Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak

Too much focus on irrelevant things and personal lives. A bit of context is ok but so many boring details without purpose have ruined this series. Better editing would have done wonders to keep it interesting and engaging.

Why the focus on the flu? Because in the modern age this is the most dangerous pathogen capable of rapidly spreading across the globe in a matter of weeks, possibly infecting and killing millions. And because it constantly mutates, there is no universal vaccine to stop it. These facts alone should concern anyone.

What's educational about this series is that I did not know the how much of it is zoonotic - e.g. capable of spreading from animal to animal including humans. The current 2019-nCoV that started at a wild meat market in Wuhan is only an example of what's possible with the flu. And that should scare everyone.

This has little to do with science or the flu. It's just a bunch of mini stories about people who work in the industry. This is cringe level stuff: the 45 year old guy who wears leather jackets and rides a skateboard. The young female scientist with a nose ring who seemingly knows nothing. The Indian woman who says she is working on 30 projects at once but pretends to feed her children each meal and read them bedtime stories after playing building games with them. If these are the people on the front lines, we're in deep trouble.

I am stunned by the so many bad reviewers and the rating it received (at the time of writing it had a rating of 5.9*).

I do not know what these people were expecting but this docuserie tells the story of people working on the front line to prevent any pandemic and keep our world safe.

Why you basher cannot even appreciate or value this docuserie on face value? Quiting after a few episodes and than rating it low telling everybody it is bad eventhough you bashers havent seen it all.

Please, give it a shot as it gives you a good inside view of the working life of all those people working to keep our world safe of a pandemic.

I'm usually pretty generous with my ratings (not to the extreme, but I'll lean one star to the right when in doubt), but this just seemed way off to me. And, yes I watched the whole season. There was virtually very little to zero science. It was mostly a reality show following healthcare providers and researchers. The healthcare providers were just very generic (a doc in a rural community, one in a sort of refugee detainment center, etc.). Some of this was loosely tied to how hard it is to get flu vaccines in and funding in rural communities, but very loosely. If anything it started to feel more politically tied than flu/outbreak/pandemic related.

The real issue is after watching that entire season, I don't feel like I know that much more about the flu itself. What's being done to create vaccines? Other than one makeshift crew in San Fransisco we know nothing. How exactly does it mutate? Wasn't discussed that I heard. What makes one emergent strain more likely to spread than another? What do the "H" and the "N" along with the corresponding number mean when a virus is labeled? I really don't know.

Maybe if a reality show following people who work around the flu or work in prevention is what you're expecting you won't be disappointed. But I really was expecting more of a scientific documentary. And, to be honest, I wouldn't have minded the following of their stories if I'd felt I learned more about the flu and how to prevent an outbreak.