Essay on Coronavirus, Covid-19: Contagion Movie Predicted Global Pandemic & Mass Surveillance

Introduction

The coronavirus, covid-19 is a global pandemic, which is highly infectious. It has led to massive digital surveillance. The pandemic is similar to a virus predicted in the year 2011 in a movie. This paper discusses the virus in the contagion and relates it to an article on the coronavirus and mass surveillance of the citizens by governments.

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Contagion about Coronavirus

The blockbuster Contagion released in the year 2011 is the story of a man who loses his wife and son to a new virus, from a bat, infecting a host pig. The disease spreads quickly when the chef preparing pork from the host pig contracts the virus and spreads it through shaking of hands. DC researches on the killer virus analyzing its complex genetic makeup, with ten genes of both baths and pigs, which were highly infectious to the respiratory system of human beings.

The world has experienced, a similar threat from a highly contagious virus, named Covid-19. The highly infectious coronavirus has its epicenter in Wuhan China, where it is speculated that the virus erupted after at the seafood market after a host animal infected by a bat, passed the infection to a human being. The host animal is believed to be either a pangolin or a snake, making the scientist work day and night towards containing the spread of the disease. The predictions in the movie are accurate when related to the new virus which has no vaccine and has caused deaths all over the globe. In the movie, the recommendations given to the people are the avoidance of contact with the infected people to avoid further spread. The world health organization has declared Covid-19 a global pandemic with countries closing down(Whitehead,2020). There is a heavy emphasis on social-distancing and hand-hygiene to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Coronavirus vs. Mass surveillance

In my opinion, the risk of mass surveillance is more fearful than the coronavirus. The sophistication of technology is making the government able to conduct mass surveillance on its citizens. According to the article, the attempt to fight the infections from the disease has made the government a totalitarian one, investing in thermal scanners, artificial intelligence and face recognition system to contain its citizens (Whitehead, 2020). The integration of the green code has limited movement, making mass surveillance more dangerous than the pandemic. The author is scared that the virus can be a human creation, designed to enable the government to obtain crucial identity documents, for easy monitoring of populations in the future.

Conclusion

In conclusion, data harvesting, in times of outbreaks of a pandemic is making the move by the government of totalitarianism possible. The possibilities of the existence of man-made viruses cannot be ignored given that some countries had actively started monitoring its citizens even before the virus breakout.

Reference

Whitehead, J. (2020). Coronavirus vs. the Mass Surveillance State: Which Poses the Greater Threat? - CounterPunch.org. CounterPunch.org. Retrieved 29 March 2020, from https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/12/coronavirus-vs-the-mass-surveillance-state-which-poses-the-greater-threat/.