Film Review: Vaccine War - Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri's film

 #VaccineWar on #Hotstar

Just finished watching this film. (kind of late to the party)

This is that #NeverForget2020 kind of film.

Apart from the acting, the perfect casting, the taut storytelling, this was a very emotional film for me.

mRNA was being developed since 2012 but had NEVER been approved for human use. And suddenly, on a virus we didn't know, a tech we had never used before was approved for human use.

I read the CDC submissions of Moderna and Pfizer. Both companies had NEVER tested anyone - neither the control group nor the vaccinated group - for the actual presence of the virus after vaccination. The success rate was based on absence of symptoms. Let that sink in. Absence of symptoms. Not absence of virus. Much less proven antibodies to virus.

All foreign companies were given indemnity against adverse reactions to the virus by the US, and made that a precondition to giving the virus to any country globally. India refused to give this indemnity. For many countries, the choices were between Sputnik and China's vaccines.

There are two proven vaccination techs - dead virus and weakened virus. Because the virus was new and lab-enhanced, I relied on the dead virus tech (Covaxin). At that time, everyone around me laughed at me. The propaganda against Covaxin was at its peak.

But in spite of all this, I had never spared a thought for the scientists who would have spent days and nights getting this vaccine out so quickly - until this movie came out. This truly was a war that could only be fought by science - and it was.

The film made me realise that this war was unique for two reasons:

1. It was the first bioweapon based world war.
2. It was also the first world war fought through fake news, misinformation, and institutional manipulation by nation states.

If that's not worth remembering, I don't know what is.

#NeverForget2020.