This is a 90-minute Frontline film that tries to trace back the emergence of coronavirus from China and the spread of this deadly virus across the globe. Despite several government warnings, the television program also scrutinizes how the United States was unprepared to combat the novel coronavirus. According to Martin Smith, a co-producer of the program, the American response to coronavirus spread was not inevitably worse (Rabinowitz, 2020). The film’s production drew interviews with world top scientists, officials, and first responders from China, Italy, South Korea, and the United States. Despite the effort by the American government, there were several missteps in response to the pandemic, which led to the spread of the virus and worsened the situation.
This film points out a series of vital missteps in combating the spread of the virus from the Chinese authorities. They denied and opposed early claims which emerged around the virus and the failure of the World Health Organization to raise the alarm quickly to Italian officials. The film begins with a picture showing people packed in Times Square, waiting to welcome the new year. They were not aware of anything about the existence of the virus, which was moving closure to them. This was a suitable tone and an evocative one. Still, this feeling was not equal to the emotional state depicted by the film when it first turns to show the first case of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan
Chinese government officials then took action to suppress all the information that tried to mention the emergence of the coronavirus in the country. Martin Smith, the co-producer of the film, states that a young doctor (ophthalmologist) in Wuhan at a given medical facility in the city expressed his worry about the virus. He expressed his fear about the emergence of the disease with symptoms of coronavirus in a group chat with students. He further reports that the police visited the young doctor, Public Security Bureau, the Chinese government’s secret police department, which forced the doctor to sign a confession and coerced him to remain silent on any disease outbreak in the country (Rabinowitz, 2020). The doctor died of the virus on February 7th after the Chinese health ministry conceded that there was a human-to-human transmission of the virus.
In America, many opportunities were missed by the government to respond promptly to the virus before it was late. Jeremy Konyndyk, who headed the Obama administration team, which responded to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, equated the government response by the Trump administration with Hurricane. He compared the virus with Hurricane offshore, which required an immediate response after seeing its impacts from a distance. Jeremy claims that failure to respond to the Hurricane by letting people evacuate and wait until it builds up to a beyond-control level is catastrophic. The film further analyses the consequences that Americans had to endure due to the reorganization of president Obama’s National Security Council, which was in charge of responding to pandemics.
The documentary also examines the government response, which emphasized closing the American borders rather than implementing comprehensive preparedness, social distance, and testing strategies that would have helped contain the virus. The frontline through the film also tracks back to the inability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop and distribute coronavirus testing kits in the early stages of the pandemic. Despite the inability of the CDC, the president on March 6th falsely claimed that the test kits for the virus were widely available in the country. This allowed Smith to place Dr. Redfield on the spot during the interview. In his response, Dr. Redfield said that he would not comment on what the then-president believed or what he did not believe.
From the film, it can be clear that the Americans suffered severe impacts of the virus due to the downplaying of the pandemic and failure to listen to the experts. In the early stages of the pandemic, which was a crucial stage for controlling the spread of the virus, President Donald Trump and other key figures in his government actively downplayed the severity of the virus and therefore minimized its threat. At the initial stages, President Trump also dismissed the virus, compared it to the normal flu, and claimed that the virus would be over by Easter. Downplaying the pandemic by the government was one of the major problems which caused the virus to spread because the pandemic got out of control. From the response of Dr. Redfield to Smith, it is clear that the Trump administration tightly controlled what CDC would convey to the general public (Rabinowitz, 2020). At some point, CDC told the media that the pandemic threat to American public health was low. The agency was quickly sidelined when they publicly said that the pandemic would severely impact the normal way of life. President Trump took over and became the main channel for distributing coronavirus updates.
The other problem that this film points out is the slackness and flawed testing by the CDC. The agency was not designed to produce the testing kits at the rate needed to spot the spread of the infection as it was silently spread in the county. Instead, the government could have adopted German-developed testing kits through the agency, which the world health organization used. The agency was able to design its test kits, but it was flawed, which further caused the delay as the scientist was working tirelessly to correct the problem. By the time the agency succeeded in developing the testing kits, the virus had spread in the population was already uncontrollable, making it nearly impossible to contact trace and isolate the people before they spread the infection to other people.
In conclusion, this film mainly focuses on the American response to the pandemic and the chains of missteps by the government. The government emphasized the closing of the American borders. Instead, they could have implemented comprehensive preparedness, social distancing, and testing strategies identified as the virus containment measures. This was a major misstep by the government that led to the spread of the virus in the country. Its further points to the strategic failure of the American government to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. It answers what went wrong by pointing out key strategic failures in the Trump administration and other government agencies. For instance, the film points out the slackness and flawed testing by the CDC. The agency could not produce the testing kits at the rate needed to spot the spread of the infection as it was silently spread in the county. Instead, the government could have adopted German-developed testing kits through the agency, which the world health organization approved.
Reference
Rabinowitz, D. (2020). ‘The virus: What went wrong’ review: A deadly diagnosis of failure. WSJ. Web.