Contagion (2011)

Laurence Fishburne: Dr. Ellis Cheever

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Quotes 

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : We're working very hard to find out where this virus came from. To treat it and to vaccinate against it if we can. We don't know all of that yet, we just don't know. What we do know, is that in order to become sick you have to first come in contact with a sick person or something that they touched. In order to get scared, all you have to do is to come in contact with a rumor, or the television or the internet. I think what Mr. Krumwiede is uh... is spreading, is far more dangerous than the disease.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : Someone doesn't have to weaponize the bird flu. The birds are doing that.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : When was the last time you ate something that didn't come from a vending machine?

  Dr. Erin Mears : [Hesitantly]  Taco Bell

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : You know where this comes from, shaking hands? It was a way of showing a stranger you weren't carrying a weapon in the old days. You offered your empty right hand to show that you meant no harm.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : How are you?

  Dr. Erin Mears : Yeah, I'm going into a meeting with...

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : No, Mears, I didn't ask what you we're doing, I asked how you were doing. How are you doing?

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : It's gonna be all over the news. What's your single overriding communications objective?

  Dr. Erin Mears : We're isolating the sick and quarantining those who we believe were exposed.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : Okay, good. As of this moment, you and I are attached at the cell phone. If you need resources, call me. If you get into a political dogfight, call me. If you find yourself wide awake, staring at the walls at 3 a.m. wondering why you took the job, call me.

• Reporter : Dr. Cheever, are you concerned that the CDC faces a credibility issue here after the perceived overreaction to H1N1?

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : I'd rather the news story be that we overreacted than that many people lost their lives because we didn't do enough. That's why we're here. It's also why the World Health Organization is sending an epidemiologist to Hong Kong. It's hard to know what it is without knowing where it came from. So our first job with these things is always to find ground zero. Figure out how it jumped into the population. We do know that a patient in Minnesota traveled to that part of the world.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : What's going on, Lyle?

  RADM Lyle Haggerty : There's a sick Congressman from Illinois in D.C. He was in Chicago over the holiday. They're using the pod to fly him home. Then they're closing down Midway and O'Hare. The Governor there is then calling out the National Guard. They're setting up roadblocks. They're shutting down the board of trade, public transportation. Even the Teamsters are pulling their drivers off the road.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : People are still gonna slip through. You know that.

  RADM Lyle Haggerty : Yes, they will. The Secret Service is moving the President underground. Congress is figuring out how to work online. When the word goes out - there will be a run on the banks, gas stations, grocery stores, you name it.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : People will panic. The virus will be the least of our worries. It will tip over now.

  RADM Lyle Haggerty : We just need to make sure that nobody knows - until everybody knows.

• Sanjay Gupta : Can you tell us, to date, how many people have died from this virus?

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : Very difficult. We're still working on confirming that number. There are 50 different states in this country - which means there are 50 different Health Departments followed by 50 different protocols.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : I thought you said once we could grow it, we could vaccinate against it.

  Dr. Ally Hextall : We tried using dead virus combined with atrophins to boost immune response.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : And?

  Dr. Ally Hextall : No protective antibodies. A lot of dead monkeys.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : Are we even close?

  Dr. Ally Hextall : If we even had a viable vaccine right now, we would still have to do human trials, and that would take weeks. And then we would have to get clearance and approval figure out manufacturing and distribution. That would take months. And then training survivors to give inoculations. More months, more deaths.

• Dr. Ally Hextall : We have to try a live attenuated virus.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : Like with polio?

  Dr. Ally Hextall : Exactly. The only danger with a live virus is the possibility that it will revert to wild type and kill the host.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : And when will we know about that?

  Dr. Ally Hextall : I'll ask the monkeys.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : So we have a novel virus with a mortality rate in the low 20s, no treatment protocol, and no vaccine at this time.

  Dr. Ally Hextall : That is correct.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : From here on out, I want no one working on this except at BSL-4. Last thing we need is for this to walk out of the lab on the bottom of someone's shoe.

• Sanjay Gupta : There are stories circulating on the Internet now that in India and elsewhere the drug Ribavirin has been shown to be effective against this virus. Yet, Homeland Security is telling the CDC not to make any announcements until stockpiles of the drug could be secured.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : Well, Dr. Gupta, there continue to be evaluations of several drugs. Ribavirin is among them. But right now, our best defense has been social distancing, No hand-shaking, staying home when you're sick, washing your hands frequently.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : The CDC is exploring forsythia and other homeopathic treatments. But right now, there's no sciencet o back any of these claims.

  Alan Krumwiede : Or no way Dr. Cheever or the people who put him into power can profit from it.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : We're not ruling anything out.

• Dr. Ally Hextall : It's mutated.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : Which way, better or worse?

  Dr. Ally Hextall : It's moved into an African HIV AIDS population. The Durban cluster is highly divergent.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : Homeland Security wants to know if we can put a vaccination in the water supply, like fluoride. Cure everyone all at once.

  Dr. Ally Hextall : I'm going home now, Ellis. It's getting late. Merry Christmas.

• Dr. Erin Mears : He could have gone to anyone with this. He came to us.

  Dr. Ellis Cheever : Why should we trust him?

  Dr. Erin Mears : We have no choice.

• Dr. Ellis Cheever : Someone doesn't need to weaponise Bird Flu, the Birds are doing that!