CONTAGION
While the movie is a work of fiction, the real-life stories of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) are real and perhaps
just as exciting as the story we see unfold in the movie “Contagion”. The role of the Center for Disease Control is to
relentlessly to work towards saving lives by attempting to protect us from potentially emerging diseases. They study
contagions, or communicable diseases, around the world in an effort to prevent the spread of epidemics.
1. The movie begins on day #_____.
2. Individuals were observed to be sick in the following locations
Where
example: Beth in the airport
What did they touch? (name at least 2 things)
Peanuts, her credit card
3. Why has the World Health Organization (WHO) and Dr. Leonora Orantes become involved?
4. How does to contagion spread from Hong Kong, China to Guangdong Province, China 90 miles away?
5. Why are their people sick in both Minneapolis and Chicago, two cities that are 400 miles apart?
6. What has Dr. Erin Maers been hired to do?
7. List the RO (pronounced R-nought), or basic reproductive values given.
8-10. In Dr. Erin Maers’ meeting, what does she mention that they need to determine in order to
establish the contagion’s R-nought value (name three)?
Illness
Flu
Smallpox
Polio
11. Why has Homeland Security requested a meeting with Dr. Ellis Cheever?
12. Why did Mr. Barnes, Beth’s ride home from the airport, take a week to become sick but Beth’s son Clark became
sick immediately?
13. Why does Dr. Leonora Orantes go to Hong Kong?
14. On day 8, there are _______ mortalities with a prediction of day 10 having _______ mortalities given the R O
value of _____.
15. Dr. Ian Sussman does not destroy his samples as he was instructed, but instead he does what with the contagion?
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RO
16. Given what we now know about the incubation period, and how the contagion spreads, who do you think infected Dr.
Erin Maers?
17-18. List two ways in which the public is expected to panic when the city of Chicago is shut down.
19. Dr. Ellis Cheever tells Aubrey to leave Chicago. Why does he tell her to leave immediately and to tell no one?
20. What did the contagion combine with to cause its mutation?
21. Why does it become the U.S. Military’s responsibility to hand out food?
22. Your Opinion: Do you think that Mitch Emhoff was breaking in to houses to (circle one)
check on his neighbors/steal their food
23. Why does it take months and months before a vaccine can be released to the public?
24. Why does Dr. Ally Hextall inject herself with vaccine #57?
25. How many people have died from exposure to the contagion by the time the MEV-1 vaccination is created?
26. Does Forsythia cure the disease?
27. How much money did Alan Krumwiede make telling people to use Forsythia?
28. Why does Dr. Cheever give Anthony, Roger’s son his vaccine?
29. Why did Dr. Cheever and Aubrey get married?
30. Who was patient zero?
A final thought: In the movie, the incubation period of the disease is approximately one week for healthy adults and two
days for small children. This means that it takes an extremely short period of time for the contagion to infect and kill its host.
Do you think that this is likely occurrence in real life? What would this mean for the long term survival of the population as
well as the survival of the disease?
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