Movie Depicts Worst-Case Scenario
May 9, 2006 — -- The ABC-TV drama "Fatal Conflict: Bird Flu in America" puts forth a worst-case scenario. It is a Hollywood account that exaggerates and condenses events to create an exciting story. But is there truth in these exaggerations? "Nightline" examined the difference between fact and fiction.
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt saw the movie and described it as "a fictional account designed to entertain.
"It was not a factual presentation of a real-life situation. It's obviously depicting events that have occurred in the past and could occur in the future," he said.
One striking scene in "Fatal Contact" depicts the collapse of the health care system. A New York City subway station is turned into an enormous health care center because the huge number of infected people has overwhelmed existing facilities.
The film also shows severe shortages of water, food and medical supplies, which the Hurricane Katrina crisis showed can still become life-or-death problems in a major emergency.
The most worrisome issue raised by the movie, however, might be the speed at which a vaccine can be produced, manufactured in large quantities and then delivered to the public.
"We do have optimism that vaccines will be available," said Leavitt. But he followed that good news with some bad news. "Because we have to create a vaccine that is crafted to the individual virus, it will be at least six months before we have a vaccine. We don't have the 300 million courses necessary to give every man, woman and child a course of the vaccine."
Most virologists believe, as the movie shows, that the human strain of avian flu would originate in Asia and arrive in the United States via an international flight. In the movie, a U.S. businessman contracts the virus from a worker's cough while overseas and then flies home carrying the virus.
But experts cast doubt on "Fatal Conflict's" portrayal of how quickly the virus evolves to a form that's transmittable by humans. "Literally overnight it went to spectacular efficacy in going from human to human," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in an interview with Terry Moran.
"Sure, in biology everything is possible, but that's an extremely unlikely scenario. When people wake up in the morning after seeing the ABC movie, they shouldn't be assuming that we are one mutation away from that movie. But what would be unfortunate would be that it scared the heck out of people in a nonproductive way," said Fauci.
Though the film may exaggerate the speed at which a pandemic could spread, it also shows how some officials can overreact. In one scene the governor of Virginia orders officials to use barbed wire to quarantine neighborhoods.
In real life, however, the Virginia governor's office assures us it has no plans to bring out barbed wire and fencing. "We haven't done that since the '50's," said spokesman Rich Hall. As part of its preparations the state has produced a 15-minute DVD to show the major issues associated with bird flu.
The Department of Health and Human Services has produced a viewer's guidefor tonight's broadcast. Click here to read it.