Podcast: ‘Shot In The Arm’—documentary exposes anti-vaccine movement’s underhanded tactics during COVID pandemic

When SARS-CoV-2 swept across the world in late 2019, nobody was prepared for the disaster that unfolded. Physicians tried to care for patients sick with an infectious disease they had never seen before, while scientists scrambled to develop effective treatments and vaccines. Although most people saw this worsening situation as a public health crisis, the anti-vaccine movement viewed it as an opportunity. Just three months into the pandemic high-profile figures and activist groups began to assert that COVID-19 was planned, the next step in a prearranged “global immunization agenda” meant to initiate a “techno-communist global government” and benefit the pharmaceutical industry.

Most of us viewed these chaotic events from our living rooms, but filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy had a closer view. In 2019 he was making Shot In The Arm, a documentary about the resurgence of measles, a vaccine-preventable disease that now spreads almost exclusively among unvaccinated children.

Kennedy kept the cameras rolling as the same activists who lobbied against childhood vaccination glomed on to COVID-19 in a bid to expand their influence over public health policy. “They seemed to be excited, in a way, that there was this trauma that they could take advantage of,” Kennedy observes. “They took advantage of a fragile situation to just become more and more cynical.”

Join hosts Dr. Liza Dunn and GLP contributor Cameron English on episode 295 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they discuss the making of Shot In The Arm with Scott Hamilton Kennedy.

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Scott Hamilton Kennedy is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker. Follow him on X, read his Substack and watch Shot In The Arm on PBS.

Dr. Liza Dunn is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Visit his website and follow him on X @camjenglish