Humanity has a primordial fear of highly infectious diseases such as COVID-19. That is evident from mankind’s longstanding obsession with pandemics.
Scourges that threaten all of us such as Ebola and Spanish influenza — which broke my grandmother’s heart when it killed her son and my Uncle Gordon in 1919 — have been such a preoccupation of screenwriters and film directors that New York magazine’s Vulture section recently published a list of the 79 best pandemic movies.
Near the top of the pandemic film table is Contagion, which begins ominously with a black screen and the sound of an unseen woman coughing.
Starring Matt Damon and Kate Winslet, Contagion’s plot is jarringly familiar. A highly infectious disease evolves among bats in China