Understanding the pandemic: Some documentaries worth watching
On the list: Two German documentaries, an Austrian production, a Swiss production and two American productions, “Anecdotals” and (treat with caution) “Died Suddenly”.
The COVID pandemic has been going on for nearly three years now and the flood of misinformation and conspiracy theories, of alleged truths and alleged lies, has become increasingly overwhelming. It is nearly impossible to tell fact from fiction. You will easily get trapped and trip in the ever-growing media jungle of information. What should you believe? What are the real facts? Who is right and who is wrong? Three tools are essential to survive this chaos of information: common sense, critical thinking and open-mindedness. It is important to confront ourselves with hypotheses that might not match our current worldview, and to constantly question this worldview and update it, if need be. Only when we are open-minded are we able to engage in critical thinking, and only if we engage in critical thinking can we begin to try and grasp this confusing, (post-)pandemic world.
There is some interesting, possibly provocative information out there about the COVID pandemic – and, consequently, Big Pharma – that is at least worth considering. I have put together a short list of documentaries that might broaden one’s horizon or even alter certain viewpoints. If you have other recommendations, please share them in the comment section!
Profiteers of Fear - The Business with Swine Flu (2009)
// The original German version Profiteure der Angst – Das Geschäft mit der Schweinegrippe1 can be found on Rumble or YouTube. //
Around ten years passed between the Swine Flu pandemic, which posed a global threat in 2009 according to the WHO, and the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in 2020. In hindsight, the parallels between both pandemics are absolutely striking; however, barely anyone remembers that there was a global pandemic in 2009. Whether the reason for that is that people were more resistant to fearmongering at the time, or that the media apparatus was not as powerful back then as it is today, is open for debate.
In any case, this documentary by Jutta Pinzler and Stefanie Schwalfenberg, produced for the German public broadcaster (!) NDR and the French-German public broadcaster ARTE, is definitely worth watching. It shines a light on the shady practices of the pharmaceutical industry, its entanglement with policy makers, state departments and regulatory bodies, as well as the trail of hundreds of millions of euros, which were quickly spent to buy vaccines against the H1N1 virus, without any scientific data on their safety and efficacy. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
It is especially interesting that the documentary features people that received a certain notoriety in Germany after the COVID pandemic broke out in 2020. For instance, a young Professor Christian Drosten is interviewed, who sounds much more reasonable in 2009 than in his later role as pandemic advisor to the German government. Moreover, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a former member of the German parliament for the Socialists (SPD) and pulmonary specialist, appears in the film. In 2009, as member of the Council of Europe, he had initiated a committee to investigate the disastrous handling of the Swine Flu pandemic; however, in 2020, he was suddenly branded a conspiracy theorist for disagreeing with official government narratives2
“In this pandemic, it’s hard to tell apart truth from lies. Whether political decisions benefit the population remains questionable. The [pharmaceutical] industry has already profited.”
COVID: Safety versus Freedom – Germany, France and Sweden in a crisis (2020)
// Alternatively on Rumble (German version) or YouTube (French version). The video above allows for auto-generated English subtitles. I have not been able to find this documentary in English. //
Jutta Pinzler also made a documentary about the COVID pandemic, again commissioned by public broadcasters NDR and ARTE. The film focuses on the different strategies in the battle against coronavirus, especially during the first year of the pandemic: On the one hand, there are Germany and France with massive restrictions that severely limited the personal rights and freedoms of their citizens. The documentary shows the impact of lockdown measures on people’s lives, how serious mass protests formed against them and how dissidents were stigmatized. This stands in stark contrast with Sweden, which took a different path based on the voluntary collaboration and civil self-responsibility of its nationals to maneuver the country through the pandemic.
Some well-known faces are featured in the film, at least for those familiar with German and Swedish politics: Former “health expert” and current German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach as well as German virologist Hendrik Streeck and Sweden's state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell comment on the pandemic. So do experts like Professor John P.A. Ioannidis from Stanford and German sociologist Ulrike Guérot who were both deemed “controversial” by mainstream media. It was quite surprising that the documentary was actually broadcast during prime-time on ARTE in November 2020 – however, it did not survive very long in the channel’s online media center where it was removed shortly after being broadcast, was then suddenly put back online, and then disappeared forever in February 2021 because broadcasting rights had allegedly expired.
“In this case there’s a tendency to declare people – who aren’t radical right-wing, who aren’t crazy – dissidents. Many people nowadays, […] completely sane people, feel like it has become dangerous to have an opinion about measures of pandemic control that differs from the general opinion.”
COVID – In Search of the Truth (2021-2022)
// Watch the four-part series on ServusTV in German (for people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland); Part 1 is available with English subtitles on Odyssee or Bitchute; I was unable to find the other parts with English subtitles. //
Nobody would think that a small Austrian private television station would produce such an excellent documentary series on the intricacies of the COVID pandemic – but ServusTV did: COVID – In Search of the Truth (Corona – Auf der Suche nach der Wahrheit) is a four-part documentary that leads Austrian virologist Professor Martin Haditsch on a trip around the world in his quest to find answers about the pandemic. On this journey, he interviews some top-class experts like Nobel prize winner Michael Levitt, Dr. Pierre Kory, Professor Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Peter McCollough and Professor Robert Malone, who were all publicly pilloried for their scientific assessments, were defamed as conspiracy theorists and even censored (McCollough was blocked on Twitter for about two months, Malone for about a year; both accounts were reinstated in December 2022).
The series takes a global perspective on pandemic events and lets those experts present their case who were otherwise silenced in the media. Remarkably enough, after ServusTV had successfully published the first two parts online, public broadcasters and mainstream media outlets suddenly got interested in this little independent TV station. The German Tagesschau claimed that ServusTV was “a channel for coronavirus deniers” while the Bayerischer Rundfunk3 called it “the channel of dissidents” and even accused the documentary of false balancing since “radical minority opinions […] are put on a level with renowned experts” (the irony of this accusation, coming from a public broadcaster, is rich). The Süddeutsche Zeitung chimed in, saying that ServusTV stood “shoulder-to-shoulder with the tin foil hats”. Strange – up to that point, nobody had ever bothered about ServusTV.
“I wish people were a little bit more thoughtful and more common sensical and less frightened. I mentioned to you before that the risk of COVID was about an extra month of living. And I think it’s important to realize that life is full of risks and you’re not going to live forever… live every day to the fullest.”
Anecdotals (2022)
// Full version on Vimeo (account login needed) or Rumble in English //
There is a group of people who are neither corona deniers nor dissidents nor tin foil hats and whose existence is quite inconvenient for the general “COVID vaccines are great” narrative: the group of the vaccine injured. The term Post-vac syndrome sounds harmless, but it affects a fast growing number of people worldwide to different extents. None of the words above can really be used to accuse these people because they did get vaccinated and are therefore certainly no radical anti-vaxxers.
Herself vaccine injured, director Jennifer Sharp examines the topic of vaccine injuries in ten chapters from a political, medical, media and personal perspective. She makes the vaccine-injured community visible and gives them the chance to tell their stories. Sharp is quite tactful and empathetic, neither advocating in favor of nor against getting the vaccine. She just wants to start the necessary discussion around possible dangers of the vaccine and vaccine injuries to open a real, differentiated discourse without hate or accusations. The personal stories of the vaccine injured are quite shocking; so are the statements of numerous doctors and experts who are making observations in connection to the vaccine that are very unsettling and that cannot be denied anymore.
“There’s actually a large group of us in the middle who don’t feel the need to label ourselves. We don’t have to hate each other. And in this middle ground, I’ve encountered a humanity that acknowledges people’s suffering from this vaccine who desperately need help. A humanity that isn’t afraid to question the regulators and the people who are profiting.”
Unerwünscht (2022)
// Watch all eight short clips on Unerwünscht.ch or the official YouTube channel. The videos allow for auto-generated English subtitles, but they only work for the people speaking in standard German (Tina E., Rosanna K.), not Swiss German. //
Unerwünscht means “unwanted” or “adverse” in German, depending on the context. It is the title of a series of eight short video clips by the Swiss association Zeitdokument which documents cases of adverse reactions from the COVID vaccine, similar to Jennifer Sharp. In these clips, people in Switzerland talk about their vaccine injuries, some of them severe, and how they had counted on the support of their doctors and the Swiss National Health Service to help them to no avail.
The parallels to Sharp’s Anecdotals are remarkable. The vaccine injured are “unwanted”, as the title of the video series suggests; they shouldn’t exist, they don’t fit the official narrative. The vaccine injured in Switzerland suffer the same fate as those in the US: they are abandoned and ignored. Nobody feels obliged to help them. Their health problems are often not being taken seriously, the connection to the vaccine is being denied, and their claim for damages and hope for financial support becomes impossible. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry is off the hook, thanks to air-tight liability clauses that were arranged with governments worldwide.
“This can’t be, that I go to the doctor’s, as an injured patient and have to listen to accusations without even being examined […] I say that I suffer from inflammations on my whole body since taking the vaccine. My nerves hurt, that’s why I went to the neurologist. […] ‘That’s not from the vaccine.’ She neither touched me nor looked at me.”
Died Suddenly (2022)
// Watch the full movie on Rumble in English //
Since its release about a month ago (on November 21, 2022) this film by Matthew Skow and Nicholas Stumphauzer has garnered around 15 million views on the video platform Rumble – that is quite an impressive number. Died Suddenly tries to find an explanation for an ominous phenomenon that many embalmers and undertakers have started to notice. While trying to pump out blood from corpses, they have observed that veins were clogged by rubber-like blood clots, about 20 to 30 centimeters (7 to 12 inches) long, which started to appear in the summer of 2021 – shortly after the first big vaccination campaign.
The most convincing part of the film are the various testimonials of different embalmers from the US to New Zealand that confirm that these “blood clot calamari”, as they are aptly described at one point, are indeed a global phenomenon and not limited to a certain region. However, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt as there are some substantial errors that have been pointed out. Furthermore, the film has a tendency to lean into conspiracy theories, which doesn’t work in its favor and in the end leads to the film discrediting itself to a certain degree. Watch it with caution and a critical eye.
Still, the images of these snake-like blood clots are quite memorable. Something is not right here; especially if you think about the fact that during the supposedly worst pandemic in the history of mankind, scientists and pathologists were told to abstain from systematically performing post-mortem autopsies on people who had died from COVID (especially vaccinated victims). Russell L. Blaylock presents some interesting thoughts on that controversial topic. In any case, embalmers can only observe; it would need political will to fund research to make sense of this worrisome phenomenon.
Somebody mentioned to go on Google and then type in ‘Died Suddenly’ and find the news articles that pop up… and, lo and behold, here’s a whole listing of articles of people within the last week who died suddenly. Younger people, older people, but a lotta younger people throughout around the world.”
Do you know any good documentaries on the topic that are missing? Please share your recommendations in the comment section.
About the author: Born 1987, with roots in Germany and the Philippines, living in Spain. Constantly curious and eager to learn new things. Freedom > safety. Your own opinion > groupthink. Coffee > tea. Book recommendation: “The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living” by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.
Die deutsche Version des Artikels findet sich hier:
All translations of German titles are mine, not official ones.
Going back in time can be quite eye-opening. The following article from the German newspaper ZEIT ONLINE about Wodarg’s committee, published in 2009, could have easily been written in 2022: Schweinerei mit der Grippe (by Rainer Woratschka)
Both Tagesschau and Bayerischer Rundfunk are part of German Public Broadcasting and therefore state funded.