Actress Kate Winslet, left, consults about the technical accuracy of the new movie "Contagion" with Dr. Ian Lipkin, center, director of the Mailman School of Public Health's Center for Infection and Immunity and Stuart Nichol, chief of the Viral Special Pathogens Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The normally staid scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounded positively star-struck this week as they awaited release of a new movie in which it’s up to them to save the world from a killer outbreak.
Tickets to a special Thursday screening of “Contagion,” the just-released Steven Soderbergh film about a deadly pandemic virus, had to be doled out via lottery to eager CDC staffers, who already had acted as extras and hobnobbed with actors during filming.
Even Dr. Ali Khan, a rear admiral and assistant surgeon general who leads the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, admitted to a bit of Hollywood awe.
“I had fun chatting with Kate Winslet. I drew an epi curve for her,” he said, referring to the graphic representation of infection cases used to track an epidemic.
Winslet plays a CDC researcher in the movie. The film's team caused a buzz at the agency's Atlanta offices starting about two years ago, when the crew sought technical advice and filming locations to add authenticity to the movie, said Dave Daigle, an associate director for communications with the CDC's preparedness office.
During the course of the filming, staffers decided that Winslet’s real-life counterpart would likely be Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases who served frequently as the agency’s spokeswoman during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Fictional-but-plausible deadly virus
But on the eve of the film’s nationwide release, CDC curiosity had reached a fever pitch, particularly about the source of the fictional-but-plausible deadly virus that quickly circles the globe.
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