Daniel R. Curtis has recently published a new co-authored article with Qijun Han

During COVID-19, acts of ‘heroism’ – particularly by ordinary people ‘from below’ – have been foregrounded, prompting complicated ethical issues in the public health context. By analyzing examples from a large corpus of films about epidemics across the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, we investigate how cinema has represented public health workers. We find that the public health worker in epidemic-related films tends to be elite or an authority figure with expertise, often male – whose personal burden and sacrifice goes unrecognized by others, or even directly challenged ‘from below’. However, although the public health worker as ‘ordinary hero’ rarely features, the ‘human’ side of epidemiologists, physicians and bacteriologists – through either personal redemption and a return to more humble roots, or recognition of personal error, questioning of official regulations and authorities, and eccentric and unorthodox behavior – makes these ‘elite’ figures appear more ordinary, bridging the gap between the two. The article can be accessed freely at Taylor & Francis Online.

Or have a look at Daniel R. Curtis's NWO VIDI project.