FLU (2013)

If you haven't seen the 2013 Korean movie, Flu, it captures the zeitgeist (spirit of the times) in a completely unrealistic, often infuriating K-drama way that can be very, very difficult to watch, especially right now.

An H5N1 flu outbreak begins in south Korea with a shipping container containing immigrants (westerners aren't the only xenophobes), and before long all chaos breaks lose in the form of an airborne pandemic that kills most people it infects in 36 hours. Mysterious rashes, coughing up of blood, panic shopping, separated families, forced quarantines in camps, lies, and military/government brutality ensue.

It doesn't help that just about everyone in the movie, including the medical workers, are wearing the wrong kind of mask. Worse yet, the female lead, a doctor who should know better, repeatedly leaves her super cute 6-year-old daughter home alone, free to roam the neighborhood, touch sick people, and ride in the car of a strange man with a compulsive hero complex.

Also difficult to watch: the massive-incinerator-corpse-claw-machine scene...

and the Please-don't-shoot-my-Mommy scene.

But back to real life.

People love asking, are you still alive? How are things in the hospital? Are there cases?

While some say it is just a matter of time, there are no confirmed cases in Merced as of this writing, and though local colleges have switched to online classes, the clinical portions of nursing schools are continuing in person. My Stan State community health clinicals should be...interesting. 

My kid's public elementary school is operating as usual, and she reports that they now wash their hands two times a day, as opposed to the previous zero times a day. Childcare and food access are a problem if all the kids stayed home, but allowing adorable little viral incubators* who can't stop touching one another or their faces to continue socializinig, then go home and touch their families, including grandma and grandpa, may not be the greatest idea, either.

And, Dad: can you just watch church on TV for a bit? There are cases in your area.

*as Dr. Modaferri refers to them