Going viral: Demand for disease-themed movies and games explodes

HONG KONG — As the world confronts the spread of a deadly new virus, interest in disease-themed movies, games and TV series has exploded, with worried viewers turning to documentaries and disaster flicks for answers and ways to cope. 

The iTunes movie download charts are usually dominated by the latest blockbusters.

But in the last few weeks a blast from the past has stormed up the charts -- Steven Soderbergh's 2011 thriller "Contagion."

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow as a businesswoman who unwittingly brings a lethal pathogen to the United States after shaking hands with a Macau chef, the movie has many parallels with current events.

Like the new coronavirus, the illness jumps from animals to humans in China before spreading abroad -- although in the movie it is an exponentially more deadly phenomenon, killing 26 million around the world in the first month alone.

It's a horror story that appears to have us hooked. 

In the last week of January, "Contagion" popped up in the top 10 of the British iTunes chart.

This week it has slipped down to 55 in Britain but remains stubbornly high up in many places -- number 7 in Singapore, 24 in Australia and 20 in the US.

In Hong Kong -- which features heavily in the film as the first city the virus runs truly rampant in -- "Contagion" is sitting pretty at number 8.

The international financial hub has provided made-for-movie scenes in real life recently as panic-buying set in with runs on staples including rice, cleaning products and toilet rolls.

Earlier this week there was even an armed robbery of a delivery driver dropping off toilet tissue.

The city experienced 299 deaths during the 2002-03 epidemic of the SARS virus -- a partial inspiration for Soderbergh's film -- and has had two fatalities from the current coronavirus.

STRESS RELIEVER 

But while Hong Kongers fret, many it seems are also keen to watch Hollywood's take on what a global pandemic might look like.

"The sudden interest in everything epidemic and virus-related allows people an avenue which can help to process what's going on," Robert Bartholomew, a medical sociologist who explores mass hysteria, told AFP.

"It's well-known in psychology that the process of talking about traumatic events can help people 'get it off their chest' and relieve stress."

It is not just movies receiving a bump.

For much of the last 8 years, "Plague Inc." has been one of the most popular mobile phone games, allowing players to control a deadly pathogen that spreads through humanity.

Ndemic Creations, the makers of the game, says downloads spike during global news coverage of a disease, including both the coronavirus and Ebola outbreaks.

"Whenever there is an outbreak of disease we see an increase in players, as people seek to find out more about how diseases spread and to understand the complexities of viral outbreaks," the company said in a statement.

"However, please remember that 'Plague Inc.' is a game, not a scientific model, and that the current coronavirus outbreak is a very real situation which is impacting a huge number of people," it added.

Last year Extra Credits, an educational YouTube channel, did a seven-part animation series for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions worldwide.

Robert Rath, the channel's Hong Kong-based writer, said views have soared since the coronavirus outbreak, especially in Southeast Asia. 

"Since January 1, the first episode gained over 100,000 views and the series as a whole gained over 330,000 views, which is dramatic for a YouTube video two years old," he told AFP.

'COLLECTIVE COPING' 

Meanwhile, Netflix could hardly have better timed the release of its January docuseries "Pandemic," a look at how unprepared the world is for new viruses.

"People have said the docuseries 'Pandemic' came out at a perfect time," Sheri Fink, a journalist and doctor who was an executive producer on the series, wrote on Twitter.

"But in fact we made it because some of us had seen the system tested in smaller ways and knew its vulnerabilities. We hoped to inform before, not after, another dangerous pathogen emerged."

Google searches worldwide for the series -- as well as the "Plague" game and movie "Contagion" -- have all skyrocketed in the last month.

Bartholomew says today's non-stop news cycle pushes people to the internet to make sense of their fears. 

"People are now in the habit of going online and subconsciously reducing their psychic stress through a quasi-ritualistic practice that involves using a keyboard," he said. 

"In the past, people might have gone to church and prayed, whereas today in a more secular age they go online and discuss their fears as a form of collective coping."

Agence France-Presse 

Flood, fire and plague: Climate change blamed for disasters

SINGAPORE - Extreme floods in Venice, fires in Australia and even an outbreak of plague in China have been attributed to climate change this week, while researchers have warned that global warming could saddle future generations with life-long illness.

Venice declared a state of emergency on Wednesday after "apocalyptic" floods swept through the lagoon city, flooding its historic basilica and inundating squares and centuries-old buildings.

"This is the result of climate change," city mayor Luigi Brugnaro said on Twitter.

City thoroughfares were turned into raging torrents, stone balustrades were shattered, boats tossed ashore and gondolas smashed against their moorings as the lagoon tide peaked at 187 centimeters.

It was the highest since the record 194 centimeters set in 1966, but rising water levels are becoming a regular threat to the tourist jewel.

"Venice is on its knees," said Brugnaro. "The damage will run into hundreds of millions of euros."

On the other side of the world, parts of Australia have been ravaged by wild bushfires this week, with four people killed and communities forced to flee the flames.

Since 2016, parts of northern and inland New South Wales, along with southern Queensland, have been in a drought that the Bureau of Meteorology says is being driven, in part, by warmer sea-surface temperatures affecting rainfall patterns.

Air temperatures have also warmed over the past century, increasing the ferocity of droughts and fires.

But links between climate change and extreme weather events have become a political football in Australia.

The coal-industry supporting government accepts the need to cut emissions while arguing that stronger environmental action would cripple its economy.

That pits the country against its Pacific island neighbors which are particularly susceptible to warmer temperatures and rising seas.

Globally, concern about effective action has surged since U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the international Paris Accord on climate change and took steps to dismantle environmental protections.

Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are among the world's only leaders who publicly question the science of climate change, despite devastating fires in their countries - in California and the Amazon basin - that environmentalists at least partly blame on global warming.

PLAGUE

While the politicians argue, concern is growing about the impact on health of a warmer world.

In China, health officials have reported a rare outbreak of pneumonic plague after two cases were confirmed this week in Beijing.

The two were infected in the province of Inner Mongolia, where rodent populations have expanded dramatically after persistent droughts, worsened by climate change, state media said.

An area the size of the Netherlands was hit by a "rat plague" last summer.

The wider implications for health are sobering.

The Lancet medical journal published a study this week saying climate change was already harming people's health by increasing the number of extreme weather events and exacerbating air pollution.

A warmer world brings risks of food shortages, infectious diseases, floods, and extreme heat.

If nothing is done, the impacts could burden an entire generation with disease and illness throughout their lives, researchers said.

"Children are particularly vulnerable to the health risks of a changing climate. Their bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants," said Nick Watts, one of those who led the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change study.

Health damage in early childhood is "persistent and pervasive," he warned, bringing lifelong consequences.

"Without immediate action from all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, gains in wellbeing and life expectancy will be compromised, and climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation," he told a London briefing.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Dead squirrel in California tests positive for plague

A squirrel found dead at Lake Tahoe last month has tested positive for the plague, health officials said, marking the latest incidence of the disease in California that forced the temporary closure of two Yosemite National Park campgrounds.

The Lake Tahoe squirrel was discovered at a picnic area near the Tallac Historic Site on Aug. 17 and sent to a state laboratory for testing, the El Dorado County Environmental Management Division, said in a written statement released on Friday.

Test results confirmed last Wednesday that the rodent had plague, El Dorado health officials said, and warning signs were posted for visitors to the area. The officials said they were not aware of any contact between humans and the squirrel.

"Plague is naturally present in many parts of California, including higher elevation areas of El Dorado County, so we need to be cautious around animals that can carry it," Karen Bender, a supervisor with the El Dorado County Environmental Management Division, said in a written statement.

In August, health officials closed two Yosemite National Park campgrounds for to be treated with insecticide after a child who camped there was hospitalized with the centuries-old scourge.

That case marked the first time a human was known to be infected with plague, which is carried by rodents and the fleas that live on them, in California since 2006. A second Yosemite visitor, who had traveled there from Georgia, was later diagnosed with the disease.

Officials have since urged visitors to Yosemite, which is about 120 miles from Lake Tahoe, to avoid walking or camping near rodent burrows, to wear long pants tucked into boots when hiking and to spray insect repellent containing the chemical diethyltoluamide, or DEET, on socks and pant legs to reduce the risk of flea bites

Last year in El Dorado County, two live rodents tested positive for plague antibodies, and in 2013 three tested positive, according to health officials there. There were no reports of illness to people.

An elderly Utah resident died from plague in August and two people have succumbed to the disease this year in Colorado.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says the plague was introduced to the United States in 1900 by rat–infested steamships that had sailed from affected areas, mostly in Asia.

Early symptoms of plague include high fever, chills, nausea, weakness and swollen lymph nodes in the neck, armpit or groin.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com