Narration in epidemic documentary-A critical analysis about the documentary “Pandemic”

Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak (2020)

Director: Doug Shultz

IMDB: 6.1/10

This is an online documentary released in January this year about how to prevent major diseases. There is six episodes totally, each episode with medical staff as the protagonist, to tell a story of the fight against disease, leading to the protagonist’s point of view, but also lead to the audience’s reflection.

Genre, audience

After news and movies have brought some emotional insight into the current grim situation, this Netflix documentary is more about defense, which means what we can do in a few months or years ago. The narrative angle is also told from the medical staff.

Unlike the news or other traditional documentaries about diseases and disasters, this film boldly puts forward many viewpoints, such as:

1. It’s only a matter of time before the next flu outbreak

2. The most important thing to pay attention to is China

3.Bats are the most dangerous

And there’s a good reason to explain these with real stories and characters.

In addition, the film about the training and exercise of medical personnel, the development of general vaccine technology, the national medical budget, and the continuous monitoring from the source of animals are worthy of our study and thinking.

Character, setting and movement

Through the different stories of six episodes, the documentary puts forward different questions:

• vaccination and personal freedom (Oregon)
• fund-raising for super vaccine research and development
• emergency management and exercises (New York)
• financial difficulties of primary health care units (Oklahoma)
• relationship between poverty and public health (Jaipur)
• illegal immigration and infectious disease control (Guatemala)
• the bad situation in the war area and the massive infection of medical staff (Congo)

There are a lot of real photos and videos taken from historical outbreaks. Compared with interviews, the video recording of the incident at that time is more intuitive and real.

I take the first story in this film as an example.

Dennis Carroll is the director of emerging threats department in USAID.

“It’s only a matter of time before the next killer virus comes along, and if we’re not prepared, it’s likely that hundreds of millions of people will be killed.”

-Dennis Carron

Dennis has a global footprint. His department is responsible for detecting, preventing and controlling the threat of new viruses. The key to control is to change from passive to active. Unlike seasonal influenza, new viruses are usually transmitted from wild animals to humans through livestock. Humans have no innate immunity to viruses never seen before, and our bodies are completely unable to resist infection. Therefore, the mortality rate of these viruses is usually quite high. If the virus can be intercepted in time, it may save millions of lives.

Dennis, in collaboration with the food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, has expanded the surveillance strategy upstream by observing clinical phenomena in animals around the world, because you never know what’s going to happen to animals and then jump to humans. Although it is impossible to predict where the next flu will originate, Dennis believes that China’s avian flu is the most dangerous from a historical point of view. The world’s first case of H7N9 avian influenza was first found in Shanghai and Anhui at the end of March 2013, with a mortality rate of 60%, which is definitely the highest mortality rate of influenza virus. In 2005, a new strain of avian influenza H5N1 spread from China to Vietnam, and then the virus spread wildly, from Southeast Asia to Europe, as far as Egypt.

The trip to China convinced Dennis that at some point in the future, a new type of virus will emerge and spread around the world like the 1918 influenza virus. This is a health problem involving more than 7 billion people. We must be alert and prepared.

In this story, the character is an expert who has an absolute say in the new virus. A lot of scenes of Dennis’s work are used to tell the background setting of the character, so that the audience can identify with and trust Dennis. At the same time, Dennis’s work experience in China during the epidemic, combined with the real historical images at that time, also made his judgment on China more acceptable.

What is the point

73 years ago.The writer Camus wrote in the <plague>

“Human beings can be in the gambling of plague and life

Everything you win

It’s knowledge and memory”

As a documentary, this film, like the traditional documentary, quotes many historical real scenes and interviews a large number of parties. In addition, the film also explains from the narrative point of view what kind of knowledge the parties have gained from their own experiences, and boldly put forward many ideas that can make us think.

There is a sentence in the film, “Pandemic is reincarnation, while human beings are forgetful.”