Not as scary

Long before COVID-19, one of the eldest’s favourite movies was Contagion.

At his request, we watched it again last night. Eeeek!

Weirdly, it wasn’t as scary as I remembered, despite the disturbing parallels with the current pandemic.

However, we both agreed we’d be even more vigilant about washing our hands moving forward and the eldest has sworn off returning to school, after expressing a desire earlier in the day to catch up with his art teachers.

Coincidentally, Dr Ian Lipkin, the medical consultant for Contagion, tested positive for the coronavirus this week. Lipkin was hired by director Steven Soderbergh to ensure the scientific accuracy of the movie.

The professor announced the news on Tuesday during a live television interview, after detailing some of the experiments he and his team at Columbia University had been working on to treat COVID-19.

“I would just like to say, on this show tonight, that this has become very personal to me too because I have COVID as of yesterday,” Lipkin said. “And it is miserable, it is miserable.”

He had coughed a couple of times during the interview.

“If it can hit me, it can hit anybody. That’s the message I want to convey,” Lipkin added.

In regard to the current global pandemic, Lipkin said that “we really don’t know when we’re going to get this under control.”

That’s way scarier than any movie.

Fortunately, however, the virus in Contagion – MEV-1 – was way deadlier than the coronavirus. It killed 25-30% of those infected, while the coronavirus only has a 2-3% mortality rate.

I woke up the night before last at about 1am feeling terrible, convinced I had a fever. I totally freaked out. After panicking for an hour or so and popping some Nurofen, I woke up yesterday feeling perfectly fine.

Maybe I’d just overheated under my doona?

I’d been feeling poorly for a few days with a mild stomach bug, which doesn’t meet any of the criteria for the coronavirus. But waking up feeling hot and headachey was the opposite of ideal in the current environment.

Yesterday passed in a fog of blah. I took some more headache tablets around 5pm and dragged myself out of the house to take the dogs for a walk. Meandering through the back streets, breathing in the fresh air, made me feel much better.

Perhaps it was a bad case of cabin fever? There’s a lot more of that to come.

Good luck with the cabin fever around your way this weekend.

PS Poor Matt Damon in Contagion, with his looks of confusion as his wife suddenly dies, then the second blow when he finds out she was cheating on him.

Song of the day: Miley Cyrus “Jolene”