On the Beach

On the Beach (1959) is a memorable film. A movie that's better for the parts than the whole. A heavy-handed unilateral disarmament film by the terminally sappy-headed Stanley Kramer. But if you can bracket the polyannaish propaganda, it's a useful political allegory. 

In the film, the human race in the northern hemisphere was instantly annihilated by a thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the USA. Humans in the southern hemisphere temporally survived, but they know they are doomed by the delayed reaction of fallout as it drifts down to the southern hemisphere, so that human life on earth will become extinct. 

The question raised by the coronavirus is whether it will plunge the globe into a worldwide Venezuela. The irony is that this a catastrophe, not caused directly or primarily by the pathogen, but by bureaucratic countermeasures to contain the pathogen. By heads-of-state, governors, mayors, and public health officials, supported by citizens who are either sheepishly subservient or blindly regard cooperation as their patriotic duty. How dire it gets remains to be seen. But there's certainly reason for foreboding.