Summer 2020
Netflix released a new documentary series “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak” in January. Fast Company called it “required viewing,” saying it “couldn’t have come at a more crucial time with the recent coronavirus outbreak.”
Ryan McGarry (MD ’09), an emergency medicine physician, School of Medicine alumnus and cinematographer, is behind the series as an executive producer. Last summer, he invited
Pitt anthropology chair Bryan Hanks to help set the stage for the series: The first episode opens at an unmarked grave site near Pittsburgh where an unknown number of bodies are buried—victims of the 1918 influenza. Hanks and a team of Pitt students use ground-penetrating radar to estimate how many people were buried there.
McGarry started work on his first feature film, “Code Black”—which inspired the CBS series by the same name—while in med school. Watch carefully, and you’ll see Pitt’s Joan Harvey, associate dean for student affairs, in the documentary credits.
McGarry is now on the faculty at LAC+USC Medical Center and on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic there.
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Image courtesy Netflix.