up an alien landing on the earth with its own set of viruses that doesn't bother it that could just you know wreak havoc on a community I would be there in a heartbeat because that would be the coolest thing ever just imagine what kind of neat viruses you could find in an alien you might even get to name him that's how cool that would be the plague in house [Music] that's a little ahead and call CDC tell him what he had a patient with the plague yeah I mean there's cases of plague it's mostly bubonic throughout the southwest but he's in there knowing this patient has the plague and he takes out a syringe that's been in the room with the patient and he pulls the cap off with his mouth and then he withdraws a sample and hands the sharp to a colleague which is something you don't do a needle or scissors or pointy forceps even broken glass we call sharps and typically in the work that we do in the labs sharps is handled by pretty much just one person you'd never see a hand off of a needle like that so that part was bad Oh No where'd it go where'd it go here's another zombie movie World War Z absolutely getting blood in your mouth as a way to get an infectious disease bodily fluids coming into contact with mucous membranes do you notice that he stood on the edge he knows that he's been exposed and a lot of people that work with these viruses myself included if we have an exposure we're not going to keep it quiet we have a responsibility to the public will self isolate we'll make sure that we're not sick and if we are sick will go into isolation we certainly wouldn't stand on the edge of a building waiting to throw ourselves off but you know you get the idea decontamination in the Andromeda Strain we start decontamination and immunization procedures now [Music] that's completely science fiction and nobody in their right mind would let themselves get cooked to the point where their outer layer of epithelium has turned to ash I mean that's the definition of you know a giant sunburn we face quite a problem out of this in fact the human body one of the dirtiest things in the known universe hard on the taxpayers isn't it the way we burn up uniforms and a lot of the clips that that we've reviewed today you see this decontamination process occurring before they go into an infectious area or into a lab and it's always just the opposite for us do you want to clean yourself off before you come out into an area where the virus isn't martial law the crazies [Applause] we don't force people into treatment facilities we try to coax them in there we don't have any regulatory authority where we can arrest people and throw them in a cage or anything like that aside from the separating the people part temperature is a good way to identify someone with a fever and is a common practice one of the things that was incorrect here is that they were actually sticking the thermometer probe in the ear that would never happen you don't touch the individual because you're just transmitting from one person to the next what they used is handheld thermometers and they pointed at your temple and they'd hold it a few inches away and they'd get a reading that way that's not correct she's being wheeled through they're seeing bloody Gurney's being passed by and isolation facilities are typically more of a hospital care type of setting it's it's not going to be under armed guard you wouldn't be left to let your imagination run wild and there would be some explanation as to what's going to happen and how you'll be cared for it's going to be alright we're going to be okay let's look at a similar scene in I am Legend [Applause] [Music] if there was some way to detect an abnormality that was a symptom of infection in the eye that that's why they'd be using that they're not touching the individual with the actual scope although their hands are all over people and it's a giant crowd no good okay I am the Tina Turner puppet nothing I'm ordering you to scan her again Skinner again [Applause] it's clear this is obviously fiction after that we would have done many more scans to to make sure that she was in fact negative these kinds of scans the temperature and the eye thing that you saw in this clip can detect symptoms of infection they can't really definitively say that you are infected what am i doing there are some mechanisms now that are more rapid than just your traditional pcr that can turn around test results very quickly but they're not on site kind of things it's it's requiring some sort of a blood sample that's taken back to a lab so just simply scanning them can't tell you basically anything other than they're feeling sick you'll always want to follow up a scan like a temperature with a blood test to identify that that person is either infected with Ebola Marburg feel a virus or it's something else zombie bite the girl with all the gifts [Music] yeah that was quick you may have got a pretty decent-sized dose of virus in whatever infection mechanism you just encountered but it takes time for the virus to locate the target cell inject its own RNA or DNA into the cell and then disseminate throughout the body generally speaking it doesn't happen in 10 or 15 seconds the doctor picks up a shard of glass and starts stabbing one of the zombies in the head presumably getting fluid in the cuts in her hand and she didn't get infected you can't have it both ways or maybe she's one of those immune people emphatically not another zombie virus in twenty eight weeks later kissing is a great way to get a virus I mean there's no question about that but again it wouldn't happen that that quickly incubation periods for some viruses can be days weeks or even months I love the movie but it's still it's still fiction here's more protective gear again in SNL often our stars to the Ebola in our everything no you wouldn't be able to have a relationship that having to dress that way all the time that would get old she wants to have sex hell no levels of infection pandemic is little too the conversion begins level three patient secretes I've never seen an isolation ward look like this there is some level of security and it's mostly to keep people out you keep people that are suspect cases separate from people that are confirmed cases and here's level four look at these two they come together in love but the first one to wake up will kill it's not anything like level one level two for the most part what you've got there's a tent or let's say a hospital ward that's probably filled up pretty quickly and you're not going to have the luxury of having that kind of space robot lab in resident evil at the CDC there are robotic machines you'll have things that just it moves it under and it dips and it moves it under and it dips and that's the robot part of it is we call it the robot but it's not you know the Robbie the robot kind of thing it's more of an automated extraction machine yeah we don't use glass vials in the high containment laboratories for that exact reason although I suspect that was done intentionally blood tests from the thing we're gonna draw a little bit everybody's blood we're gonna find out whose the thing will do you last now I hate it when my flamethrower doesn't work there's visible blood tests best example is malaria you can look at a blood sample under a microscope and actually see the parasite infecting the cell to have a reaction like that though where the blood jumps out of the petri dish and runs away I mean it's cool but this is pure sci-fi the lab in the hot zone no one goes into the level-4 alone I'll be standing you head to toe for anything that could contaminate particles in all right just breathe breathe through it what are you doing I'm checking your pupils signs of panic entry and an HCl if we're talking to people we usually say that the HCL or the high containment lab if you were panicking like that putting the suit on the chances are you would never go inside you've got a continual flow of fresh air and it's it's not panic inducing no we don't ever call it the hot zone it's the lab I would like to point out though they didn't decontaminate going in that part they got right conclusion I guess the idea of a pandemic and really bring out the fear and the panic in people but they tend to be not nearly as uncontrollable as Hollywood makes it seem a lot of the work that the CDC does is to make sure that disease outbreaks like this don't ever get to the stage of a global pandemic viruses that you've seen in these clips are basically Hollywood fiction and the real life viruses that are out there are hardly ever if at all as fast-acting is what you've just seen in these clips thank you [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 7,839,567

Rating: 4.9540391 out of 5

Keywords: pandemic, pandemics, diseases, movie diseases, disease expert, ecologist, diseases in movie, disease, movie disease, pandemic scenes, pandemic scene, cdc, pandemics in movies, movie pandemics, movie pandemic, pandemics wired, wired pandemics, wired technique critique, technique critique pandemics, technique critique, pandemic expert, zombie disease, zombie expert, outbreaks in movies, outbreak, disease outbreak, contagion, contagion breakdown, contagion movie, wired

Id: feGHmv_eDcw

Length: 22min 9sec (1329 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/uwtartarus]

I watched this recently and several times I thought about DG.

[u/JibrilAngelos]

This clip should be a requirement to watch before running Sick Again.

[u/adipose1913]

This is a favorite of mine. Someone at work brought it up to me, had a lot of fun with it.