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Locked down, everyone streamed Contagion
The search spike
Google Trends scored Contagion at around six on a scale of one to a hundred through 2019. By January 2020, as the first reports of the pandemic swept the world, it had surged to 84. In March 2020, when mass closures hit the United States and other countries, it reached 100, the very peak of search interest.
On the Warner Brothers catalog, the film jumped from somewhere around 270th place to the second most popular title overnight.
Why scary stories pull
Horror pulled in viewers the same way. In the first year or so of the pandemic, people sought out scary movies more, compared with other kinds of movies, than they ever had before.
Contagion follows a global pandemic, from how the virus spreads to how society responds. In February and March of 2020, scientists were still figuring out the real virus in public view, and a lot of mistakes were made along the way, a process most people are not used to watching. Contagion packaged the whole thing into a neatly told story of about 90 minutes.
How does Google Trends score search interest?
Each score is a term's search volume divided by total searches in that place and time, then scaled so the highest point in the chosen period equals 100. A score of 50 means half the peak. The scores show relative interest, not raw search counts. Because every score is measured against the peak, a six in 2019 means searches at about six percent of the March 2020 level.
How did Contagion get its science right?
Director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns consulted public health experts while making the 2011 film. Columbia University virologist W. Ian Lipkin served as a scientific adviser. The film's fictional virus, MEV-1, was modeled on the Nipah virus. The Nipah virus was first identified during an outbreak in Malaysia in 1998 and 1999.
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