Summary
Alan leaves flyers on cars in San Francisco that say "The CDC lies!" Suddenly he sees Lorraine from the San Francisco Chronicle, coughing outside an apartment. "I think I had a seizure," she tells him and asks if he has any forsythia. When he tells her he does not have any forsythia, she tells him she is pregnant. "Go home, I'll bring it to you when I get it," he tells her.
The scene shifts to Dr. Mears lying on the floor in a gymnasium, where her condition has worsened. She dies there, and some hospital workers talk about the fact that the hospital has run out of body bags. Dr. Cheever drives to work at the CDC where there are protests taking place. He conducts a television interview with Sanjay Gupta about a drug that could potentially fight the virus, telling him that the strongest defense against the virus is social distancing. Gupta asks how many people have died from the disease, and he says he does not know.
Gupta invites Alan Krumwiede into the interview to debate with Cheever. Alan talks about the efficacy of forsythia, but Cheever does not confirm the potential of homeopathic remedies, as there is no science to back it up. Cheever suggests that Alan is far more dangerous than the virus because of the lies he is spreading. Alan discusses a theory that has been posited on social media about Cheever covering up information, referencing the fact that his wife told her friend Elizabeth about the virus, but Cheever says he is not aware of the allegations.
Cheever meets with Lyle Haggerty about the fact that he is now a scapegoat for the press. The office informs him there will be an investigation and he is not allowed to do any press interviews anymore. Hextall and Eisenberg discover a new mutation of the disease in Africa and Hextall and Cheever discuss the potential for a vaccine sometime soon, even though conditions are still grim.
We see a montage of empty offices, gyms, memorials, and posters celebrating Alan as a prophet. One of the memorials is for Lorraine. On Day 26, Mitch waits in line for meals, when someone announces there are no meals left to give out. Fights break out between people and Mitch defends a woman who is getting mugged. At home, he watches television with his daughter, which estimates that 2.5 million people have died. Later that night, as he tucks his daughter in, Mitch hears gunshots from a neighboring house. He sees two men coming out of the house with guns as he calls 9-1-1, but no one is able to answer his call.
Mitch visits a neighbor's house, breaking in when no one answers and going through the fridge. He finds a rifle in the garage and brings it home. When he gets home, his daughter is not there. Jory has gone out to make snow angels with her boyfriend, Andrew, who takes off his mask with her, insisting that they cannot transmit the disease if neither of them has it. She lowers her mask, but before they can kiss, Mitch pulls Andrew away and tells him to go home.
Hextall and Cheever talk about the vaccine, which is not ready yet. Hextall explains that, even if it were ready, they would still have to do human trials which would take weeks. "Homeland Security wants to know if we can put a vaccination in the water supply, like fluoride, and cure everyone all at once," Cheever says, but Hextall doesn't respond to this. She hangs up, wishing him a merry Christmas.
The scene shifts and we see Hextall experimenting with a vaccine in the lab, first looking at a monkey in a cage and then injecting a trial vaccine into herself. She then goes to a hospital to visit her father, who is ill. She takes off her mask in his hospital room and tells him she is testing her vaccine, after having learned about vaccines and Barry Marshall from him. "I don't want to get you sick," he tells her, but she assures him that she is inspired by him because he took a chance treating sick people and got sick himself in order to help. He begins to cry and they laugh about the fact that Barry Marshall won a Nobel Prize.
The scene shifts to a news story about a vaccine that is being distributed, and the question about who will get it first. We see Dr. Cheever's wife at home as thieves raid her house for food and valuables. A masked intruder interrogates her about where they keep their vaccines, but she tells him they do not have any.
Cheever runs home and finds his wife shocked by a home intrusion. He asks if the intruders seemed sick and if they touched her, reminding her that they are getting the vaccine the next day. "They didn't touch me," she tells him.
Analysis
In this section of the film, matters only worsen, with Dr. Mears dying of the disease. The scene of her death is hopeless and terrifying, as she dies alone in a gymnasium in Minneapolis at a time when there are not even enough body bags in the country with which to dispose of the dead. Political unrest heightens, with protests and conspiracy theories abounding in relation to the lack of answers surrounding the condition. Soderbergh depicts a world that is completely undone by the disease, thrown off of its course and into violent disarray.
The scientific community, headed by Dr. Cheever, now comes into conflict with the conspiracy theories of Alan Krumwiede, when Cheever debates Alan on television. Alan suggests that the CDC and the government are trying to deceive the public just to make a profit, a compelling argument against for-profit pharmaceutical structures. Cheever, on the other hand, insists that this is not the case, that there is a great deal that is unknown about the disease, and that the supposed homeopathic treatments for the disease have not been proven to work scientifically. Here, we see large official institutions coming into combat with a more radical wing of the public, in increasingly tense ways.
There is very little hope among the characters in the film in this section of the film. The shock of the disease has worn off for most, and many have come to accept the horrible conditions of the world during the pandemic. Now, the characters must think only of survival and making it through to a time when a vaccine or cure has been developed. We see abandoned airports and public gyms, representing the ways that society has completely stopped and civilization has disappeared. There is an atmosphere of not only doom and despair but also of isolation and alienation in the midst of an ongoing tragedy.
After losing both his wife and stepson to the virus, Mitch must work hard to keep his daughter safe in an increasingly unsafe world. He hears gunshots from a neighboring house one night, but law enforcement is completely overwhelmed by an outbreak of crime in the city. Then, after investigating a neighbor's house one day, he returns home to find his daughter missing, as she has snuck out to spend time with her boyfriend. Mitch carries a huge emotional burden, as a single father in mourning who must protect his daughter from potential infection in a city that has been turned completely upside down, medically, politically, economically, and socially.
Every element of the narrative has a political as well as an emotional dimension. For instance, once Hextall has developed the vaccine that could be the key to fighting the virus, it is not a simple dissemination process, as many people worry about who will get the vaccine and when. People break into Cheever's home looking for the vaccine, even though Cheever's wife insists that they do not have any doses. In this we see that nothing about the disease or its mitigation can be separated from structural and political conditions. Even when there is hope for relief from the tragedy, this relief is contentious and political in nature.
