I like to say the party doesn’t start until I get there, and I’m the last one to leave. At least when it comes to popular culture. That certainly applies to my recent viewing of Containment, the 2016 Warner Brothers series, now binging on Netflix. WARNer Bros corners the market on predictive programming for major disasters- from planes crashing into Washington to plagues unleashed on the Homeland.
Of course, there have been government, military, industry and medical rehearsals of plandemics from Dark Winter with Anthrax in 2001, Crimson Contagion, LockDown, Event 201 and various iterations of pathogens and reactions I’ve written about in this series. There’s been cinematic and literary “premonitions” of germs wreaking havoc and transforming society from Andromeda Strain to Contagion. Both the original and remake of the Planet of the Apes movies even regreen the planet.
Yet the predictive elements in Containment, a character driven thriller set in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Center for Disease Control, are astounding. Numerous overhead pans of their towering center, indicates they had a central role in advising the writers and directors, as they did for Contagion, the 2011 movie.
A pathogen with 100% fatality from hemorrhagic symptoms, spread by contact with bodily fluids is an infectious disease specialist’s wet dream. This one is initially blamed on a Syrian refugee by medical authorities as Patient Zero, (back when Syrian refugees were in the news). From the beginning, it’s acknowledged as a lab created pathogen, later identified as an influenza virus, although the now familiar “spike protein” graphic is displayed in a television news report early in the series.
“I can’t breathe” are the dying words of several victims, when they aren’t spitting up blood and infecting those they spray, who die within 48 hours. A command to maintain “4-6 feet distance” is called “social distancing” by a newscaster. No shaking hands or touching, gloves and masks and face shields are rolled out as protective magical talismans. The federal medical authorities show up, with an arrogant, assertive woman in charge. No legal authority for her imposed dictatorial mandates is offered or asked for by an Atlanta police department charged with enforcing them.
The surrounding neighborhoods of the hospital where patient Zero was treated and died are placed under total lockdown and quarantine of the healthy by a great wall of empty cargo containers surrounding it. Thousands of cargo containers are driven into the city and dropped in place, triple decked around many miles of circumference. The logistics are impressive, delivered within hours by the federal government, overriding state and local authority. A nod to Supply Chain Shortages?
Hoarding, price gouging, with criminal elements taking over streets, stores and pharmacies ensues. Minimal police presence by those unfortunate officers left inside who can do little more than observe or join in, while drones and cameras record societal breakdown. Naturally there are heartwarming stories of interracial and same sex couples, love thwarted and reckless quests to secure medical supplies, food and escape. White meth freaks with no purpose except mayhem, and armed black gangsters, whose leader has a soft heart for babies, round out the characters. Pretty woke for 2015, when the 13 episode season was presumably written and filmed.
No more prescient than Event 201’s novel coronavirus emerging from China scenario, at first. Until halfway through the season. Either the writers went off the reservation to provide mystery and conspiracy for dramatic interest, or the twist was approved by the CDC. Turns out Patient Zero was tertiary, infected by his female doctor at the hospital, spread by her boyfriend, a researcher in gain of function experiments the U.S. government was funding. The actual agency is not identified, but Fauci’s NIAID comes to mind.
A Young Black Savior is immune, and sacrifices his blood for an antibody treatment, concocted by a Chinese scientist in the basement laboratory of the hospital where infected are quarantined, then cremated in the hospital incinerator. (That’s right, tax exempt hospitals are major pollution emitters.) The Chinese Scientist is scapegoated as the plague release culprit by the Arrogant Bureaucrat who funded the Home Grown Gain of Function research by the dead boyfriend.
No mention of vaccines being rushed into Emergency Use Authorization, though. The cure in the Black Messiah’s Blood is the Holy Grail, here. With a 100% mortality, you don’t really need a Warp Speed Vaccine to help with the culling. A brave and resourceful blogger uncovers these deep secrets, aided by whistleblowers and conspiracists, both inside and outside the lockdown.
An African American police lieutenant outside, whose black girlfriend and white best friend police officer are inside, grows suspicious of the arrogant expert, who selected him as the trustworthy stooge spokesman for the lockdown rollout. He teams up with the blogger and learns the truth before he confronts her. She defends her actions as essential to the greater good, and points to her work containing Ebola, a CDC myth of success despite gross failures and exacerbation, with rumors of lab creation. He tapes her confession with his smart phone, and uses it to force her to resign.
The season ends, but the series was not continued. Probable cause for civil, if not criminal convictions of officials in the federal medical industrial complex was laid out for Courtroom Drama in the War Crimes Trials of Containment II.