Watch Contagion, 2011
It's "the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic", the movie.
Yup, you read that right: 2011. 8 years before, everything predicted. Or at least, many things on how a pandemic unfolds in a modern context. A lot of the expected social behaviors are there, and how they affect the spread of the virus. It ain't a perfect movie and it misses a lot and has a lot of political caveats. Especially, it buys into the fiction of "once you have a functioning vaccine the world is saved". That's not true. It wasn't true for small pox, it wasn't for rubella or polio. It's not true for COVID-19 and it won't be for HIV or any fucking virus.
I've been obsessed with this movie ever since I saw it and even more after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd seen the movie before. During the time when covid1 was taken seriously, roughly from 2020 to 2022, I kept thinking about that movie. And I wasn't the only one, see this video by Folding Ideas, I can't stop watching Contagion2.
The movie is shockingly accurate.
Why so? Cause scientific experts were consulted for the writing of the movie. According to Wikipedia, a certain Larry Brilliant was consulted. An epidemiologist who contributed to the eradication of smallpox. Did you know? Even for eradicating smallpox, vaccines weren't enough. Measures of isolation and others were necessary to finish getting rid of it. And this was with a pretty effective vaccines against the disease. Current vaccine technology is good against covid, but not immunising so much, it's mostly effective to prevent long covid. So we need other measures (ventilation, testing, air quality control, masking…). Today, smallpox is still my go-to example to counter several bullshit arguments be it about COVID-19 or transmittable diseases and vaccines in general :
- "Vaccines don't work". First they do. Second, solely, they aren't enough, but they are an effective tool. It worked for smallpox.
- "It's too late now, COVID-19 is too common". I don't have the numbers, but smallpox was a common disease, it wasn't rare. It's was widespread. It was a freaking pandemic. A freaking problem.
Notice the past tense here. Cause when was the last time you heard someone catching smallpox? That's right, you didn't. Cause that shit is gone. And it's not easy. There's several reasons why we did it only once so far. But we fucking did it. And if we're not doing it now, it's because we ain't fucking trying. Not hard enough. And not only can we, we freaking should.
Why I am talking about this?
Well, like I said, I'm obsessed with this movie, because I'm obsessed with the covid pandemic. Because I'm worried. For my LGBTQ "family", for my biological family, for my friends. Fuck, for myself. I'm already disabled and I don't have long covid. Yet. I have already low energy and get easily fatigued, so much so I can't keep a job anymore.
And we knew. We freaking knew 8 years before!
Expert of the fields knew. It is not accurate to say the issue is that we were taken by surprise by covid. We weren't prepared because the people in power didn't want us to be prepared. Because money. Because eugenics. Because what's necessary to prepare for pandemics is what capitalism and fascism hate the most: care, spending money, collaboration, admitting the vulnerability of the body, that bodies are messy, that life is messy,….
I'm sorry, right here I'm sensing I'm starting to go all over the place. That's because there's something on the back of my mind, like there is, always, when I'm trying to write about covid. I need to go on a tangent here. It's gonna be messy, not organised nor balanced nor fucking fair, 'cause nothing about this is.
You've been warned, so here goes:
I've been agonising mentally about the COVID-19 pandemic for 5 years, non stop. What most people remember as a thing that was hard and anxiety provoking and a mess, and… is just my fucking daily life. And it's the daily life of the people I live with, of many of my friends. I haven't lost anyone to covid. Yet. But I will. I know I will. Friends have lost so much because of covid. They lost social life, or to not lose it, are literally playing "russian roulette" with their life every fucking day. What I see is rampant eugenics even in radical leftist circles. I see people throwing the world "Queer" around will ignoring a fucking pandemic, like HIV wasn't and isn't a thing. I traverse political circles that boast about queerness and their proud heritage will asking me if I'm sick because I'm wearing a mask! I'm sorry WTF is wrong with us? Yes, not wearing a mask is fucking fascist. Or at least part of the element of fascism that allows it to develop, thrive and eventually gain power. I'm not saying radical leftist are fascists, I'm saying that, as of now, fascism can still get them because they haven't rejected eugenics (and I'm not talking about the racism…). When we accepted to stop wearing masks and "resume normal life", we3 accepted that the virus wasn't gone but that only so called "vulnerable" people would have to handle that. They could vaccinate and protect themselves, on their own. They would have to handle the risk associated with the disease, on their own. Individualistic shit. It was accepting the fundamental logic that "vulnerable" people are not quite equally humans as "non-vulnerable" people. But that considering only that specific diseases. Cause we're all vulnerable to something for fuck's sake. So in order to "keep on living" and "preserve mental health", we collectively condemned disabled people to the very life we were trying to avoid for ourselves. That's eugenics. That's conditional humanity. And that's a part of "already there" of fascism.
That tangent should go in a separate article, were I could write, develop, research… what I wanna say. But I'm too tired for such a big writing process and I need to get something out.
Ok. Rant over. Back to being composed and nice.
Covid was as much of a surprise as are the consequences of climate change. Before the covid pandemic, experts of the field were already saying « it's not a matter of "if" but of "when" » about a new pandemic outbreak.
Our society is doing an abhorrant job at handling the COVID-19 pandemic, by that I mean, it's not handling it, at all. And that's a priority. Hell, it's not like we're doing a fine job handling the HIV pandemic, or polio, or…
But you know what a priority should be right after that? Preparing for the next one4. Because, just like it was true for the COVID-19 pandemic, it is true for the next pandemic: it's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when".
So, "stop touching your face" and wear a freaking mask5.
edit: fix typo, clarify some sentences. Minor edit.
- In this article, covid, COVID-19 and Sars-Cov-2 are used interchangeably ↩︎
- Video by Folding Ideas — I can't stop watching Contagion ↩︎
- I'm being generous with that "we" here… ↩︎
- A good video by Last Week Tonight about the next pandemic ↩︎
- But also ventilate and get tested6 ↩︎
- And watch Contagion, it's a good movie ↩︎