Epidemiology In World War Z

Epidemiology is a crucial part of life on Earth in real life and in movies. It is used to study how diseases are distributed and what the outcomes of these said diseases are on a population. Elements such as mortality, morbidity, and disability are measured. It is used to control health problems that arise. This makes it crucial to stopping a disease before it becomes a major problem. Epidemiology can also be used as entertainment in movies such as World War Z by Marc Forster.

World War Z is about a man that gets caught up helping the government in return for his family’s well-being. He used to work for a government but has retired from that life. Unfortunately for him, an outbreak of some unknown virus has occureed and high level government

The outbreak is a pandemic because it is worldwide. The reason is has been able to reach of the level of pandemic is because of the speed of transmission. The illness in the movie is an infectious disease that is very contagious and easily communicable through a bite. The movie also takes into account the epidemiologic triangle: a host, an agent, and the environment. The agent is a virus that is transmitted to others through the bite. Finds that the way these infected people look for others to bite is to find a suitable host. The host must be healthy. These infected “zombies” seek to bite someone who has a healthy body. They won’t give the virus to a person that has some condition that makes them a bad host such as someone with a terminal disease. This is the only way for the disease to be passed on. In the movie, during very chaotic scenes, some humans were passed by. It was not revealed at the time but it was later noted that they must have been passed by because of their illness making them an unsuitable candidate for the virus to infect. The environment is also ideal for the virus to start an outbreak because there is an abundance of humans in a small area. In the movie, Gerry (Brad Pitt) is selected to perform descriptive epidemiology by finding out the who, what, when, and where details of the pandemic. He is in the middle of initial outbreak in New York City when he sees that humans are being turned into “zombies” in as short as 12 seconds after being bit. He tracks the chaos across the globe to North Korea, Jerusalem, and eventually India to find patient zero in search of a cure. Along the way, he notices the select people being passed on by the infected and hypothesizes that he can inject himself with a deadly but curable disease to see how the “zombies” react to him before he thinks it suitable for others. His hypothesis is correct and he is not a suitable host because the infected