Summary
Someone meets with Alan and explains to him that there is no proof of the efficacy of forsythia. "Did you know about these studies when we met the last time?" the man says, "We could get in a lot of trouble." Alan insists that the scientists rushed the trials and they know nothing about the side effects of the vaccine, reminding the man that the 1976 swine flu vaccine gave people nerve disease. The man warns Alan that people trust him, and if he tells them not to take the vaccine they will listen. Suddenly, Alan realizes that the man he is with is wearing a wire and recording their conversation, and he makes a run for it. They arrest him for securities fraud, conspiracy, and manslaughter.
Day 133. Lyle Haggerty speaks to the press about the vaccine and pulls a random lottery ball that indicates that people born on March 10 are first eligible for the vaccine. Cheever goes to his office, where Hextall is still working. He encourages her to take a break, but she wants to keep working to get to a better understanding of how the disease came to be.
At home, Mitch and his daughter watch the news announcing which birthdays are eligible for the vaccine, and Jory worries that they will run out of vaccines. He assures her that this won't happen, but she becomes upset about the fact that time is passing and she is missing out on her life. She texts her boyfriend that she is "in jail for 144 more days."
Dr. Orantes teaches at a school in the village in Hong Kong and asks one of the students how to say "fish" in Chinese. Sun Feng comes and interrupts her, bringing her to meet with an official from the WHO to negotiate a deal so that his village can receive the vaccine. "Please give them what they ask, I just want to go home," she tells the representative from the World Health Organization on the phone.
When they arrive, the representative from WHO hands over the vaccines and Sun Feng has Orantes take it to make sure it is real. She agrees that it is and Feng lets her go, driving away hastily. At the airport, the man who picked her up tells Orantes that the ones he gave to the village were placebos, as the Chinese government insisted. Orantes gets up and leaves the airport abruptly.
Alan Krumwiede gets interrogated by officials, who tell them that no antibodies showed up in his blood samples, meaning that he lied about having the virus. "Forsythia is a lie and you made four and a half million dollars for telling it," the official says, before informing him that he is going to go to jail. Suddenly, they are interrupted by a man telling them that Krumwiede's supporters have bailed him out.
Haggerty gives Cheever his and his wife's dose of the vaccine, and Cheever tells him that he is invited to their official wedding as soon as they can schedule it. Haggerty then tells Cheever that they have scheduled their hearings, and Cheever leaves. Before going home, Cheever administers a dose of the vaccine to the janitor's son, Anthony, before shaking his hand and telling him that shaking hands was "a way of showing you didn't have a weapon in the old days." At home, Cheever gives his wife a vaccine, as she worries about whether this will get him in trouble.
Day 135. Krumwiede takes photos of vaccination sites for his blog and interviews people who are in line for the vaccine. At Mitch's house, Jory finds a package from her dad with a prom dress inside, and a note telling her to be ready by eight o'clock. Mitch looks through Beth's digital camera at pictures from her trip to Hong Kong.
Jory comes downstairs to find the living room decorated for an at-home prom, and her boyfriend rings the doorbell, holding up his vaccination bracelet. As Mitch weeps looking at Beth's digital camera, Jory calls to him, asking him if he's coming downstairs. He comes downstairs to find Jory and her boyfriend slow dancing in the living room.
We see a bulldozer cutting down trees in Hong Kong and displacing a flock of bats that then infects a large group of pigs that are then killed for meat. As the chef at a restaurant prepares one of the pigs, he is pulled aside to take a picture with Beth at the restaurant, but he does not wash his hands.
Analysis
In this final section of the film, life starts to return to normal and some of the chaos of the previous sections is rectified. Alan Krumwiede is apprehended by law enforcement for securities fraud, conspiracy, and manslaughter, after misleading people about the efficacy of forsythia and threatening to convince people that the vaccine is dangerous. Vaccine rollout continues and Hextall continues to fight for answers about the disease. The heroic characters in the film begin to attain victory, while the more nefarious forces are brought to justice.
Even as hopes begin to rise, however, characters must slowly heal from the traumas they have faced, and it is not as simple as returning to normal. Vaccination rollouts are slow and arduous, administered randomly by birthday, which frustrates Mitch and his daughter, Jory. Jory mourns the months of her youth that have been lost to the national emergency, frustratedly yelling, "Why can't they invent a shot that keeps time from passing?" The hardships of the year, the lives and the time lost, are not completely solved by the invention of the vaccine.
Meanwhile, Dr. Orantes has been kept hostage in Hong Kong in exchange for the vaccine, but is finally allowed to leave after Sun Feng negotiates a deal with officials from the World Health Organization. This storyline highlights the complications and ethical issues of a public health crisis on the global stage. While Sun Feng is unlawfully holding Orantes hostage, he is doing so to try to level the playing field and get vaccines for his small village, which is sure to be overlooked in the grand scheme of the pandemic. This storyline highlights the inequalities in the world, and the desperate measures to which people will go to make sure they are dealt a fair hand.
The film ends for the surviving protagonists on a hopeful note. Cheever makes a personal sacrifice to help the janitor in his office, giving the janitor's son his dose of the vaccine, and administering the vaccine to his wife. Hextall is able to see the rewards of her scientific risk-taking with the successful dissemination of the vaccine. Finally, Mitch is able to give his daughter Jory some equivalent of the experiences that she is missing out on, when he throws her an at-home prom, buying her a dress and inviting her vaccinated boyfriend over to the house.
Even with these hopeful segments, director Steven Soderbergh does not make the ending tidy or uniformly positive. Krumwiede, in spite of his dangerous lies, has enough supporters to bail him out of jail and begins spreading falsities about the vaccine. Orantes escapes from captivity in Hong Kong, but soon realizes that the vaccines that were handed over in exchange for her freedom were placebos. The final image of the film shows us Day 1 of the virus, which is all traced back not only to Beth Emhoff, but to her company. A bulldozer from her company displaces a bat which drops an infected piece of banana into a pig farm, which then brings the virus to the restaurant where Beth dines and shakes the unwashed hand of the chef. Even with the silver lining of the vaccine and a slow return to normal, the viewer is left with an image of the accidental and arbitrary origins of disease, the foreboding sense that disaster can begin with the smallest of tipping points.
