Pandemic, Netflix series about doctors, scientists fighting viral disease outbreaks, carries a dire warning
- Another flu pandemic is inevitable, documentary series says, and points to China as the place to watch for the emergence of deadly new influenza viruses
- Series moves from Spanish flu that killed 100 million people in 1918 to current battle to contain Ebola virus in Congo to anti-vaxxer parents
When the Netflix docuseries Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak began streaming last week, it landed just in time for the peak flu season. It also coincidentally aired as a deadly new coronavirus first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan put health authorities worldwide on alert.
Wuhan and several other Chinese cities are in lockdown over the Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese usually travel for family reunions and breaks.
The docuseries carries a dire warning: “When we talk about another flu pandemic happening, it’s not a matter of if, but when.”
More than two dozen people are so far known to have died from the Wuhan coronavirus and hundreds have been infected. Almost all China’s provinces have reported cases of infection. About 20 cases have also been reported beyond mainland China’s borders, in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and countries including South Korea, Thailand, Japan and the United States.
Pandemic begins with a search in a suspected mass grave site in Butler County in the US state of Pennsylvania that dates from 1918. Soldiers spread the Spanish flu virus when they returned home from World War I and the pandemic wiped out up to 100 million people worldwide, far more than the eight million killed in the war.