Stream It Or Skip It: ‘How to Survive a Pandemic’ on HBO Max, About The Race For A Vaccine And The Issues That Arose Out Of A Solution

Writer and filmmaker David France’s Oscar-nominated 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague took a heartfelt, hard-hitting look at the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and with How to Survive a Pandemic (HBO Max), he’s created a sequel of sorts for our latest global health crisis. Survive covers the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, its unprecedented speed and scope, and the complicated issues of rollout at both the national and international level. It’s a story of science, politics, and of disproportion.  

HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “It’s a crisis that needs a science solution,” “We’ve never created a new vaccine in less than five years,” “human species,” “reinfection,” “global threat”: It’s May 2020, there are already 250,000 deaths worldwide, and one knows what the near future will bring. How to Survive a Pandemic alternates between footage of an impatient President Trump hectoring private sector vaccine developers (“Ready to use when, would you say?”) and Science writer Jon Cohen expressing fear that “science will be steamrolled” under the administration’s search for an easy COVID solution and an election year political victory. Cohen believes in Dr. Peter Marks, though, who’s in charge of vaccine regulations at the FDA. “He’s not gonna let politics trample science.” And once China releases the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, vaccine research worldwide kicks into high gear.

Survive threads through various stories of the pandemic and search for a vaccine, and director David France’s arrangement for cameras and crews to track everything early on has given him a wealth of footage to access. Cohen interviews Marks, and virology expert and frequent CNN guest Dr. Paul Offit. There are interviews with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a co-developer of the Moderna vaccine, and Dr. Dan Barouch, co-developer of the Johnson & Johnson shot. But there are also dispatches from the pandemic front lines. In Brazil, ambulance driver, rescue technician, and vaccine trial participant Thiago DeMello watches President Jair Bolsonaro call his people sissies for wanting a shot. And in Pittsburgh, the Reverend Paul Abernathy advocates for safety and survival in his low-income community of color, a place he fears will be lost in a shuffle of misinformation, health system mistrust, and vaccine availability. A churlish President Trump pulls the US out of the WHO, Dr. Fauci fields death threats from MAGA vax deniers, and gloom descends on a lockdown world.

When the promise of vaccine trials reaching 95% efficacy brings everyone back from the brink, that’s exactly when How to Survive a Pandemic shifts into its second sobering section. The vaccines have arrived, and the world is rejoicing. But logistical challenges hamper the US rollout. States are left to manage without federal guidance or financial resources. Trump’s people are stonewalling President-elect Biden’s transition team. His own voters are still hating on Fauci. And vaccine refusal is on the rise domestically and internationally. By April 2021, over three million people are dead. But virus mutations are mounting, and hot zones are still thriving. The WHO decries a “deficit of solidarity and sharing,” even as countries and corporations pledge vaccine equity. And infighting and inequality rage on a global scale as many of the mistakes made during the AIDS epidemic sadly repeat themselves.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Alex Gibney’s Totally Under Control, available on Hulu, is certainly one of the more powerful COVID documentaries, especially from a perspective of political malfeasance on the part of the Trump administration. Over on Netflix, Convergence: Courage in a Crisis offers interviews with some of the same players as Survive, and the limited series Pandemic features the subtitle How to Prevent an Outbreak.

Performance Worth Watching: Writer and Science senior correspondent Jon Cohen functions as the rudder of How to Survive a Pandemic, steering the doc’s narrative as he writes in real time about vax research and rollout. The irascible journalist-singer-surfer-writer travels from his home in California to conduct in-person interviews of the most major players – Dr. Peter Marks in Washington, DC, Dr. Anthony Fauci in New Jersey, and World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva, Switzerland – and his curious mind, perceptive eye, and slightly disheveled demeanor puts a personal face on the doc’s global reach.

Memorable Dialogue: Fauci takes a pull off his Lagunitas IPA and tells Jon Cohen about where he stands with the Trump White House. “I’m walking a fine line, being the only one in that task force to tell the president or the vice president what they don’t want to hear. I’m not trying to undermine the president,” he says. Outside, it’s September 2020, and case numbers and death counts continue to climb. “But there’s something called reality. And I will not hesitate.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: How to Survive a Pandemic begins with a note of positivity, which has been rare in the micro-industry of COVID documentaries. It’s December 11, 2020, and Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator and a member of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, has just pressed SEND on the email announcing his agency’s authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine. It’s a huge moment, and the army general in command of Operation Warp Speed tells him that vaccine supplies will be moving immediately. But it’s also huge because it means millions will be able to move out of their improvised home offices, and Survive director David France surveys Marks’s “temporary headquarters,” a cramped basement warren where his laptop is propped up on cans of oatmeal and a giant teddy bear sits in as an administrative assistant. It’s a great observation of how surroundings as unlikely as this became vital nerve centers where the work got done. There are lots of little moments of levity like this in Survive – like Jon Cohen belting out a rueful barrelhouse blues number on his piano, or the braintrust at Pfizer leaping for joy and hugging awkwardly around a conference table when the company’s human trials are a success – and they help make its benchmark death toll graphics and the sorry state of pandemic management in low-income countries an easier pill to swallow. Because ultimately, the answer How to Survive a Pandemic offers to the inherent question of its title is a tough one: it helps to live in a rich Western country, where vaccine equity is a reality, and the chronically disproportionate response to the inevitability of global pandemics might effect you less.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It’s tough to revisit the imagery of the pandemic. But Survive offers a succinct look at how boldly science was able to pull us out of a mortal tailspin, and the joy that can bloom inside of despair.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges