MovieChat Forums > Contagion (2011) Discussion > The vaccination strategy

The vaccination strategy


I have a background in public health, though not in infectious diseases, and I've watched the movie several years ago. I've recently taken an online course in infectious diseases, and been thinking again of the vaccination strategy in the movie. They allocate the vaccine dose randomly according to the birth date, but it is not actually the most optimal strategy. the most effective strategy would be to allocate the vaccine doses in priority to:
- Firstly health care workers for obvious ethical reasons
- Then to people who are most at risk for complications (in the case of covid19 it is the elederly, ppl with diabetes, obesity, heart or pulmonary problems...) to reduce the burden on hospitals
- Then to people who are most likely to transmit it to a lot of people (super spreaders), either because of their job (police officer, cashier at a supermarket) or living conditions
- And then, once those people are vaccinated, vaccine the rest of the population, but distribute the vaccine evenly across the whole country in order to avoid large clusters of unvaccinated people.
That's a more effective vaccination strategy. I'm a bit surprised that this film, which was advised by scientific consultants does not seem that scientifically accurate in that respect...

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I think for the most part, most countries would do it as depicted in the film by random drawing of birthdates, but in the case of the US it would probably depend on who is POTUS. Old Donald would leave each state to decide how they would administer a vaccine while Old Joe, I am not certain but I would predict a combination of your thoughts but it would include birthdate within each segment.

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