I Can't Stop Watching Contagion | Folding Ideas

Clickbait Title: Spreading Misinformation During A Crisis Makes You A Bad Person

The one thing that I'm expecting someone in the comments is going to latch onto is the exact timeline of the abolition of serfdom in Europe because it was very much not a uniform thing and the process took a couple hundred years to encompass the entire continent. It's a super big and complex subject because it encompasses both the fallout of the Black Death and various technological developments. But some of those developments were, themselves, responses to the plague, built to solve problems it created. Ultimately I chose a super simplified, ultra-compressed version of history because the story of history is ultimately the story of the present. We can come out of this crisis better than we went in.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

[MusicoftheDamned]

Ignoring the increasing darkness of the current times, I have to say that the fact that _Contagion_ also predicted Gwyneth Paltrow being a severe health risk to everyone is amusing.

[UnreasonableOpinions]

I will never get over the fact that on launch one of the most consistent critiques of this film was that its portrayal of government-political action on a pandemic as being half-hearted and half-arsed and people were too easy to believe conmen and shills, and now the modern critiques observe that the film's portrayal of government political action was mildly to wildly optimistic depending on your host country, and sadly naive as to how well-marketed the conmen and shills would have to be to work.

[steelex]

"i can't pay attention to the news, and I can't not pay attention to the news."
right there, man.

[tmthecat]

watching this and reflecting on the pandemic brought me to tears. millions are dead and there's a sense that we're all back to normal, my groceries are nearly unaffordable yet politicians blame the usual scapegoats. i think Contagion portrays optimism in its end, but as you said there's no end for us and we're left rubble and ash and uncleared smoke that wasn't there before, and we're told to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and get cleaning. this disease peeled back the gause over every gaping wound in our system so the public knows its government is a walking undead creature that speaks with human tones and reassurances as if we cant see its true form now. i wish sometimes that it all had a sense of dramaticism, but it meanders and leaves me wanting to force an end myself.
i hope your doing well, Dan, and your new normal is something tolerable. i can tolerate mine, but im so, so lucky.

[NiteManhattan]

The projection on the couch is a really creative and impactful way to avoid a copyright strike. Very slick. Thanks for all the artistic inspiration.

[robertstuckey]

The sentence "Would this be the year there would be nobody left to bury the dead?" brought out the wildest most primal form of grief.

[_AF__]

I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way, but listening to someone talk about these complex feelings with such eloquence is comforting in a way. It will suck for a while but we will get through it. Thank you. Stay safe, everyone.

[anarchofairy]

"disease has no eye for poetry" really hit home. all suffering can be endured if it is given meaning, but a pandemic has none. this didn't need to happen and we all didn't need to die.

[whyaminotsleepyet]

“I need to practice emotions, and I need to live in a bounded world, and I need to believe we can choose better.” That hit way different and harder than I expected.

[ElementTrinity]

I honestly can't believe this was over a year ago. March 2020 is seriously so early in the pandemic in highsight, so weird to think about how much further downhill things went after that

[GibusWearingMann]

"We remember January but it has as much presence in the mind as childhood."

[dumbgames]

I really ****ing wish this hadn't aged to well. FFS, nearly 2 years later.

Thank you, genuinely, for the video. Escapism via other's escapism is alive and well, I suppose.

[citationsneeded]

This video felt like hours and yet bearly half of a half hour has passed, the last 2 weeks of March have been the longest month ever

[steelplatedheart]

This is just surreal. I remember how I felt in March - grasping for something to make me feel better, watching Contagion as a way to process overwhelming emotions, being afraid for my own safety, having bouts of depression that kept me in bed for hours after I was supposed to be at work, then bouts of mania were I felt the need to clean everything... but now.... Now? I just feel empty. I feel nothing but nostalgia watching this, like "oh how nice, people used to take this seriously. I'm not sad, I'm not afraid. I'm just resigned. I've long since stopped feeling the impact of the hundred thousand people who've died, the millions of people who will suffer health problems for the rest of their life, the thousands who are facing homelessness... It just is, and I almost wish we were still in this place where the fear was so overwhelming that we could do nothing but watch Contagion on repeat.

[LeroyYonderboy]

"A low mortality rate is often the result of adequate care, but the quality of care goes down as the number of severely ill goes up,
As the number of infected healthcare workers reduces the number of people qualified and capable of administering that care. This in turn has a knock-on effect where unrelated illnesses and injuries become more dangerous, a heart attack or broken leg that would be easily managed under normal circumstances becomes that much worse when there not enough people to help, aren't enough beds to go around. The more people who are exposed, the more need to roll the dice against that 1-2% and the more are going to loose." Thats the thing i have been trying to formulate for myself, thanks for putting it in to words. I am stealing it.

[gc]

My friend and I watched Contagion freshman year of high school. We both made fun of the daughter for caring so much about prom in the middle of a damn global pandemic. Four years class of 2020 prom and graduation all got canceled. Karma is something fierce. I apologize to her character, she was justified in being upset :')

[Dragon-Dad-]

"On the one hand I am deeply privileged enough that I can stay safe and be isolated. On the other hand I cannot think of the other hand."

Thank you for putting words to my emotions. I really appreciate it.

[itsawayoflife]

Coming back to this video just over a year later. God, it still hits. I need a badge that says 'I was a student nurse during the coronavirus pandemic and all I got was this lousy badge'.

[Taramoor]

I have to admit, there’s something comforting about the film version of this, where the government is informed of the problem and spurred to action.

[kohp]

Thank you Dan. It's been 4 years and watching this took me back. Amazing how much we've 'moved past this' but it just feels like repressed trauma