American Pathogen is a 30-minute documentary film that details how America became the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. It tells the story, from the dismantling of our preparedness system starting in 2016 to the “missing months” of inaction in early 2020. Milwaukeean Emma Roller worked on the documentary as an assistant editor, providing valuable research. I recently spoke with the film’s writers Sarah Sherman and Seamus McKiernan.
American Pathogen’s sub-title is “194,443 Americans are dead. It didn't have to be this way.” That number continues to grow. What was the germ of an idea that caused you to decide to make the documentary?
S.M.: There was a firehose of news and chaos happening from about February onward. It was very hard to follow the daily news even if you were trying to stay on top of it. The germ of the idea became “how do we tell the truth about a moment that we are living in real time, that is going to go down in history that matters to a lot of Americans—in a way that is digestible but also tackles the details and research needed for this.”
There was confusion, uncertainty, even anger about COVID-19 and the White House’s response. We wanted to harness that to ward against the fatigue that can happen with a number like 200,000 deaths as a statistic.
S.S.: We are all makers; writers, editors, directors. As the pandemic was getting more and more severe, and our future more and more uncertain, we came together to see how we could use our storytelling skillsets to encapsulate this moment in time to help people see, hear and remember what happened, as we are going into an election. What happened and why it got this bad.
American Pathogen could be as simple as a series of bullet points or a timeline. Except it is made all the more human by commentary from experts in the scientific community and former government officials. Why do you think the current sitting president failed to act on the advice of experts?
S.M.: A lot of people tie themselves in knots trying to get into the motivation of Donald Trump. You also need to judge him based on his past actions and what we see on a daily basis. We wanted to make sure the voices of scientific experts and people who worked for years in the government were driving this along with a heavily researched historical timeline. We always tried to remind ourselves it was important to repeat what we knew to be true and to use those scientific voices as the vehicle.
S.S.: What we’ve seen is Trump places a premium on loyalty. Unfortunately, science and expertise don’t adhere to loyalty. This is about a greater truth: experience and institutional knowledge. When we ask ourselves why—that is an explanation that comes up for me. That there was a lack of loyalty.
President Bush and President Obama had plans to deal with pandemics. The Obama administration successfully dealt with MERS with only two patients testing positive in the United States.
Recently Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said a mask is “more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%.” Of the possibility of a vaccine he said, “I think we're probably looking at third, late second quarter, third quarter 2021."
The current sitting president claimed Dr. Robert Redfield was “confused” when he said that and “I think he made a mistake when he said that. It’s just incorrect information.”
What do you make of this?
S.M.: I don’t think that we go far enough and make clear enough that Trump doesn’t listen to advisors and disdains expert advice but that he has consistently done that since January and has sidelined and silenced the CDC’s most basic report about mask-wearing and spread. That is the difference between negligence and willful negligence. Trump’s communication currency is confusion. Dr. Redfield made a mistake. Not a factual error, but in that he contradicted the president. Dr. Redfield said what scientists have been saying since February.
In the film we tried to draw a line between the dismantling of public health infrastructure—thought cuts, firings and hiring freezes in government science programs—and the sidelining and muzzling of existing government scientists, to show these things are all related.
During the Ebola and MERS crises the CDC message was always front and center giving information to the public.
S.S.: None of us were surprised with the Bob Woodward revelations. The research we did for the film is valid proof that Trump knew. He misrepresented the reality. What that shows us is a willingness to communicate to the American public in order to manipulate our perception of the situation, even if it directly contradicts what scientific experts are saying.
He will simply lie, instead of telling people what the real truth is about a timeline when they can expect to get back to their normal lives. There are certainly precedents in history of presidents projecting falsehoods, but flat out misrepresentation moves to outright malfeasance.
S.M.: In making the film we learned a lot. The pillars of public health have to do with clear communication and consistently repeating these facts: mask wearing, six feet of social distance, what does asymptomatic spread mean, and where can I get a test?
We came across this now very popular book—John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza; he is an historian and said the number one lesson we should learn about the 1918 pandemic is “political leaders should tell the truth.”
In our film we tried to echo that scientific approach of clear consistent messaging. It is interesting to look at Donald Trump’s response to COVID-19 as the exact opposite – confusion and putting his head in the sand as people were dying.
In late February the current sitting vice-president was put in charge of the Coronavirus Task Force. How well has he handled this role?
S.S.: It is a little hard to know because we don’t see much of him. At the end of the day the buck stops with the president. Cases are still soaring in the United States. We have a cycle of opening and closing down, opening and closing down.
S.M.: When Pence was installed as head of the task force, by most accounts it was a political decision to replace the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. That coincided with the stock market taking a nose-dive on news the coronavirus could affect the United States.
What most people don’t know is that Pence was put in charge of the task force at a moment in late February when Trump was angry that Americans were scared about the coronavirus. It was meant to control the information. The February and March task force press conferences had far more to do with non-science news than with communicating what the CDC wanted Americans to know.
Then, of course, they suddenly went away and for many weeks Dr. Fauci couldn’t get ahold of the president.
To read more film previews and reviews, click here.
To read more articles by Blaine Schultz, click here.
