Contagion
Contagion, the new film starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law, premiered this weekend. The story behind the film is simple, a flu-like epidemic on a global scale. However, the idea behind this story is becoming more and more complex. The idea is that with the world becoming an increasingly globalized place, instruments of this globalization such as international travel and urbanization will put society at a greater risk from lethal viruses and bacteria. Many infectious diseases originate when microbes transition from wild animals to people or domesticated animals. With urbanization occurring at a rapid pace, more and more wild animals are coming into contact with domestic animals and people. Furthermore, the growth of international travel has facilitated the ability for such diseases to spread and has also increased or sensitivity to such diseases.
This idea that a disease could be so rampant and infectious made me think of the complex networks at work. First off, once a disease made the jump from wild animals to humans, the path it would follow would be related to many of the networks we have discussed in class. Starting on a local level and moving outwards covering the globe, all that would be needed for the virus to make a jump from a small area to a larger one would be one member of the original group traveling outside of said space or to have a member of an outside network enter the original one. In addition, the crossover of networks that would allow the disease to make the initial transition from wild animals follow this same thought. All that would be needed to start the infection of humans would be one crossover from wild animal networks to those of humans.
As is made clear in the article, interactions in networks such as the above examples are common and extremely real. While there is no reason to worry about doomsday scenarios in which large portions of the globe are wiped out, it is interesting and increasingly necessary to think about the ways in which our networks interact and the consequences associated with such enormous and interconnected systems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/opinion/the-real-threat-of-contagion.html?ref=opinion