As "How To Survive a Pandemic" (2022 release; 106 min.) opens, we are in "Washington, DC, December 11, 2020" and Peter Marks, head of the FDA's vaccine unit, is prepping a press release announcing the first vaccine emergency approval. We then go to "Part I, Eleven Months Earlier" as COVID-19 starts breaking out, despite urgent pleas from the World Health Organization that it's not yet too late to change the course of this, but nobody listens or cares. When a few months later the pandemic hits full tilt, the Trump administration announces "Operation Warp Speed" to develop a vaccine in partnership with private bio-tech giants. At this point we are 10 min. Into the film.
Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from writer-director David France ("Welcome to Chechnya"). Here he brings a behind the scenes look at how the world's top scientists raced to develop a vaccine. Our guide, so to speak, is Jon Cohen, a reporter at Science Magazine, who is determined to document this for posterity's sake. He is granted amazing access, in real time, to the various key players including at the FDA, Moderna, Pfizer, AstroZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, the WHO, etc. And yes, the political aspects of it all are also addressed. When Covax is launched to promote an equitable distribution of the vaccine around the world, most countries join, but not the US. Watch then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explain, with a straight face and no hint of sarcasm, that the US declines to join Covax because "the WHO is too political". Absolutely astonishing. (Trump then announces that the US is withdrawing from the WHO altogether, which the Biden administration immediately reversed.) But to get a real sense of what hurdles are met in overcoming the pandemic, watch "Part II", where a black minister in Pittsburgh literally goes from door to door to encourage a predominantly black neighborhood to get vaccinated. Yes, the vaccination hesitancy (if not refusal) is an enormous challenge, one that we deal with to this very day (the overall vaccination rate in the US is astonishingly low, particularly among the MAGA crowd and minorities of color). The overall low rating of this documentary here on IMDb is almost certainly more a political statement than it is a substantive review of the documentary (if they have seen it at all). In reality, this documentary is well done, with footage in real time of how "Operation Warp Speed" pulled through in record time, and as time goes by, history will confirm this as the Trump's administration biggest accomplishment.
"How To Survive a Pandemic" recently premiered on HBO and is now available on HBO On Demand and HBO Max, where I caught it. If you have any interest in understanding how the vaccines for COVID-19 came about in record time, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.
