Summary
Dr. Hextall and Dr. Eisenberg look at scans of the virus and decide to send it to Dr. Sussman, suggesting that "if he doesn't know what it is, then nobody does." The scene shifts to Dr. Sussman talking on the phone about the virus, when he is approached by Alan the conspiracy theorist. "You're not a doctor and you're not a writer," Sussman says: "blogging is not writing." Alan suggests that the virus is a biological weapon, but Sussman insists that he should call his office if he wants to talk.
Day 7. Dr. Cheever meets with someone from the Department of Homeland Security and a man named Lyle Haggerty from the military. Haggerty tells him that there have been more outbreaks and that the disease is posing a threat to homeland security. They discuss the fact that there could be an outbreak during the Thanksgiving season, and one of the men asks Cheever if there's a way to weaponize the flu that's going around. "The birds are already doing that," Cheever says, gravely.
We hear a news report of the disease popping up in schools in Minnesota. Dr. Mears interrogates people who knew Beth Emhoff, all of whom are worried about whether they might have caught it from her. Mears tells them the virus can't live on a box, and another coworker says she invited Beth to a Pilates class, but never heard from her about it. When she asks if anyone else came in contact with Beth, they tell her that someone named Aaron Barnes picked her up from the airport.
Mears calls Aaron Barnes and tells him to get off the bus he is on immediately. He tells her where he is and gets off the bus, worried about the fact that he touched his children. Mears finds him collapsed at a bus station and brings him into the hospital. Mears then goes to interview Mitch Emhoff about his wife, asking him if Beth worked with livestock, if she had seen anyone who was sick. She then brings up the fact that Beth had a layover in Chicago and asks if there's a possibility that Beth left the airport while there.
Mitch tells Mears that before their marriage, Beth was in a relationship with a man named Jon Neal. "Is Jon Neal sick? Did we get this from him?" Mitch asks. Mears tells him that she cannot give him that information, even though he is desperate to know if his wife cheated on him.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hextall meets with Dr. Cheever and shows him a diagram of how the virus works. "Somewhere in the world, the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat," she says, and suggests that the virus is still changing.
Hextall calls Sussman and tells him that they are taking him off of the case of the virus. "I think that's a mistake," he replies. She tells him to destroy all his samples, that they cannot risk it, but he insists that they are making faster progress than the government-run researchers can make. "I can do this," he insists, but she tells him he has to stop.
Alan Krumwiede watches Dr. Cheever speak in a press conference on television and writes down his name. In the press conference, Cheever announces that they are sending an epidemiologist from the WHO to Hong Kong, and we see Dr. Orantes at the airport. In Hong Kong, she speaks to health representatives to learn more.
Cheever holds another conference, this time with Hextall, who announces that they cannot grow the virus themselves, which means they cannot begin to create a vaccine. In Hong Kong, Orantes talks about the fact that Beth Emhoff used an ATM in Macau. A man she speaks to tells her that his mother has symptoms and she looks nervous.
At a restaurant, Sussman notices a woman coughing, and then looks around at the other people there. At the lab, Sussman tells one of his assistants that she can go home and that he will destroy the samples, per the CDC's orders. Once alone, he observes the samples and sends data to Hextall and Cheever.
Alan Krumweide meets with a man who wants to know more about his conspiracy theories, and tells him that he has found the cure for the virus, which is forsythia. Meanwhile, Mitch asks Dr. Mears if they can use his blood for a cure, since he is immune. She tells him it's too difficult, but that he will not get sick. She also tells him that they cannot be sure that his daughter will not get sick, since her immune system is half his and half her mother's.
Mitch and his daughter walk through the hospital lobby, which is mobbed with people. One of the health representatives in Minnesota tells Mears that his wife is being very cautious, and she tells him that his wife is not overreacting. They look at a giant gymnasium and plan where they will put infected people, and Mears tells him that they need three more spaces just as big. Suddenly, the two of them are interrupted by a representative from the town who wants to know who is paying for the gymnasium.
Cheever asks Mears how she is doing on the phone, and she tells him about the fact that she had to tell Mitch that Beth was cheating on him before she died. He tells her she sounds tired and urges her to take care of herself. At the Emhoff's, Mitch forbids his daughter's boyfriend from entering the house and tells him not to leave the flowers he brought, as they might be dangerous.
In Hong Kong, Orantes tries to figure out more about the origins of the disease and we see a flashback of Beth playing a game at a casino.
Analysis
In this section of the film, some of the various groups begin to interact more with one another. We first see this as Alan reaching out to Dr. Sussman to try and ask him more about the virus, then with Dr. Mears getting in touch with people who knew Beth Emhoff to try to understand more about the transmission. While the terror of the virus and the unknown looms large, the viewer is bolstered by the presence of Erin Mears, a brave worker who is set on questioning people and getting to the bottom of how Emhoff was infected, seeking to give the chaos of the pandemic a clearer narrative.
There are small interpersonal dramas that crop up throughout the narrative. The viewer already knows that Beth spent time with a man who was not Mitch while she had a layover in Chicago, but that information becomes more clear to Mitch when Dr. Mears questions him about whether she might have gone anywhere while she was in Chicago. Mitch's personal life and the threat of infidelity becomes tangled up in the investigation to get to the bottom of the public health emergency in a complicated way.
Another secondary conflict opens up when Cheever instructs Hextall that no scientists should be involved in researching the virus other than the main team and she has to call Dr. Sussman to tell him as much. He pushes back, insisting that if they only use government-based researchers, the research will proceed much more slowly. Hextall cannot budge, however, and Sussman must back off, showing the ways that scientific advancement and public health concerns are complicated and entangled with bureaucracy and political necessities that do not always have to do with scientifc accuracy and the public good.
Sussman does not heed this order from Hextall and instead seeks to grow the virus on his own. Just as he suggested, he is much faster than the government-backed researchers, and his work is crucial to the CDC. Still, there is no sure sign of any possible mitigation of the disease any time soon and the path to a cure remains bleak and encumbered by so many unknowns. As the film and the virus progresses, the images of rooms full of people start to become scarier and scarier as the threat of infection rises.
The film has a somewhat straightforward and repetitive structure. While we learn little details about characters and the circumstances, Soderbergh keeps every segment very brisk and personal details to a minimum. If anything, he seeks to depict a world thrown into crisis and the doubts that this stirs up, rather than linger too long on the psychological consequences of this conflict. The conflict of the film is a global and an epic one, a literal matter of life and death, which means that characters cannot afford to stop for long to think or consider. Rather, their lives follow the anxiety of the situation, the fear that grips the world.
