YSM Issue 93.4 Full Magazine

ANDEMIC: HOW TO
REVENT AN OUTBREAK
Though released in January 2020, several months before
the escalation of our current pandemic, Pandemic: How
to Prevent an Outbreak, a compelling Netflix docu-series,
touches upon terrifying scenes of our reality right now. Pandemic
provides an in-depth analysis of the deadly threat of viruses such
as influenza and Ebola. Its timing was so eerily prescient that in
online forums, viewers have proposed conspiracy theories about
how the producers managed to predict the COVID-19 outbreak.
Ironically, throughout the documentary, scientists, physicians, and
government threat units try to convince the audience that a deadly
virus will soon emerge—the producers did not need to guess
anything, as it was rather scientifically obvious.
The show revolves around different stories of virus-fighting
physicians and scientists from across the world. Bioengineers Jacob
Glanville and Sarah Ives strive towards a universal flu vaccine,
which they hope will immunize everyone against any strain of
the virus. Infectious disease epidemiologist Syra Madad directs
the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health +
Hospitals, tirelessly attempting to prepare New York City for the
next infectious outbreak. Dinesh Vijay fights against deadly H1N1
virus in India, while Holly Goracke tries to protect the citizens of
Jefferson County, Colorado. Images throughout the series—the
urgency of the flu season, violence against doctors combating
Ebola in Congo, and the overabundance of patients in India—
drastically impact the audience, devastating us with the sacrifices
of the frontline workers.
BY DILGE BUKSUR
This devastation soon transforms into disappointment over
our country’s ignorance of the show’s warnings. Pandemic clearly
outlined many of the reasons why our world would struggle in
the face of a new form of respiratory virus. It explained the
difficulties of containing the spread of viruses that originate from
bats, the hypothesized source of SARS-CoV-2. The vivid footage
and extensive interviews listed lack of medical replenishments,
rejection of scientific authority, insufficient healthcare workers
in small areas, lack of access to extensive hospitals, and poverty
as potential destroyers of our healthcare systems. Yet, just a
few months later when faced with the COVID-19 pandemic,
government figures chose to ignore these warnings.
This fall, we have struggled with the record highs of coronavirus
cases in the United States. Even though screens and papers tend
to discuss only numbers, these digits represent real people. An
average viewer will not have actually stepped foot inside our
virus-swamped hospitals, but this show will transport them
right to the epicenter, revealing what it is like to deal with a virus
as either a patient or a frontline worker. Numbers and statistics
represent people who are unable to breathe, shiver with fever,
and suffer isolated in hospital rooms.
Just weeks before COVID-19 spread across the whole world, a sixepisode
Netflix show predicted its onset and divulged what we needed
to change. However, we sat back and watched our forthcoming
reality like a sci-fi movie. People are dying for something we should
have been prepared for. There is nobody or nothing else to blame. ■
(2020, January 22). Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak
[Docu-series]. Netflix.
IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Mask wearing
has become the
new normal with
the COVID-19
pandemic.
SCIENCE IN TH
38 Yale Scientific Magazine December 2020 www.yalescientific.org