A wake up call that came late!

Modern man calls himself ‘Homo sapiens’, which translates to ‘wise man’. Despite this wisdom, we often realise that we are as helpless as our animal brethren in case of a flu outbreak or a global natural calamity. Despite having highly sophisticated technology and advanced science, we fail every time there is a global pandemic eating up lives one by one, testified to by the current situation.

The documentary, ‘Pandemic: how to prevent the outbreak’ is a less dramatic, less philosophical, but a cognisant take on the situation that is so common yet so unfamiliar to health professionals and victims alike.

The documentary moves forward through the lives of health care officials, researchers, doctors, entrepreneurs, lab technicians and politicians who work at different paces, different time zones and in different aspects of pandemic control.

Collectively, they urge you to pay more attention to the statistics, numbers and tell you how future governments should focus on designing systems that can successfully tackle pandemics over the world.

From the Democratic Republic of Congo, to an underfunded county hospital in Oklahoma and a multispeciality hospital in Rajasthan, the narration does not discriminate between countries that have a better healthcare system and those that are less fortunate.

It explains that they are all highly and equally incapable of handling situations of a pandemic outbreak. The documentary undramatically shows you the lives of doctors who work 72 hour shifts during the flu season in the US, people who have left their fruitful careers to find solutions for virus outbreaks and health care professionals and microbiologists risking their lives by exposing themselves to novel viruses just so they can study them to find vaccines.

All these people wish that the people in power positions knew that they are receiving nominal funds for their research, while money is being pumped in to other businesses and corporations that make huge profit returns. People in power fail to realise that the world will only be more suitable for businesses and profits if viruses didn’t cause shutdowns and economic slowdowns.

One thing that this documentary discusses in detail is the anti-vaccine campaigns that are gaining popularity and their dangerously notorious support among people, which makes it difficult to pass strict vaccine laws.

“If I don’t want to immunise my child, I am putting my child’s life at risk. I could make an argument that as a parent I have that choice, but do I have the choice of putting your child at risk?” asks Oregon’s senator Elizabeth Hayward.

Fake news is another major adversary to the healthcare system in fighting a pandemics. Dr. Anupriya Aggarwal, a second year medical resident in Rajasthan, says “People go for quacks over scientific medicine as they offer quick solutions and since daily wagers can’t miss a day of work”.

The documentary weirdly takes a religious turn during its fifth episode that’s titled ‘Prayers May Work’, but that gives a better result than you would expect.

One of the defining moments of the show would be when Dr. Michael Yao of WHO in Congo says: “We can count on science, we can count on medicines but we cannot count on human behaviour”. That forms the message of the documentary to me. Humans never understand the idea of avoiding pandemics before they happen; it would be a humongous task to educate the whole world on hygiene and avoidance of diseases. Humans, being social animals, will always pass around viruses one way or the other. Hence the most important thing to do would be to focus on prevention.

Be that as it may, I cannot but be baffled at the timing of the release of this documentary. Did they intend to release it for people to watch during the lockdown? The makers of ‘Pandemic: how to prevent an outbreak’ seem to release that they are late because the second episode is titled ‘Pandemic is Now’.

I’d recommend this show to anyone who stands a chance of contracting the Covid-19 virus, which is literally everyone. Whether the show engages you is a different question: I doubt it; it is too dry and struggles to hold the viewer’s attention throughout. Some dramatisation, philosophical musing and the ability to instil a sense of urgency in the viewer could have helped.

(The writer is a filmmaker and critic)