ur_gothmom

Sometimes, I make decisions which are... questionable... and this week I decided to start rewatching Re:Genesis, in the third year of an ongoing worldwide pandemic, and a current syndemic of both influenza and covid. (At least where I am; in many places there's a tripledemic with RSV on top of the other two.)

If you're not familiar, Re:Genesis is a Canadian medical/science drama from the 2000s (so, after the og SARS) centring around a fictional research lab in Toronto called NORBAC: a cooperative effort between Canada, the US, and Mexico, staffed by various sexy doctors and scientists under the direction of a sexy administrator (from an intelligence, rather than medical, background). The main character is a brilliant, fundamentally anti-authority microbiologist named David Sandstrom who, and I can't say this strongly enough, fucks. (Fun fact, teen Elliot Page shows up as Dr. Sandstrom's kid who occasionally visits from Salt Spring Island despite his strong Nova Scotia accent.)

In the first episode, the scientists of NORBAC learn about a mysterious new virus that's killing people, and although the first cases are in relatively rural towns north of Toronto, the pattern of cases is moving south following a highway, headed straight for Canada's most populous city. They scramble to both identify the pathogen and try to trace it back to the patient zero. Finally, they identify a Greyhound bus with at least one confirmed case on board and isolate all the passengers to determine how many are infected, shortly before it arrives in Toronto (spoiler: the unwitting carrier is on board).

Two little details in the first couple episodes stood out as incredibly prescient to me. Firstly, one of the early cases was a high school student, and without knowing exactly where and how he contracted the virus and whether other kids might have caught it too, they attempt to shut down the school until they know more. And despite one of their students being very dead and the real possibility that others could follow, the town does not want to do that. We see the very frustrated director of NORBAC, who presumably has the authority to, if not order around, at least put significant pressure on local health departments, on the phone, grumbling, "How hard is it to close one goddamned school?" Very fucking hard, as we know here in 2022! Considering how the government is refusing to even bring back a mask mandate, let alone close schools, as cases rise again, it's honestly miraculous they ever closed them in 2020 in the first place.

The second made me ugly laugh. Remember, this was released in 2004. In the second episode, after the bus has been quarantined but before they have definitively identified the carrier, David Sandstrom sits in on a press conference where a public health authority is releasing a statement on the new virus. Thus far, all the medical personnel we've seen have worn either N95 masks or half-face respirators when dealing with the patients; the team at the quarantine site for the bus passengers are wearing full-body PPE and respirators, and our main characters are interviewing them through glass over intercom. This is a virulent virus that spreads through aerosols (and, in 2022, now that we know how misguided science has been on the subject for the last 150 or so years, we can speculate that it's probably airborne). David, our hero, walks out, derisive and disgusted, after the public health suit tells reporters that people don't need to wear masks; they will be fine as long as they just wash their hands.

Re:Genesis hits different nearly 20 years and a global pandemic later. The scariest part now isn't the diseases or even the terrorism; it's the knowledge that in the end the public health flacks peddling hygiene theatre and a return to normal will win over the flawed but dedicated scientists and medical professionals trying to actually fix the problems.