[conspire] Let's look at fluview

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> He builds up to a routine that says the panet will get rid of us with a
> virus.

OK, thanks.  I'll probably watch it, then.  I hope you're familiar with
Terry Gilliam's shaggy-dog (er, shaggy-monkey) 1995 science fiction movie
'12 Monkeys'?

   [...]
   The movie uses its future world as a home base and launching pad for
   the central story, which is set in 1990 and 1996, and is about a time
   traveler trying to save the world from a deadly plague.

   The traveler is Cole (Bruce Willis), who in the opening shots lives
   with a handful of other human survivors in an underground shelter put
   together out of scrap parts and a lot of wire mesh.  The surface of the
   planet has been reclaimed by animals, after the death of 5 billion
   people during a plague in 1996.

   Cole is plucked from his cage and sent on a surface expedition by the
   rulers of this domain, who hope to learn enough about the plague virus
   to defeat it.  Later, he is picked for a more crucial mission:  He will
   travel back in time and gather information about the virus before it
   mutated.  (The movie holds out no hope that he can "stop" it before it
   starts; from his point of view, the plague has already happened, and so
   the future society is seeking treatment, not prevention.)
   [...]

https://web.archive.org/web/20090215021903/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19960105%2FREVIEWS%2F601050301%2F1023

   Jeffrey Goines [Brad Pitt]:  You know what crazy is?  Crazy is 
   majority rules.  Take germs, for example.

   James Cole [Bruce Willis]:  Germs?

   Jeffrey Goines:  Uh-huh.  Eighteenth century: no such thing, nada,
   nothing.  No one ever imagined such a thing.  No sane person.  Along comes
   this doctor, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis.  Semmelweis comes along.  He's
   trying to convince people, other doctors mainly, that's there's these
   teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and
   make you sick.  He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is
   this guy?  Crazy?  Teeny, tiny, invisible?  What do they call it?  Uh-uh,
   germs?  Huh?  What?  Now, up to the 20th century — last week, as a matter
   of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole — I go in to order a
   burger at this fast-food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor.
   James, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all
   OK.  "What about the germs?" I say.  He says "I don't believe in germs.
   Germs is a plot made up so they could sell disinfectants and soaps."  Now
   he's crazy, right?  See?  Ah!  Ah!  There's no right, there's no wrong,
   there's only popular opinion.  You... you... you believe in germs, right?

Post-modern wisdom from two characters in a fictional insane asylum.
(The bit about Dr. Ignatz Semmelweis is true.  He died, in the end, in
an insane asylum, in disgrace.)

Kurt Vonnegut considered Semmelweiss a once-in-a-lifetime hero.
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Misc/Semmelweis.html