(Music)
Yeah.
- What's up guys, it's your girl, T.
And I am here today with Dr. Rimoin.
She's an epidemiologist,
which basically means shes studies infectious diseases all day long.
- I'm a professor at UCLA school of public health and
I study how disease spreads in population.
Today we're going to be talking about epidemics as they're portrayed in movies,
and see what they got right and what they got wrong.
(Sound) - The chimps are infected,
they're highly contagious, they've been given an inhibitor.
- Infected with what?
- To cure, you must first understand.
- Infected with what?
(Music)
Rage.
- There are diseases that can cause changes in behavior.
And there are examples like rabies which make people more aggressive.
There are other diseases like toxoplasmosis which can, for example,
make mice Less afraid of cats and then more likely to be eaten.
So the idea of a virus changing behavior is actually real, just
the actual execution of it in the movie was maybe just a little bit exaggerated.
- Got between ten and twenty seconds to kill them.
It might be your brother, or your sister, or your oldest friend.
It makes no difference.
And just so you know where you stand, if it happens to you,
I'll do it in a heartbeat.
- So, the idea that from the time that you are exposed to a disease
to showing symptoms is only 10 to 20 seconds, is not very realistic.
What, that's something that's called Called the incubation period.
It can normally take anywhere from 8 to 12 hours,
for something that would be very, very fast.
A neurovirus for example, but most diseases will take much longer than that.
- You okay?
- Mm-hm.
(Cough) - You sure?
You don't sound so good.
- I think it's a flu or something, tell Patrick hi.
- Yeah, I think that that was actually a perfect example of what happened.
Disaster breeding disaster.
I mean, what we see all the time is that there's a war, and you
have all of the The infrastructure falling apart, but all of a sudden you have
diseases which you could've controlled before if they're not very controllable.
During the Ebola outbreak, the infrastructure broke down.
People were not able to immunize kids anymore and
so, all of a sudden, you started having measles outbreak and
other diseases that are normally controlled so absolutely.
- We're all infected.
But the CDC, Jenner told me.
Whatever it is, we all carry it.
- In the very controversial second season of the Walking Dead,
we also learned that all of the characters
in the show are infected with this virus - Basically,
it means that because they're already infected,
they're all going to become zombies eventually, once they actually die.
Is it possible for
us all to be walking around with diseases we don't even know about?
- I would say that there are diseases that
you have a large proportion of the population having.
Herpes virus, a lot of people are infected with that
- HPV is another example.
There are other diseases like cytomegalovirus where you have
most people at some point have been infected with it.
- Where is that?
- Cytomegalovirus?
It's just a common virus that usually people get when they're babies,
but they can get Later on in life.
- It sounds like it would make a superhero, I'm not going to lie.
- (Laugh) Well, superhero viruses only infect a few people, really.
(Sound) - Alverez has died of the original strain.
Seward died of the new strain.
Now, these are too close together on the tree for
the virus to have suddenly spontaneously mutated.
So I think, That the host animal is carrying both stains.
- Is it possible for a monkey, or even a human, to carry two or
more strains of the same virus?
- Yeah, that's absolutely possible.
So HIV is a perfect example of a disease where people may have more than one strain
HPV is another example.
So sure you can be infected with more than one strand of many diseases.
- Have you ever seen any effects of hemorrhagic fever?
- No sir.
- Allow me sir.
- Major.
- Yes major.
- When the patient first gets the virus he complains of flu like symptoms and
then in two or three days pink lesions begin to appear all over his body along
with small pustules that soon erupt - With the blood and
puss, kind of milky stuff- - These particular lesions become full
blown they feel like mush to the touch.
These is vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding in the noise, ears, gums.
The eyes hemorrhage.
The internal organs shut down.
- I'm almost afraid to ask this,
are there diseases really like motaba in the real world?
- Yeah, there are actually diseases like motaba.
They're called hemorrhagic fevers.
So that would be Ebola or Marburg, or Lassa.
- You know the incubation period.
- No that kills in two or three days.
The mortality rate is a 100%.
- Jesus.
- There are very few diseases that are actually 100% fatal.
Spanish influenza which is one One of the most deadly diseases of all time when we
had about a 20% fatality rate.
- Are there any epidemic movies that you love that we haven't talked about?
- 'Airplane'.
- Wow. - 'Airplane' is my favorite
outbreak movie.
Because it's about a food borne outbreak on a plane.
- What was it we had for dinner tonight?
- Well, we had a choice - Baked fish.
- Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.
You have Leslie Nielsen going around trying to figure out if
people ate the steak or the fish.
The whole thing's about a food-borne outbreak on a plane.
That is absolutely my favorite outbreak movie.
- The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing, finding someone back
there who can not only fly this plane - But we didn't have fish for dinner.
(Music)
- Where could people find if they want to learn more about terrible diseases?
- I run a research program and the democratic Republic of the Congo and
I'm a professor at UCLA.
You can go to our website, you can also follow me on twitter.
- That's going to do it for us today.
Make sure you guys follow Dr. Arimoin on all of her platforms.
And make sure you follow us, so that you don't miss our next episode.
Leave a comment letting us know what myths you want busted moviewise,
when it comes to science, technology, all that kind of jazz and
we'll get an expert in here to let us here to let us know what's real and what ain't
- We'll see you guys next time.
(Music)