Kadayunan, Hanadi M.

BSMT1 A
Community and Public Health

“Contagion”

The movie was all about solving mysteries and putting together
puzzling events about the spread of the virus which they called as the MEV-1 virus.
The virus started because of the chef although it originated from bats. When he was
preparing the pig who ate the bat, his hands got in contact with the blood and used
it to shake the hands of the lady without washing his hands. It really shocked me
how a silly mistake can take thousands of lives. If he was careful enough and
observed proper hygiene, children will not die. If he was smart enough to know the
importance of hand hygiene, stores will not be robbed and burned down. If only he
became more cautious, people will not fight over medicines and chaos will not occur.
As I progress in the movie, it made me more paranoid about the things that
we touch and the people we talk to. In the movie, we saw how easily and quickly a
diseases can transfer just by touching something that an infected person touched. It
really encourage me to wear gloves, mask and face shield even at home because you
shouldn’t trust everything and everyone. It also discouraged me to attend parties
and gatherings since you will never know what they did and who they met before
they had contact with you. The movie also gave me so much insights and realization
on how difficult the job of a public health officer is. It can be life-threatening since
you will be expose to hosts and pathogen along the way. The pressure in their
shoulder as they try to compete with the spread of the disease was huge. Just like
what the girl experienced when she was asked if she was okay, she just said fine.
Even her meal comes only in the vending machine. Surely, those realities still
resonates the reality we are facing today with Covid-19.
The movie also taught me to take blood and other body fluids as contagious
more seriously. I think I was the type of person who didn’t mind touching
somebody’s blood because I didn’t understood why it was considered contagious in
the first place. I thought that as long as it won’t get inside, it’ll be okay. But the
movie refuted all of my ideas before and gave me a new perspective. There’s also a
scene in the movie where I though it was a super no-brainer move for them to resort
to lotto machines to determine the priority of vaccination. They could have done
some research on who is more susceptible and at risk of dying instead of leaving it
to luck.
But at the end of the movie, their tears dried up and things started to come
back to how it was even without their loved ones. Indeed, light awaits a long, cold
and dark journey in the tunnel. It’s up to you if you want to witness it.