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GREENSBORO — When Jennifer and Moira Tanner left a Friday afternoon matinee of the new disease thriller “Contagion,” each said they had just one thought.

“I really, really need to wash my hands,” Jennifer Tanner said.

Moviegoers might have that feeling this weekend with the release of the disaster flick that pits Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne against a deadly, quickly-spreading virus.

But Dr. Ward Robinson, medical director of the Guilford County Department of Public Health, said he’d like viewers to take more away from the movie than the desire to buy a trunk full of hand sanitizer.

“I’m not convinced all those human efforts from hand hygiene to human distancing make much difference,” Robinson said. “If anything makes a difference, it’s immunity. You have to get that flu shot.”

The Centers for Disease Control worked with director Steven Soderbergh to make the movie as realistic a depiction of a worldwide epidemic as possible. The CDC and health departments across the nation want the fictional epidemic to educate people about preventing the spread of real world illnesses — especially seasonal influenza.

Robinson said people don’t pay enough attention to how they can avoid the disease until there is a panic on the order of the H1N1 “swine flu” scare of two years ago.

“Movies like this do get us talking,” he said. “It gets the brain cells working and gives us the opportunity to talk about things that are real and people do need to take responsibility for.”

According to Robinson, worrying about the outbreak of a mysterious super-bug is a losing game. The best thing worriers can do is to get immunized for the diseases we know are threats. Robinson said people resist vaccination for a number of reasons — none of them good.

“Some people just think they’re too healthy, they don’t have to be immunized,” he said.

Robinson said in studies of communities where younger, more healthy people were immunized, more vulnerable populations — especially the elderly — survived in greater numbers.

The reason? Grandparents weren’t passed illnesses by children and grandchildren whose stronger immune systems hold up well to something like influenza but then pass it to those who don’t hold up as well.

“We shouldn’t be thinking about the vaccines as a protection for ourselves,” he said. “We should be thinking of this as a selfless act to help our families, our loved ones and our communities.”

He said a misunderstanding of the science behind immunization also keeps some people away. It’s not possible to get the flu from a vaccine, he said — but some people get a low-grade fever or the sniffles as their body is tricked into thinking it is protecting itself from the flu.

That will pass quickly, Robinson said, and it’s a feeling that’s much better and safer than the flu.

“There are times when it’s too late to get the vaccine,” he said. “But it’s never too early.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com