Notes for season 5 episode 8, “Reassortment“
13:30 A lockdown caused by a traveller from Hong Kong infected with a new influenza-like virus? In 2015 (the episode is set in Oct 2015, but aired in May 2016).
19:53 “Be sure to wash your hands often.” Are they doing a pandemic speed-run? How long before they’re wearing masks?
20:39 Uh, so the plot involves a vaccine causing deaths by creating a super-virus? Not sure this is something that would play the same if written in 2023.
23:00 Masks on.
25:36 Root is looking at a screen that looks like the output of asking ChatGPT for “Twenty implausible names for package shipping companies”
26:44 Samaritan has been using access to the healthcare database to manipulate it for its own ends. In other news, spy tech company Palantir won the contract to operate the NHS health database in November 2023.
33:00 It turns out the hospital administrator helped the outbreak in an apparent attempt to… increase the amount of automation in the healthcare system? “[400,000 people] die in the US every year from medical deaths caused by humans.” This is apparently one of those shocking claims that often get repeated, but don’t really stand up to any examination.
34:28 Root prints out a CDC ID card using an Evolis Badgy100.
41:45 Ah, so the outbreak was just a pretence to get everyone to get vaccinated, which was in turn just a means to get everyone on a DNA database? And that DNA database would be used by an AI for some unspecified sinister purpose? In other news, the database of DNA testing company 23andme was recently hacked.