Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Contagion (2011) - Outbreak (1995)

As soon as I saw the trailer for Contagion, I was reminded of the 1995 epidemic disaster movie Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, Renee Russo, et al.

In a CNN report, I contrasted the Hollywood nightmare with the reality of the Ebola virus, pointing out that the faster a virus kills, the less likely it is to cause widespread disease... simply because there isn't time for the virus to jump to a lot of other people. It's the slow and stealthy viruses, like HIV, that can really rack up a death toll.

But here's the bottom line...

In 1995 when I was a CNN Medical Correspondent covering how Hollywood depicts infectious disease threats, that's what I did... report about the movie... not appear as a reporter in the movie.

My how things change.

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