Last week, Netflix premiered its new docuseries Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak—and the timing couldn’t have been more prescient.
In late December, China alerted the World Health Organization to several cases of pneumonia in the port city of Wuhan. After ruling out the SARS virus, it was determined on January 7 that the cause of the illnesses was a new coronavirus, which is in the same family as SARS.
By January 22, the day Pandemic debuted on Netflix, the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak had risen to 17 with more than 550 infections—and those numbers have been climbing ever since.