‘Containment’ is an over-the-top, blood-spattered TV drama that’s sure to find viewers. But is it for public health audiences?
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* Michele Late

*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers*

Are we all just days away from being quarantined by a deadly outbreak of highly pathogenic flu? A new TV series thinks so and brings that to life, complete with electrified fences, burning bodies and people being shot in the streets.

Combining blood-strewn hospital scenes and relationship drama with just enough public health and medical terms to make it “science-y,” “Containment” is an infectious disease outbreak made for a TV audience.

But will it hold the interest of public health viewers? *The Nation’s Health* watched the show’s debut April 19 and called in a public health expert to get his take. He says that if you’re willing to overlook some of the hokey drama — did those two people really just stand there and flirt in the hallway near blood-spattered bodies? Yep — and glaring public health mistakes, you may just find it worth a watch.

Based on “Cordon,” a Belgian series, “Containment” is airing on the CW, a network best known for frothy teen fare like “The Vampire Diaries” and “Reign.” So going in, public health viewers may be a bit wary.

The main plotline of “Containment” is promising enough: A patient visits an Atlanta hospital with what seems like a cold. Afterward, his doctor rapidly becomes ill and is put in isolation. People die and the hospital is put on lockdown. The virus is identified as a type of avian flu that has been “manipulated to give it higher pathogenicity and make it capable of human-to-human transmission,” as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor on the show puts it.

Adding to that, it turns out “patient zero” is from Syria and entered the U.S. without permission with a suspicious vial. Officials suspect bioterrorism and quarantine the area surrounding the hospital.

There are all sorts of distracting side plotlines, from a pregnant teen wrestling with adoption to a commitaphobe deciding whether to move in with her boyfriend. And of course there’s a school bus full of cute kids who just happened to be on a field trip to the hospital when the outbreak starts.

But there’s also a good amount of public health detail, some of it even factual. For that we can probably thank public health workers, as the show consulted with both CDC and the Georgia Department of Public Health. The show is set and filmed in Atlanta, adding a nice link to CDC, which is headquartered there.

One of the details that passes the public health sniff test is that avian flu — in this case, a modified strain of H7N2 — is the cause of the show’s outbreak. According to John Brownstein, PhD, our public health reviewer who watched the show, avian flu remains a real concern for pandemics. While H7N2 has infected very few humans in real life, public health officials are closely watching it and other avian strains. Also probable? The fact that the virus is brought into the country by a traveler.

“The pure idea of importation of a virus via someone coming from a place where there might have been an emerging disease…makes a lot of sense,” says Brownstein, an epidemiologist, Harvard Medical School professor and disease surveillance expert. “It’s something that we think about a lot in terms of just transportation and the risk of movement of pathogens.”

Also interesting, says Brownstein, is that the show’s outbreak begins in a hospital, a setting where diseases such as Middle East respiratory syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome have been known to spread to health workers. The emergency response coordination shown between local, state and federal workers was another high point, said Brownstein, who is a co-founder of HealthMap, an online surveillance tool that tracks infectious disease, and a developer of Flu Near You, a related tool that tracks flu.

Another nice touch on the show is that the lead federal health worker refuses to shake hands. During recent real-life outbreaks, global public health officials have eschewed handshakes, encouraging people to greet each other with elbow bumps instead. People on the show are reminded — over and over, in fact — to stay four to six feet away from one another.

But don’t forget those not-so-factual bits. For example, in a single day, scientists trace patient zero, identify the flu strain, declare it “100 percent fatal,” determine the virus is only transmissable via fluids, define the incubation period and institute a quarantine. That’s right: One. Single. Day.

“It all happened super, super fast,” Brownstein tells *The Nation’s Health*, noting that federal personnel were on the scene after just a single case of the disease. “I think it was a little bit optimistic.”

There are a few other public health weirdisms on the show: The main character leading the federal response is with “health and human services” — no title specified — and the only CDC worker seems to be a lone doctor. Like other shows, when the full name of CDC is spelled out, writers leave off the “and Prevention,” although it’s officially been part of the agency’s name since 1992. And while health officials cordon off an area around the hospital for 48 hours to control the outbreak, no mention is made of the airport through which patient zero entered the country.

And then there’s that dialogue.

“I’ve seen smallpox scares, SARS panic, West Nile. Most are news for a day, a week maybe, until the people find a Kardashian to distract them,” says one character. “I’ve never seen anything like this virus before.”

So given all the annoying public health missteps, is this a show for public health workers to watch? Taking its mix of disease and relationship drama into account, Brownstein dubbed the show “Contagion Meets Melrose Place,” noting that it wasn’t necessarily writing and acting at its finest.

That said, “if they’re willing to do a little bit of suspension of disbelief, it should be fine,” Brownstein said. “I’d probably watch again next week.”

*“Containment” airs Tuesday nights on the CW. Full episodes are also available online the day after at: [www.cwtv.com/shows/containment](http://www.cwtv.com/shows/containment).*

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association