Other mistake: When the child takes Don and his colleague to see a pile of Ebola fever victims, the camera lingers on the "corpse" of a man who is breathing.
And the Band Played On (1993)
1 other mistake
Directed by: Roger Spottiswoode
Starring: Matthew Modine, Alan Alda, Nathalie Baye, Patrick Bauchau
Genres: Drama
Factual error: At the end of the movie they say that Bill Kraus died on January 26th, 1986 but he actually died on January 11th, 1986.
The Choreographer: The party's over.
Question: Don gets a call from the French verifying that the blind samples Don sent confirming their virus and the AIDS virus were the same. Don goes around the CDC office and tells everybody that the French also had the AIDS virus. This causes everybody to cheer. Why would the French having the virus make everybody cheer?
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Chosen answer: It represents a breakthrough in the case - a lead to the original source of the virus, as many of the patients being treated in France were either African or had spent time there. Up until that point, the origin of the virus was a mystery - with the knowledge that the French were treating the same virus, it gave them vital information in backtracking where the virus originated. It also proved that AIDS was a worldwide phenomenon of epidemic proportions, something that a number of agencies had been reluctant to accept up to that point.
Tailkinker ★
This is not an accurate answer. When they say the French had the virus, they don't mean patients with the virus. They mean the French successfully found the virus in blood, which is a necessary step in determining that aids is caused by an infectious agent and the first step in coming up with medication. The French had patients with the virus since about the same time as the us.