Scott Burns, Screenwriter of "Contagion," on Predicting A Pandemic

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, many people looked to the film “Contagion” as a manual for what lay ahead. The movie became a touchstone, and its stars were even enlisted to do a public service announcement about Covid. Now, a year later, the screenwriter of that movie, Scott Burns, along with UCLA epidemiologist Anne Rimoin, join us to talk about what the film got right and what unfolded in real life that they could never have predicted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KikiWED podcasts comes from Landmark College, holding their annual summer institute for educators from June 24 through 26th.
0:09.1	More information at landmark.edu slash LCSI.
0:13.7	Support for Forum comes from Broadway SF, presenting Parade, the musical revival based on a true story.
0:21.3	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of Leo and Lucille Frank,
0:27.6	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia.
0:31.6	When Leo is accused of an unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and
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0:56.0	From KQED. From KQED.
1:12.5	This week on Forum, we're looking back on From KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:16.2	This week on Forum, we're looking back on our time in the pandemic.
1:22.4	And today we'll be talking about the ways that we imagined the pandemic might go culturally and scientifically.
1:28.0	COVID was unprecedented, but there were foundations for our societal responses to the virus.
1:33.8	We'll have Scott Burns, who wrote Contagion, in eerily prescient film from 2011, about a deadly virus that became a touchstone of the early days of the pandemic.
1:37.0	So we have a virus of no treatment protocol and no vaccine at this time.
1:41.0	And then we'll talk with scientists and activists who battled AIDS here in San Francisco
1:45.2	about how their experiences and research jump started the fight against COVID. That's ahead on
1:50.3	forum right after this news. From KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrival filling in this week as your guest host.
2:03.6	I've got two little kids at home in Oakland.
2:05.3	I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine, and I've spent the past year co-running the COVID tracking project, interpreting the data each day.
2:13.4	This morning, we're going to talk about the ways we imagined the pandemic might go.
	...

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