Weekend reads: Vanessa Dylyn on the fallout from the pandemic

An interview with the Emmy-nominated Canadian documentary filmmaker

Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, now the director of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. (Image courtesy of Vanessa Dylyn.)

There’s a feeling in our leadership class, and in our media, that the public does not want to think or talk about the Covid era — and that it’s best to simply move on and put it behind us. So, there has not yet been a reckoning on pandemic policies, and what our society got right and wrong during the crisis.

My guest in the newsletter today is a Canadian documentary filmmaker who hopes to spark a conversation about the suppression of scientific debate with her film, Covid Collateral (you can stream it at covidcollateral.com). Vanessa Dylyn is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker based in Toronto. Her credits include The Musical Brain featuring Sting, and The Divided Brain featuring psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist.

Here, in this edited and condensed Q&A, we discuss Covid Collateral, how difficult it was to get the film in front of audiences, the facts that have come out since Dylyn completed it — and what it all might mean for the Canadian federal election.

TH: I recently attended a screening of your film in Toronto, with a Q&A afterwards hosted by my colleague, the Free Press journalist Rupa Subramanya. I’m curious about what drew you to this subject matter. What were you experiencing during the pandemic that made you want to explore this in a film?

VD: Thank you for having me, Tara. I was very motivated to make this film, for a number of reasons. In early 2020, I witnessed restrictions on ordinary people that made absolutely no sense to me. We all saw small business owners being driven bankrupt while the big box stores stayed open. Apparently, you could catch Covid if you bought a croissant at your local bakery, but not at Costco? And we were keeping children out of school.

I also noticed, again early in 2020, that there were some highly credentialed scientists who were speaking out against lockdowns. These were not unknown people. They were leaders in their field. People like Jay Bhattacharya, at Stanford at that time, Scott Atlas, [a White House advisor], and Martin Kulldorff, who was at Harvard, and Sunetra Gupta at Oxford. They were all speaking out because they felt that there was no science behind these lockdowns. These people were being torn down by their own colleagues, by their own universities, by medical institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and by mainstream media. Not to mention Big Tech.

I also noticed a discussion about the origin of the virus. Dr. Fauci, who was the chief medical officer in the White House at the time, tried to explain the origin of the virus as this natural evolution of animal to human — a virus that had jumped out of a wet market in Wuhan. I became very suspicious. Because I knew, like many people, that in Wuhan you also have an institute that houses the most dangerous pathogens in China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a level 4 biohazard institute. What are the chances that in the same province you’re going to have a wet market where this virus jumps out to a human host?

At this time, there were some leading scientists who noticed that there was this insert in the Covid virus’s genome. They found this thing called a furin cleavage … These prominent scientists started saying, “Wait a minute, this looks like a lab leak. This thing was likely manufactured in a lab and accidentally leaked.” Those people who claimed that this is probably a lab leak were smeared as conspiracy theorists.

I thought there was something there. I thought: This is the suppression of science, just clearly the suppression of science at a time when we need transparency in science. I started wondering: Why are these scientists being shut down? What’s the scientific basis behind lockdowns?

I’m not the kind of filmmaker that takes sides. This was not a “point of view” film. I thought I needed to approach this subject by looking at the suppression of science during Covid. I decided to limit the film to two stories: The reasons behind lockdowns and the lab leak theory. I tried to make the most even-handed film possible, where I let prominent doctors and scientists tell the audience what happened.

TH: The suppression of information during the pandemic, at the level of government, Big Tech, and media is a fascinating story — and one that I think we’re all going to be learning about for years to come. As you say, you cover the lab leak theory and the lockdowns, and specifically you do touch on the school closures. The New York Times and other mainstream press now acknowledge how destructive these closures were, in terms of learning loss and mental health, particularly for marginalized children. But at the time you made this film, this issue was hugely controversial. How hard was it to get this film before audiences?

VD: Oh, my. I wrote up a treatment, I had all my characters, and I started to approach broadcasters in Canada, who certainly know my work. It was just stone silence. One broadcaster, who shall remain nameless, was just out and out hostile. Basically saying, “Please don’t ever, ever come to me with anything like this.” So, hostility would be a polite word. It was extremely difficult to get this done. My own colleagues were pretty rude and hostile about it. It was difficult to get business affairs people, a production accountant. Even a closed captioning technician — when we were almost finished the film, they said, “No, thank you. I don’t want to touch this.”

Luckily, in April of 2022 I met with the Canadian broadcaster, New Tang Dynasty, who is not a well-known broadcaster. They took a chance on this film because the commissioning editor there, Joe Wang, was a scientist by training. He was actually a vaccinologist who had worked on the first SARS vaccine. And he was already really well-informed about the suppression of science during Covid. So, that’s how I got started.

But even when the film was in production, even when we were completing the film, there were a number of people on my team that said, “Can you take my credit off the film?” One mentioned that she was up for a job, a pretty big gig, and someone had checked IMDB and noticed that she was listed as part of the creative team. And he asked her about her political affiliation. I was just shocked. So, there were people who were seriously worried about being associated with this film. Most distributors also turned down this film because it was just too risky for them to carry it.

If you’ve seen the film, there’s nothing especially radical about the film. It just allows pretty prominent people to talk about what happened to them. But I think what happened to some broadcasters is perhaps it’s just too soon after Covid for them to take a risk on it.

TH: Some of the guests in the film are controversial. New Tang Dynasty and Epoch Times can be controversial. The actual story here, I think, is no longer controversial. We’ve just learned that in 2020, German intelligence believed there was an 80 to 90% chance that a lab leak was the cause of the pandemic. We saw The New York Times publish an op-ed that the public was badly misled about the lab leak theory. In terms of the controversy surrounding the guests, we’ve seen some of that controversy decline. You interviewed Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor. He was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for focused prevention instead of lockdowns. He and his co-authors were the targets of “a quick and devastating takedown,” as the then-head of the NIH Francis Collins called for in a now-released email. Bhattacharya and his colleagues were ostracized, attacked in the media. Bhattacharya was put on a trends blacklist on Twitter, as the Twitter Files reporting revealed, and his tweets were prevented from trending. But, as I said, the controversy has receded in some ways. Bhattacharya was just appointed head of the NIH. What was it like for you to watch him be confirmed?

VD: It was an absolute thrill. I was in contact with him. I was interviewed for his own podcast, just before his nomination. So, I found out a little bit sooner. I was just so happy for him because he was really put through hell, just as Scott Atlas was. To see this vindication of him taking the position of director of the NIH, to me, was nothing less than poetic justice.

You mentioned the fact that the content of the film is becoming more and more known, and is becoming less controversial. We actually had a screening in Washington last summer that was sponsored by the Cato Institute, and I was invited to be on the panel and to introduce the film. Two people on the panel were very interesting choices. One was Jay Bhattacharya, and the other one was Dr. [Robert] Redfield, who is the former director of the Centers for Disease Control. Was I intimidated that he was going to be on the panel? Hell, yes.

But here’s what was very interesting. After the film was screened, Dr. Redfield told the audience that he had been against lockdowns right from the get-go, and that he had been muzzled by the White House and by Dr. Fauci. He was kept out of important meetings and phone calls. He also said that he believed in early 2020 that the Covid virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. He said that he had been accused of being a racist for making that statement. He actually said, out loud, that science caused Covid and science needs to deal with it. I was shocked at how candid he was. And he said he is completely against gain-of-function research because it’s too dangerous.

It’s no wonder that Tony Fauci and his team wanted to suppress the discussion of a lab leak theory because it was Tony Fauci, through the NIH, that had been funding dangerous gain-of-function research on Coronaviruses for years. As a matter of fact, one character who briefly appears in the film, Peter Daszak [of EcoHealth Alliance], was the man who allotted these funds.

TH: I don’t know if you know the work of Elaine Dewar. Early on in the life of my podcast, she was on the show talking about her own investigative reporting into the lab leak theory. So, there are people in this country, including yourself, who were early on this story. It did not get a lot of mainstream media attention. When I speak to people in the public about lost trust over the media, this is one of the stories that comes up a lot. I’m curious about the reception in the mainstream media to this film. What kind of coverage have you gotten?

VD: I have appeared on a number of podcasts in this country. The broadcaster has screened it several times. Where I have gotten the most comments is on Canadian and U.S. podcasts; people write in. And generally the reception has been very, very good. But I would like the film to get out into the mainstream media. This is why I’m still doing podcasts. I’m hoping we get some big public screenings. We’ve had three in Canada, one in Washington.

Overall, the reception has been excellent. People have been very grateful that a film like this is out there. I think people want a chance to talk about what happened to them. I hope that this film helps people talk to their neighbours, talk to their loved ones. Because we need to come together as human beings who have lived through the most disruptive period in our lives.

TH: We are about to have a federal election in this country. It’s the first federal election grappling with the fallout from the whole Covid era. What are your thoughts about what you’ve learned in this making this film, and how this applies to the election?

VD: I think one of the unfortunate things is Trump’s imposition of tariffs, because I think this has sidelined the entire conversation about the Liberal Party, and Justin Trudeau’s leadership, and how the government handled Covid. I think that’s unfortunate.

I think we need to demand much better leadership in this country. I’m not criticizing Justin Trudeau for locking down the country, that’s what many countries did. But he showed no leadership … The Canadian population was going through the worst disruption in our lifetime, and he spoke with no compassion. His tone was punitive. He’d come out, he’d hector the population to stay indoors, and he would go back in. Parliament stood empty, as it has stayed empty for months now. You can’t run the country on Zoom.

People have forgotten about the awful environment around the vaccine mandates. Justin Trudeau divided people, and he encouraged ostracizing people who were just vaccine hesitant. He was labeling them as misogynists and racists, and every other label. He was using very dangerous, divisive language, unbecoming a leader of a democratic country.

This is way beyond the film, but I think we as Canadians need to start looking at much better leadership. And more transparency in all our institutions, whether it be educational, legal, medical, government. We need to demand more transparency, and we need to demand the inclusion of informed alternative views.