6 Endings To My Personal Pandemic Movie
The movie is over. Really hope there’s no sequel
We’re all living our own version of Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion, a 2011 thriller about a killer virus that has become a sort of new classic.
My personal pandemic movie started in early March. The coronavirus had spread to Europe from China and was finally in America. But I was still riding the New York City subway train to therapy. I went and saw a new production of West Side Story on Broadway. I ate a yellow cheese omelet with a side of coleslaw at a diner. I didn’t know at the time how good I had it.
The next part of my movie is also probably familiar to many. Empty grocery store shelves. Frantic calls to pharmacies. Closed doors. Panic attacks over the toaster. A morning phone call with terrible, world-breaking news. A test. Weeks in a room, alone, scared. A growing rage at dithering leaders too concerned with saving face than lives. We are all in a life-and-death battle with the plague. Our movies are both different and the same.
I humbly present six potential endings to my personal pandemic movie. It’s tentatively titled Contagion 2: DeVoravirus. These minutes are not the beginning, nor the second act, nor the climax. I am pretty sure I’m not going to write a screenplay about these strange, dark days but if…
