As if the first lockdown wasn’t worrying enough, we freaked ourselves out by watching a film about a deadly viral pandemic. Contagion – the 2011 movie starring Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon, which sees health officials scramble to contain a new virus after being spread by an infected pig - trended on Netflix for most of last year. Our self-destructive viewing habits probably tore apart what was left of our threadbare mental health, but hey, the Contagion producers might have got a nice Christmas bonus out of it.
But that was then, so why in 2021 is Contagion back in the news and trending on Twitter? It’s because Health Secretary Matt Hancockrevealed this morning that the film inspired the UK's Covid-19 vaccine strategy. It’s dizzying to think where this sits in the life-imitating-art-imitating-life-imitating… question, but something about government policy being influenced by a Hollywood disaster movie with a virus-laden pig feels disconcerting.
Speaking on LBC this morning about whether the film had informed the decision to increase orders of the Oxford vaccine from 30 million to 100 million, Hancock said: ‘I knew when the vaccine came good... that the demand for it would be huge and that we would need to be ready to vaccinate every adult in the country and I wasn’t going to settle for less.' He added that the film taught him there could be ‘a huge row about order of priority’ once vaccines become available.
It led to the UK setting out early its ‘order of priority’ for the jabs. He explained the film shows the ‘highest stress’ around the vaccine programme is after it starts getting rolled out. Luckily the film was created with scientific advice from leading pandemic experts at the World Health Organisation.
He later told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘I think the safest thing to say is [the film] wasn’t my only source of advice on this issue but I did watch the film – it is actually based on the advice of very serious epidemiologists.
‘The insight that was so necessary at the start was that the big pressure on vaccines internationally would not be before they were approved – of course, there was a huge amount of work then – but it was after they are approved. So, one of the things I did early [on] was insist that when we had the Oxford vaccine, and we backed it from the start and that was great, I insisted that UK production protects people in the UK in the first instance. And, as the UK health secretary, that is my duty.’
It didn’t take long for Twitter users to collectively question what on earth was going on. Even Matt Damon started trending, with one user writing: ‘Matt Hancock also revealed that his lack of ability to give a straight, relevant answer to any question was inspired by Matt Damon not knowing who he is or what he's doing in The Bourne Identity.’
Another wrote: ‘So, Matt Hancock got the idea for the vaccine strategy from a Matt Damon film. Did the government derive their policy on feeding children from Oliver!?’
Directors and producers, please make sure your films are well-researched and up for the task of shaping government policy because you never know who might be watching it.
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