Hacker Cinema
The Flu That Killed 50 Million
2018 · Film · documentary · 48 min
Directed by Andrew Thompson
It is 1918 and the end of WWI. Millions have died, and the world is exhausted by war. But soon a new horror is sweeping the world, a terrifying virus that will kill more than fifty million people - the Spanish flu. Using dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness testimony from doctors, soldiers, civilians and politicians, this one-off special brings to life the onslaught of the disease, the horrors of those who lived through it and the efforts of the pioneering scientists desperately looking for the cure. Narrated by Christopher Eccleston, the film also asks whether, a century later, the lessons learnt in 1918 might help us fight a future global flu pandemic.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Handy link to the 2018 50 million film: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0blmn5l
Doesn't work for outside UK IPs. It is on TPB, though.
A BBC documentary called "The Flu That Killed 50 Million" is informative. As of time 130 million were infected and 200 thousand dead, Sir Arthur Newsholme, senior medical officer at Whitehall, sent a message to his European counterparts proposing a cease fire because an existential threat to humanity transcends national rivalries. (Just kidding!) He actually decided against even warning the public to take any precautions because it would not be "expedient" for the munitions factories to slow down. My takeaway is never to put it past those in power to decimate of the population if it suits their ends.
The BBC just did 'The Flu That Killed 50 Million' [1] – I watched it myself a couple of weeks ago
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0blmn5l/ad/the-flu-that-killed-50-million (I would guess UK only)