Netflix's Pandemic: How to prevent an outbreak is on the Top 10 list of Netflix India. No marks for guessing why. As the novel coronavirus pandemic is seeing rapid jumps in the number of cases reported in India, this six-part documentary series throws light on the nature of influenza viruses, how they originate and why it's so difficult to fight them.
To a layperson, the biggest surprise that the documentary throws up is that scientists have been predicting a global pandemic for years now. We just haven't been listening.
The series starts with a mass grave in Pennsylvania where several people who succumbed to the 1918 influenza pandemic were buried. This flu, also known as the Spanish Flu, was so deadly that it claimed more lives than the number of people who died in the two World Wars put together. The gripping story is told through scientists, doctors, researchers and health workers across the globe who are dealing with the challenges of rapidly mutating influenza viruses.
But it's not just the disease that they have to fight - it is people's belief systems, political turmoil and quite simply, human circumstances. In Congo, health workers face the threat of being shot due to the civil war; in India, the dense population makes it easy for the virus to spread; doctors in the US have to deal with anti-vaccination campaigners who believe the government has no business making vaccination compulsory, even as some Gautemalan refugees in American detention centers have to be turned away from getting their shots because there isn't enough stock; Vietnam, which shares borders with China, often the epicenter of influenza viruses, must develop strategies to protect its population without upsetting its powerful neighbour.
There's also the problem of money. Researchers need funding to develop life-saving vaccines but if they take the support of big pharma companies, it may mean the vaccines will not reach the people who really need it - the poor and the underprivileged across the globe. The series intersperses personal narratives with history and contemporary scientific research, underlining the fact that the heroes in the frontline of the war against viruses are ordinary people who've chosen to put themselves out there.
While influenza viruses have a long history, their spread now has become easier, thanks to how common international travel has become. The 1918 pandemic happened because soldiers who fought the World War went back to their home countries after it was over, spreading the virus as they travelled. But our current lifestyles mean that we're even more susceptible to pandemics. What's reassuring though is that the warriors we meet in the documentary are trying to find ways to make the world safer - from testing migratory birds and bats periodically to detect a new strain of virus, to ramping up efforts to make a universal vaccine against all influenza viruses.
Pandemic, which released on Netflix in January 2020, seems prophetic when we watch it now, a few months into the coronavirus pandemic that has brought entire countries to their knees. The series was filmed in 2019, almost as if the makers knew what was coming. Conspiracy theorists could make something of that but the truth is, there's been enough research to tell the world that we were going to face this one day or the other. We've had enough periodic warnings that we've called by different names - Swine Flu, Ebola, SARS, MERS - but it's taken the coronavirus to really get our attention.
If you want to know where viruses come from and how they infect human beings, why we have an effective vaccine against the lethal smallpox but not influenza viruses, and what's in store for the future, Pandemic is just what the doctor ordered. Stay at home and watch it. It's the best you can do in the given circumstances.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.