The Making of Anatomy of a Pandemic: A PBS Documentary
By Larry Klein
When novel H1N1 was beginning its global trek toward pandemic status in late spring 2009, we approached PBS about producing a special that would attempt to look at the pandemic from the point-of-view of those on the front lines of the effort to slow infection rates and treat those already sick.
We decided on this approach because this would be a documentary requiring months to complete. We knew we could not compete with the news of the day (the networks and cable providers would certainly do that). But we could be like imbedded journalists for this war - examining the outbreak from the ground up and through the eyes of those our society entrusts with our very lives and well-being. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded the project and we were off ... sort of.
