During the early onslaught of the epidemic we are told by Dr. Erin Mears that the average human touches their face three-to-five times per minute. The exact amount is futile. What’s important is that it only takes one to pass on a virus. What’s also important is that I was touching my face when I was notified.
Dr. Mears is fictional (played by Kate Winslet), but the threat is real. Over the centuries, we weak humans have been decimated by unseen beings; microscopic terrors that eat us from the inside. The Black Death wiped out half of Europe in the 14th century; the Spanish Flu thirty million at the turn of the 20th. Smallpox is the real winner here though. Reports indicate it’s responsible for the deaths of 500 million people. Contagion’s nemesis is MEV-1: a proposed bat/pig viral super-villain.
