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 analysing examples from a large corpus of films about epidemics across the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, this article investigates 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 unrecognised 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 behaviour – makes these ‘elite’ figures appear more ordinary, bridging the gap between the two.

在 COVID-19 期间，“英雄主义”行为——尤其是“来自底层”的普通人的行为——被置于前台，引发了公共卫生领域复杂的伦理问题。通过分析 20 世纪和 21 世纪有关流行病的大量电影中的例子，本文调查了电影如何代表公共卫生工作者。我们发现，与流行病相关的电影中的公共卫生工作者往往是精英或具有专业知识的权威人物，通常是男性——他们的个人负担和牺牲不被他人认可，甚至直接受到“自下而上”的挑战。然而，尽管公共卫生工作者作为“普通英雄”很少出现，但流行病学家、医生和细菌学家的“人性”一面——通过个人救赎和回归更卑微的根源，