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      How to Survive a Pandemic

      2022 1 hr. 49 min. Documentary List
      82% 17 Reviews Tomatometer 38% Fewer than 50 Ratings Audience Score HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC takes an inside look at the historic, multi-national race to research, develop, regulate, and roll out COVID-19 vaccines in the war against the coronavirus pandemic. The documentary began filming in early 2020 as the largest public health effort in history got underway and followed those efforts of over the next 18 months, exploring in real time the hard work and collaboration of health agencies worldwide, as well as the political and moral failures of governments to act impartially and equitably. Read More Read Less

      Audience Reviews

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      Chris A Glorifying a man who openly lied and put millions of lives in danger. Documentary should have focused on the factual and provable lies this man told. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 05/15/23 Full Review Valerii Ege D How to Survive a Pandemic is an explanatory documentary that follows the pandemic process from the beginning to the present day, establishing close contact with doctors and scientists during this process and telling what happened in the background. We can also say that it is the story of the discovery of the vaccine in 1 year. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/19/22 Full Review Audience Member As a frequent visitor to the trough of the documentary format, I knew instinctively as the pandemic was ringing alarm bells early in 2020, that this would be the landscape of the genre for the next few years, maybe decades. There is no end to the stream of documentaries dealing with this scourge but what has been interesting is that they have usually come in two flavors; the desperate and sometimes gut-wrenching portraits of how COVID-19 spread (72 Days, Coronation and The First Wave) and the finger-pointing at the Trump Administration's misguided and nonsensical approach to the problem (Totally Under Control, Fauci and In the Same Breath). David France's How to Survive a Pandemic resides somewhere in the middle. Yes, there is gut-wrenching footage of dying COVID patients and the film selects footage that makes Trump look like an ineffectual boob, but for them most part, it sticks to the information. The film is paced like a thriller as we hear information about the pandemic that spread like wildfire and how the scientific community was pushed to get a vaccine in production as quickly as possible. Naturally, in order to organize the information effectively, France tries to organize it chronologically. The film's first half deals with the speed with which the vaccine had to be created and the second half deals with controversy as the vaccine was rolled out – the public's distrust and the slow-pace with which it was distributed to poverty-stricken countries. So naturally, perhaps inevitably, How to Survive a Plague ends up being a lot of "Tell me something that I don't know." If you followed the progress of the pandemic on the news or read about it, little of this information is going to be the least bit surprising. What is new is the approach. Since the film is structured chronologically, the thriller element is provided by a frequent counter that tells us how many people had died from the disease at any given moment, which of course clues us in on the wildfire that these scientists were working against. But we are also given a perspective. France was previously the director of the similarly-themed (and much better) How to Survive a Plague about the early days of the AIDS crisis and how groups like ACT Up and TAG were forced to take matters into their own hands when the government turned its back on the problem. That film had the benefit of hindsight. How to Survive a Pandemic leaves you with the nervous feeling that this is only the beginning. And yet, there's a sense of imbalance here. Yes, the film is necessarily divided into those two parts but it is largely weighed on the race to get the vaccine made – the final running time of which was eleven months, a historic record. That's important, and the film credits Dr. Dan Barouch, the head scientist at Johnson & Johnson but it also short-shrifts the details of what delayed the vaccine and the film fails to cover Omicron variant which, if Mr. France wanted to tell the complete story, really needed to be included here. The movie ends by making heroes out of the people who rolled out the first vaccine and anyone watching it will immediately feel what is being left out. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review stephen k Thoroughly antiscientific and the product of corruption that hopefully won't be obscured with the passage of time. Anyone with the ability to think critically, look at the unbiased data and observe the financial interests of government officials and pharmaceutical companies involved will conclude that this is poorly produced propaganda at best, and misinformation at worst. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Critics Reviews

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      Randy Myers San Jose Mercury News The tight focus opens up to broader issues and questions that need to be addressed. Rated: 3.5/4 Mar 31, 2022 Full Review Brian Lowry CNN.com How to Survive a Pandemic is a poor title for a mostly fascinating documentary, whose flaws reflect its slightly fragmented nature. Mar 30, 2022 Full Review Devika Girish New York Times The message — that science cannot succeed without a politics of solidarity — is important, but the film ends on a note of uncertainty that feels defeatist rather than urgent. Mar 29, 2022 Full Review Andy Lea Daily Express (UK) Politics and science collide in an engaging documentary that explores the Covid pandemic from the point of the view of the US scientists tasked with developing a vaccine. Rated: 3/5 Jun 7, 2022 Full Review Peter Canavese Celluloid Dreams Tells the story of "Operation Warp Speed" in broad strokes, fostering the notion of the gratitude that we owe to the scientists, doctors, journalists and politicians while also criticizing the Covid-19 vaccine roll-outs and inequities. Rated: 3.5/4 Apr 10, 2022 Full Review Glenn Dunks The Film Experience ...despite having the weight of timeliness on its side, Pandemic lacks the propulsive immediacy of David France's earlier films 'How to Survive a Plague' and 'Welcome to Chechnya'. Apr 9, 2022 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC takes an inside look at the historic, multi-national race to research, develop, regulate, and roll out COVID-19 vaccines in the war against the coronavirus pandemic. The documentary began filming in early 2020 as the largest public health effort in history got underway and followed those efforts of over the next 18 months, exploring in real time the hard work and collaboration of health agencies worldwide, as well as the political and moral failures of governments to act impartially and equitably.
      Director
      David France
      Executive Producer
      Joy A. Tomchin, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Jim Swartz, Susan Swartz, Nina Fialkow, David Fialkow, Greg Boustead, Jessica Harrop, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
      Screenwriter
      David France, Tyler H. Walk
      Genre
      Documentary
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Mar 29, 2022