One supposes it’s valuable to look to the future and imagine, even briefly, what might be on the horizon, and contemplate how this nightmarish scenario will prove informative in combating those later.
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Gibney’s kicker says as much or more than the rest of the film - the day after completion, Trump announced his Coronavirus diagnosis - but before he gets there, the filmmaker tries to step back and look at COVID as the latest tread in what will be an increasing existential series of threats to our health and well-being, brought on by climate change and other man-made processes. Meanwhile, supplier Mike Bowen predicted the need for n95 masks and other equipment to no avail, and encouraged government officials to no avail to begin the process of stockpiling equipment for first responders and essential workers. Gibney exposes the irresponsible, and inexplicable - or maybe just craven - decisions of the government to shift blame for CIVID explosions to states, while simultaneously denying them life-saving PPE, and then driving up costs as states were forced to bid against one another for the supplies. Meanwhile, 20-year-old interns were hired to work in Kushner’s task force to procure personal protective equipment, called PPE, without the training to do so, the contacts to find reliable suppliers, and the oversight or protocols to maintain adequate confidentiality - that is, until they were instructed to sign a nondisclosure agreement, in one interviewee’s opinion, to prevent them from talking about how badly they bungled the process. Bright, who features heavily in the film, was ousted from his role at BARDA after filing a complaint opposing the implementation of hydroxychloroquine, which was designated by the Trump administration as a cure for COVID despite no clinical evidence that it saved lives. These individuals include the CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease director Nancy Messonier, whose unvarnished truth about the imminent pandemic sent financial markets spiraling and led to her marginalization by a President whose re-election success hinged on his economic record. But what quickly emerges is a classic snapshot of Trump administration policymaking, a combination of traditional (and traditionally unsuccessful) GOP tactics and the President’s self-aggrandizing, detail-deflecting bluster. The U.S., of course, was not the only, and certainly was not the first government to try to combat COVID by comparison, the filmmaker charts South Korea’s path, where politicians left the response in the hands of medical professionals, and not only was there no shutdown but fewer than 500 of its more than 50 million citizens died. people even further along partisan lines. Starting with insights from Rick Bright, former chief of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Gibney ( Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) traces a path from the first known COVID case arriving in Seattle, Washington, to the pandemic that has paralyzed the economy and inexplicably divided the U.S. But Gibney’s probing interviews with a wide variety of institutional experts both in the US and around the world offer a powerful snapshot of a pandemic whose effects could have been more successfully mitigated under the guidance of healthcare rather than political leaders. To some extent, if you’ve paid attention to new headlines over the past nine months, much of this information will not be new to you.
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