Nick Pope’s controversial new documentary about the failed response to the Covid pandemic – and the associated government overreach – is a hard-hitting exposé of institutional failure and societal panic.
When Covid first hit, the authorities and the media created and promoted a false “everyone’s at risk” narrative, when the data quickly showed that only the elderly, the immunocompromised and the obese were at risk of serious health outcomes. In most Western nations the average age of Covid deaths was as high – if not higher – than average life expectancy, yet the dishonest “everyone’s at risk” narrative was perpetuated. And obesity was hardly ever mentioned, because of a politically correct fear of fat-shaming – when losing weight would have enabled a large group of genuinely at-risk individuals to leverage the odds back in their favor. Consequently, instead of targeting help and resources at those who were at genuine risk, the powers that be shut down the world.
The authorities then bet the farm on a handful of iron-fisted mandates. Rules on things like lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates and school closures divided people, just when we most needed to come together as a society. But these mandates failed: lockdowns and cloth masks had only a statistically insignificant impact on reducing community spread or mortality rates; the vaccines didn’t stop transmission, and natural immunity turned out to be just as effective – if not more effective – than these vaccines; and even The New York Times, which peddled more Covid panic porn than most, conceded that a child was statistically more likely to die in a car accident on the way to school, than of Covid caught at school.
Fourteen days to flatten the curve became two years; people were told to “follow the science” (but only when it supported the official narrative; not when it disproved it), and everyone was constantly bombarded with Orwellian propaganda, and patronizing slogans such as “your mask protects me; my mask protects you”, “we’re all in this together”, and “the new normal”.
Absurdities were commonplace: the man arrested in Malibu for paddleboarding alone in the ocean; social distancing circles sprayed on the grass in parks (when casual outdoor transmission was never a thing); one-way signs on the floor in grocery stores; ridiculous plexiglass barriers in stores; and having to wear a mask in restaurants, but being permitted to take it off when the food arrived – as if the virus suddenly took a break at this point. And, all the while, there was a strong suspicion that the figures were being fiddled, to inflate the numbers, with no clarity being given about whether someone had died of Covid, or with Covid – remember the fatal motorcycle accident where the victim was counted as a Covid death? People laughed at the absurdity of such things, but there’s been little accountability or apology from the people who shut down the world, and stole two years of your lives.
Trillions of dollars were wasted, countless people lost their jobs or businesses, economies crashed, businesses and schools were closed, children’s social development and education was stunted (the potentially catastrophic long-term effects of this have yet to be assessed), and the brutal (but ultimately ineffective) mandates set civil liberties back at least a generation. Elderly people were condemned to die alone in care homes, with relatives forbidden to visit, while funerals were sometimes held on Zoom.
Open and honest debate about these now-debunked strategies and heartless policies was prohibited, dissenting voices were silenced, and those who questioned the official narrative often found themselves censored or canceled, and banned or shadowbanned on social media, as Big Tech colluded with governments to silence the people.
Words and phrases like “lab leak”, “natural immunity” and “Sweden” were dishonestly categorized as right-wing dog whistles, and people who suggested that the Wuhan Institute of Virology might have played a part in events were falsely labeled as conspiracy theorists. Ironically, many parts of the US Intelligence Community now assess it more likely that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak than by natural zoonotic emergence.
The unvaccinated were treated like lepers (long after it was shown that the vaccines didn’t stop transmission), and were accused – along with anyone else who didn’t slavishly follow the various mandates – of “killing grandma”. The response to Covid became dangerously and absurdly politicized, particularly in the US, where, for example, Black Lives Matters protests were deemed acceptable, whereas gatherings seen as more conservative were dishonestly labeled as “superspreader events”.
Apocalypse Covid was a difficult film to make. While the data and the science now disprove the effectiveness of the mandates on lockdowns, masks, vaccines and school closures, there’s still a reluctance to confront this, or to assess the price society paid, both financially, and in terms of socio-economic costs, civil liberties, and child development. That’s partly due to the legal consequences and reputational damage the policy-makers may still face, and partly due to the embarrassment on the part of people who blindly went along with all this – simply put, nobody likes to admit they were fooled, and got played.
Apocalypse Covid has been criticized by some, who dishonestly portray it as a conspiracy theory film – the first distributor (one of the ‘Big Five’) pulled out, after a “risk assessment” meeting. It’s also been mischaracterized as an “anti-vaxx” documentary. This misunderstands the nuanced nature of the film. Operation Warp Speed was one of the few success stories of the pandemic. It delivered a vaccine in months, when it would usually take years. But that did lead to some genuine concerns, so while the vaccine was worth taking for those at genuine risk, there was no need to mandate it for healthy people, whose Covid would either be asymptomatic, or would involve cold or flu-like symptoms. The fact that US military personnel sacked after refusing the vaccine are now being reinstated and given back-pay is proof of how discredited these anti-science vaccine mandates are.
Apocalypse Covid tells the incredible story of how all this insanity happened, and attempts to make sense of the madness.
The documentary was meticulously researched and fact-checked. The information presented is based on scientific papers published in The Lancet, and studies from organizations including the Johns Hopkins Institute, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the UK government’s Department of Education. All titles and publications dates are cited at the relevant point in the documentary, so people can fact-check the data for themselves.
Asked why he made this documentary, Nick Pope – who researched and wrote the 12,000 word script, and who narrates the film – said this:
“Apocalypse Covid attempts to set the record straight about what happened during the pandemic, because the truth matters, and we need to ensure we have a historically accurate account of such a major and impactful event. We’ve never had an honest discussion about the failed response to Covid, largely due to the politicization of the virus, and my film is aimed at starting a conversation about this. Most of all, I made this film so we can learn lessons for the future – because this pandemic won’t be the last.”
Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFHOpWkOCZ0&ab_channel=RealityFilms
Here’s the Amazon listing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0DK459R46
And here’s some mainstream media coverage: https://www.skynews.com.au/insights-and-analysis/heavyhanded-western-pandemic-policies-exposed-in-apocalypse-covid-which-probes-misplaced-priorities-during-the-pandemic/news-story/edd75978578e41e273def7c236cacbc9