Wow. I saw the move "Contagion" over the weekend, and it was really incredible. At least the idea of it was incredible. A woman travels overseas, shakes hands with the casino chef who has just wiped contaminated pig's blood off of his hands (but not very well). She interacts with several other people at this casino, then goes home - through several airports and a pit stop with an old lover. Then .... people start to die. Including her.
The PR aspects surrounding this scenario really stood out during this movie. First, you have a blogger who realizes this is a problem before anyone else, because he saw a video of someone sick on YouTube - and he can't get anyone to listen, so he goes off on his own. He decides he knows the cure - fakes that he has the illness and makes himself well using forsythe. He makes millions of dollars from this position - which is all a lie. He winds up arrested, but his blogger fans bail him out.
The Center for Disease Control finds itself in the worst situation in anyone's memory. Particularly when their fearless leader is overheard warning his fiance to leave town and join him - before others know her town is soon to be quarantined. So they have this media disaster to extinguish.
There was a lot of talk in the movie about Twitter, blogs and the Internet. Ten years ago, this type of situation could possibly have been managed better, since the spread of rumors would have taken longer. The opposite viewpoint, of course, is that the spread of warnings and good news (vaccines) would also have taken longer.
So this whole scenario just really brought to light how things have changed in the Internet/social media age. In good ways and bad ways. I don't know how such a situation could be managed well, because there are so many sources of information. It wasn't like the CDC was even in control, which, in days past, it would have been.
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