Since the origin of cinema, infectious disease outbreak films have been numerous and have displayed a wide range of pathologies, including, in addition to real or “any-resemblance-to-actual-is-pure-coincidence” viruses, vampires, zombies and aliens. A non-comprehensive overview of recent and historical instances will be presented, emphasizing the representations of problems in and solutions of epidemiological control, with particular Canadian examples. Speculations on a mathematical representation of the last-minute-heroic-world-saving intervention will be discussed.

Jaques Bélair is Full Professor in the department of mathematics and statistics at Université Montréal. His PhD is in applied mathematics from Cornell University and he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. He has served as associate director of the Centre de recharges mathématiques (CRM), vice-dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, President of the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS) (of which he is currently secretary), and co-chaired the Organizing Committee of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) in 2019. His research concerns mathematical modelling of dynamic regulatory processes in biology: in the past, cardiac arrhythmias and motor control, presently, blood cell production (hematopoiesis) and the propagation of infectious diseases in general, and current COVID-19 in particular.