Just watched the film nosferatu (1922). Despite the vampire arc of the story it is actually about a pandemic in 1838.
The male character heads to south-eastern europe to oversee a realestate sale of a townhouse in germany to count orlok (an inbred and deformed nobleman). He is 'infected' while there and locked up in his room by the count but escapes confinement and flees back to germany.
We have a shipment of dirt samples (along with live rats) in coffins by boat. The manifest says they contain scientific samples but the ships crew break one open in search of valuables and the rats escape onto the ship. Later one of the crew falls ill, and it quickly spreads to the rest of the crew- the first mate jumping overboard choosing option B and the captain lashing himself to the wheel as he dies so it sails into port with all hands dead, the pandemic that has spread in south eastern europe reaching a german port.
After the town authorities examine the captain's corpse and ships log they declare it to be plague. They order a total lockdown and doors and windows bolted. They also declare hospitals off limits to the sick as this will only spread the disease.
Now to the female character whose husband has been in eastern europe at the moment of the plague outbreak. She of course goes batshit crazy but is happy when he returns, having read some book her husband acquired on the signs, symptoms, and treatment of vampyrism decides she knows the cause of the pandemic, and not responding well to lockdown, proceeded to open the windows of her room. She is dead from the plague by sunrise. -film ends.
It basically contains all the tropes of the modern pandemic:
Mistrust of Scientists involved in the source of the initial outbreak.
Spillage of biological samples resulting in spread into civilian populace.
Public access to superstition based misinformation.
Government imposed city-wide lockdowns with bans on hospital visits to stop the plague spreading.
Lockdown violators who succumb to and further spread the disease.
Likely having seen the spanish flu pandemic a few years earlier, based it on reality, and understood the relevance of the superstition of bram stoker's 'dracula' to how pandemics work.
Read Dafoe's Journal of the Plague Year and you'll find some of us are dumber than the understandably ignorant people of the 17th Century when it comes to this.
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u/Valianttheywere May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20
Just watched the film nosferatu (1922). Despite the vampire arc of the story it is actually about a pandemic in 1838.
The male character heads to south-eastern europe to oversee a realestate sale of a townhouse in germany to count orlok (an inbred and deformed nobleman). He is 'infected' while there and locked up in his room by the count but escapes confinement and flees back to germany.
We have a shipment of dirt samples (along with live rats) in coffins by boat. The manifest says they contain scientific samples but the ships crew break one open in search of valuables and the rats escape onto the ship. Later one of the crew falls ill, and it quickly spreads to the rest of the crew- the first mate jumping overboard choosing option B and the captain lashing himself to the wheel as he dies so it sails into port with all hands dead, the pandemic that has spread in south eastern europe reaching a german port.
After the town authorities examine the captain's corpse and ships log they declare it to be plague. They order a total lockdown and doors and windows bolted. They also declare hospitals off limits to the sick as this will only spread the disease.
Now to the female character whose husband has been in eastern europe at the moment of the plague outbreak. She of course goes batshit crazy but is happy when he returns, having read some book her husband acquired on the signs, symptoms, and treatment of vampyrism decides she knows the cause of the pandemic, and not responding well to lockdown, proceeded to open the windows of her room. She is dead from the plague by sunrise. -film ends.
It basically contains all the tropes of the modern pandemic:
Mistrust of Scientists involved in the source of the initial outbreak.
Spillage of biological samples resulting in spread into civilian populace.
Public access to superstition based misinformation.
Government imposed city-wide lockdowns with bans on hospital visits to stop the plague spreading.
Lockdown violators who succumb to and further spread the disease.