Filmmaker Jefferson Lewis's Outbreak offers a unique perspective on the healthcare crisis by considering how contemporary society would react to a 19th-century pandemic. Lewis focuses on the 1885 smallpox epidemic that devastated Montreal (the last time the disease impacted North America), creating a speculative scenario in which a flight attendant arriving from London comes down with a chicken pox-type illness. Unable to get emergency room care, the flight attendant relies on over-the-counter medication and sleeps it off in her hotel room. However, the airborne smallpox virus carried by the ailing woman soon impacts a wider circle of unsuspecting people—including the hotel cleaning staff who unknowingly handled her bed sheets. Interwoven with the hypothetical case is a historical review of how Montreal dealt with its 1885 smallpox epidemic. Would the city (and, by extension, Western civilization) be able to cope today with a killer believed to have been eradicated? In view of the shaky manner in which crises such as AIDS, SARS, and the H1N1 virus were handled, Lewis's film raises disturbing questions about the abilities of contemporary healthcare systems to identify and respond to fast-spreading pandemics. Scarier than any Hollywood sci-fi thriller, this is recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (P. Hall)
Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague
(2010) 52 min. DVD: $225. National Film Board of Canada. PPR. Volume 27, Issue 5
Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague
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