Health Secretary Matt Hancock's Obsession With Matt Damon Film 'Contagion' Drove UK Vaccine Strategy
'How Matt Hancock's obsession with Matt Damon film drove UK's vaccine strategy.' The Guardian, Feb. 2, 2021. 'Contagion' has been credited as offering an accurate examination of how a global pandemic might play out.
As the UK endures another lockdown and watches the coronavirus death toll go past 100,000, one source of optimism has been the effectiveness of the national vaccine programme, the fastest such rollout in the world. Now, as well as the effectiveness of the NHS and the work of former vaccine taskforce chief Kate Bingham, a surprising factor in that success has come to the fore: health secretary Matt Hancock’s obsession with a Matt Damon movie featuring a virus-ridden pig.
In the early days of the crisis, Sky News reported, the health secretary constantly reminded advisers of the example of Contagion, the 2011 Steven Soderbergh film which has been widely credited as a prescient examination of how a global pandemic might play out. In particular, Hancock wanted his team to heed the movie’s depiction of the complexities of an international race for limited vaccine supply – and make sure that Britain was out in front. “He was constantly referring to the end of the film,” a former Department of Health and Social Care adviser told Sky.
“He was always really aware from the very start, first that the vaccine was really important, second that when a vaccine was developed we would see an almighty global scramble for this thing.”
Hancock was particularly struck by a scene in which a lottery based on birthdates is used to ration supply – not as a policy prescription but as an indication of how precious the vaccine would be.
“To be clear, he didn’t think there was going to be this competition just because he’d seen Contagion,” a source patiently told the Guardian. “The UK vaccine effort was in no way built on the epidemiological model of watching a film – it was an illustrative example. He would say: ‘We’ve all seen Contagion, right?’ It was helpful.” “A lot of the focus was the need to inject a dose of reality and realpolitik into it,” the source added. “It’s not just about the science of how to develop it, there’s also supply and procurement and stuff that’s about human nature and politics.”
Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University and chief scientific consultant on Contagion, said it was “obviously quite gratifying” when told of Hancock’s interest by the Guardian. “The whole idea was to try to inform people about what they needed to anticipate,” he said. But he noted that the message behind his collaboration with screenwriter Scott Burns was not to encourage so-called vaccine nationalism but to warn of its dangers. “We have to vaccinate the entire world, there’s absolutely no question about that,” he said.
“As long as there is a population that has not been vaccinated, there is a high likelihood that this thing is going to continue to evolve. So, people who don’t understand or appreciate that – it’s not only unethical, it’s also not in your self-interest.”...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/02/how-matt-hancocks-obsession-with-matt-damon-film-inspired-uks-vaccine-strategy
