Bear with me as the following post is not your typical film review. It’s a lengthy read, but I believe it is an important one, primarily because it doubles as both a film review, but also a reflection of the past few years. To this day, even in the face of mounting criticism of Covid ‘pandemic’ management, we’ve hardly seen any apologies or acknowledgement of wrongdoing made by the powers-that-be.
Watching this documentary felt like I was reliving the Covid years all over again, and it was deeply unsettling—not because I was scared of the virus, but because I was more scared of how quickly the public will express support for authoritarianism. No other event in modern history has better confirmed that, in times of crisis, the masses will demonstrate a complete inability to think critically or rationally, and against their own interests. Films like this should be studied in years to come as an example of how propaganda is used in times of uncertainty.
Covid spurred one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in modern history—and the propaganda continues in the form of the documentary ‘Shot in the Arm,’ which was released in the fall of 2023.
‘Shot in the Arm’ has all the trappings of a modern propaganda film—so much so that it would pass Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s classification of the propaganda model with flying colours, though the irony is not lost on me that Noam Chomsky himself fell victim to Covid propaganda—and he fell hard. The propaganda model relies on a few important ‘filters’ to determine whether an event or institution is pushing propaganda, including ownership (who owns it?), official sources (who is used as a source?), and flak (how to discredit those who disagree with prevailing assumptions?).
This documentary checks all the boxes.
Even so, the film is being touted as a ‘compassionate’ and ‘unbiased’ look into vaccine hesitancy. It will be immediately evident to anyone who watches it that it is anything but. It’s also been described as a way to ‘bridge political divides’ — a common feel-good refrain used by ideologues to mask their actual disdain for anyone who may think differently than them. (I wrote about the lucrative ‘bridge building’ industry here and why it’s so ineffective).
The Propaganda Pushers
In 2019, filmmaker and director Scott Hamilton Kennedy (no relation to the Kennedy family) was already working on a film about the measles outbreak, but then Covid-19 came along and fell right onto his lap. He quickly pivoted, and started capturing the ‘anti-vaccine’ movement throughout the Covid years.
Scott Hamilton Kennedy teamed up with celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who can never pass up the opportunity to showcase his generalized ignorance on topics that extend far beyond his specialty (which he seems to forget is astrophysics) to produce this film.
Filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy poses with family after getting the flu shot (Pre-Covid days)
The insufferable Neil deGrasse Tyson ‘doing his part’
Other executive producers of importance include Rachel Pritzker and Roland Pritzker, two members of one of the wealthiest families in the United States who have an estimated net worth of $15 billion. Some notable members of the Pritzker family also happen to be on the frontlines of funding the gender ideology lobby. They’ve doled out tens of millions to a number of different institutions, including medical institutions, universities, corporations, and big banks, all under the goal of pushing the techno-medical complex. For more information about the Pritzker family, I highly recommend checking out journalist Jennifer Bilek’s blog where she has devoted considerable time investigating them.
Those involved in the production of this documentary are either incredibly wealthy and affluent (the Pritzkers), or they are well-known public figures who have a devout international following (Neil deGrasse Tyson). This combination lends itself well to pushing the right kind of propaganda that serves the establishment.
The Believers
While we’re initially led to believe that the documentary deep dives into the ‘anti-vaccine’ movement, it is actually the Believers who take up the most screen time.
The Believers are dogmatic in their pro-Science™ stance. They sincerely believe they are the Good Guys on the right side of history, and filmmaker Scott Kennedy considers himself to be one of them, too. Because of this, lines are drawn in the sand early on—it’s the Good Guys (the Believers), vs. The Bad Guys (the Skeptics).
Blima Marcus
One Believer in the pro-Science™ camp is nurse practitioner Blima Marcus.
Blima Marcus
Prior to Covid, Blima, an Ultra-Orthodox Jew, has been working to help increase the uptake of the MMR vaccine in Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.
At the onset of Covid, Blima drove around in what she called her ‘Corona Car,’ which was filled with masks, hand sanitizers, and all the other things a neurotic middle-aged woman might have in her vehicle.
Blima in her ‘corona car’
The following exchange between Blima and Scott Kennedy is one of many examples that reveal Blima’s state of mind.
Blima: “Back when Covid came to the United States, the only silver lining I saw, was that I assumed that the anti-vaccine and anti-science cohorts in our midst would realize what it feels like and what it really is to be faced with a dangerous infectious disease for which we have no treatment and no vaccine. And I thought that this would be the moment where they would realize how lucky we are, that for most other diseases we’re now on the other side of that. I did think that the arrival of Covid would be the end of the anti-science world.”
Kennedy: “Were you right?”
Blima: “I was never so wrong in my life.”
*cue dramatic music*
As is customary for the pro-Science™ crowd, Blima throws around the words ‘anti-vaccine’ and ‘anti-science,’ but she fails to explain what exactly she means by them. This is par for the course.
Believers have a penchant for throwing around establishment talking points, including regurgitating buzzwords like ‘anti-vaccine’, ‘anti-science,’ ‘far-right’, and ‘conspiracy theorist’ without ever defining them. It’s an effective way to frame the other side as unhinged, fringe, and paranoid—and it saves time explaining what is actually meant by using such words. In using these now established terms, the viewer is left to fill in the narrative gaps themselves while the Believers discredit anyone who don’t blindly subscribe to their ideology. This narrative then becomes normalized and is then accepted as the cultural standard.
In the same breath, Blima doubles down on the Covid threat by framing it as a ‘dangerous infectious disease’, though she doesn’t actually explain why she believes that to be the case.
On top of condemning the amount of ‘misinformation’ and mistrust surrounding vaccines, Blima calls out other health behaviours, including people who take vitamins and supplements.
Blima says,
“The misinformation and the mistrust goes beyond just vaccines and it extends to many kinds of health behaviours, belief in vitamins and supplements as alternatives to medications or vaccinations. Elderberry is a popular supplement that people believe can cure diseases or prevent diseases. These are not really true.”
While she’s talking about natural health foods, a camera pans to an unknown website listing a number of natural health products, including chia seeds, coconut oil, granola, and other natural health snacks, as if it’s evidence that natural health products are indeed dangerous.
Film pans to images of natural health foods, which it deems to be ‘anti-science’
What Blima fails to mention is that natural supplements are scientifically proven to support optimal health and even prevent disease. The CDC, National Institutes of Health, and other regulatory bodies agree.
Most Americans don’t even meet the daily requirement for essential vitamins including Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, calcium, or magnesium, which greatly increases risk for disease, cancer, and other ailments. It feels absurd to even point out these fundamental facts, but apparently it is necessary considering health care workers themselves aren’t taught anything about nutrition, and they dare even insinuate that the promotion of such supplements is ‘anti-scientific,’ like Blima has done here.
Even Blima’s point about elderberry is off-base. Elderberry is chock full of nutrients and antioxidants that help boost the immune system and may even protect against respiratory illness. The only reason why there is little peer-reviewed articles on its efficacy is because there is no money to be made from funding its research. We know that preliminary research indicates that it is indeed a viable source for reducing ailment symptoms and even preventing illness. But Western medicine is inherently reductionist and relies on treatment not prevention. There’s no money to be made here.
Interestingly, more countries are now trying to make it even harder for people to access natural supplements because of claims that they are ‘dangerous’ and pose health care risks. See: Canada’s latest attempts to further regulate the natural health market. This sudden vilification of natural health products is highly convenient, and very advantageous for the medical-industrial complex.
Karen Ernst
Another key Believer firmly in the pro-vaccine camp is Karen Ernst, the Director of Voices for Vaccines.
Karen explains how she got involved with the Voices for Vaccines organization:
“I was on maternity leave. My second son Levi was 10 days old. And it was my first son Toby’s 5th birthday. His preschool was having a party for the entire class, and all of the parents stayed, including me and my husband with Levi.
The next day I got a call from the preschool telling me that Levi had been exposed to chickenpox. And chickenpox in a newborn baby is really, very serious. Levi was fine. But when the mom came back I did ask her, ‘Hey, how in the heck did he get chickenpox? Didn’t he have the vaccine?’ And she told me that, ‘No,’ they just didn’t think that the vaccine was important. I was surprised. Like I had a newborn, why didn’t she have our back on this?”
While this story was meant to elicit sympathy, I had a bit of a different reaction.
For one, chickenpox is incredibly common. It’s so common that chickenpox parties were a typical event for kids to quickly build immunity. Millions of kids are exposed to chickenpox every year. Of that amount, up to 100 people in the United States die from it annually which, for comparison, is approximately the same number of Americans that die from jellyfish stings.
Because of the chickenpox vaccine, advocates now claim that only up to 30 people die a year—which may be an improvement, but it’s hardly impactful considering so few people die from chickenpox in the first place.
On the other side of it, between 2006 and 2018, 69 people were significantly compensated for varicella (chickenpox) vaccine-related injuries. This does not include those who were denied compensation (which is extremely difficult to get), but who still claimed vaccine injuries.
The actual vaccine may indeed cause more injury than the illness itself, which make Karen’s reaction all the more disproportionate, and frankly, irrational.
Not only was Karen’s baby unharmed, he didn’t even get sick in the first place.
It was such an overreaction, but it is very telling that this non-incident traumatized Karen enough to completely immerse herself in the vaccine cause. If Karen was that scared, perhaps she should have taken a page out of her own book and taken some personal responsibility herself and not brought her newborn baby to her son’s preschool.
About her position with Voices for Vaccines Karen says,
“I like to be a parent representative. Part of what we have to do is work to inoculate people against misinformation by teaching them how it works, and helping them figure out how to fight it.”
It’s no mistake that Karen is making parallels between the Covid vaccine and her attempts to ‘inoculate’ people against what she calls ‘misinformation.’ While the term ‘inoculation’ originated in 1799 and meant ‘to insert a bud in a plant for propagation,’ Karen repurposes it to say that much like Covid is an infectious disease, so too are humans who express wrongthink. It’s a very calculated and deliberate use of language that is meant to evoke negative feelings against anyone who appears to, according to Karen, push misinformation.
This isn’t the first time Karen uses medical-speak to describe skeptics.
Elsewhere in the film she says,
“I like to think of vaccine hesitancy as its own infectious disease.”
In this example Karen suggests that anyone who is even hesitant is an infectious disease, and the disease of hesitancy must be eradicated.
These are just a few examples of how the pro-Science™ camp carelessly throws around buzzwords and redefines them as they see fit. These aren’t people who care for bridging divides or expressing compassion for the ‘other side’—they are self-righteous, calculating, and irrational—and they possess an inexplicable inability to think critically—it is a dangerous combination, but an effective one for selling propaganda.
Paul Offit
Like Karen Ernst and Blima Marcus, Paul Offit and Peter Jay Hotez, both paediatricians and vaccinologists, are also portrayed as The Good Guys. Paul Offit is also notably a member of the FDA’s advisory committee.
On the topic of science Paul says:
“Science isn’t political. At least it shouldn’t be. There’s something very pure about science. It’s not like politics or religion or philosophy. It’s not a democratic process.”
He also says that “Science is enormously self-correcting . . . it’s always self-questioning.”
Paul’s not the only one of the Good Guys who believes this.
Karen Ernst’s parents also make an appearance in the film and regurgitate the same science-is-not-political talking point.
Her parents are self-professed Conservatives who also happen to be ‘pro-Science’. Scott Kennedy couldn’t ask for better propaganda actors: white Conservative seniors who are the perfect recipients of the fear campaign.
About science not being political, Karen Ernst’s mom, Pam, says,
“This is not politics. This is science. This is your health. You don’t consult your congresswoman or congressman when you want to know if you should get a vaccine. You ask your doctor.”
Statements like these make me wonder where people like Pam and Paul have been during Covid. No matter where you stand on the topic, if nothing else, Covid revealed to all of us how political science really is. One need only look at when the supposed revolutionary vaccine was initially rolled out—a not insignificant number of people called it the ‘Trump vaccine’ and refused to take it simply because Trump promoted it. Once Biden took office, the very same vaccine was suddenly deemed safe. This event, like so many others, has been selectively erased by public consciousness.
In my own province (that I have since left), B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry admitted on more than one occasion that Covid rules were indeed political, though again, many conveniently ignored these admissions, too. It’s also worth noting that Dr. Bonnie Henry is now currently pushing for the expansion of B.C’s failed safe supply program.
Science is indeed political. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Politically-accepted ‘science’ is bought-and-paid for by for-profit systems that stand to benefit from the outcomes (i.e., pharmaceutical drugs, peer-reviewed articles, etc). And these for-profit systems—the FDA, big pharma, and government—work in lockstep to prevent ‘bunk’ science from being published. If there’s no money to be made, then it won’t be studied (consider the lack of funding that goes into researching the health benefits of natural foods, noted above).
It’s not profitable to push natural supplements, but it is profitable to push pharmaceutical drugs as a way to mask symptoms, not treat the illness itself. This is not a conspiracy; it’s a well-established fact.
Western conventional science is inherently reductionist, and reductionist science rejects holistic and spiritual ways of healing—as confirmed by Blima who confidently states this much when she vilifies perfectly safe, and yes, scientific, ways of maintaining good health. That’s how The Science™ works today—it operates within a narrow, reductionist vacuum within the parameters of an economic system that values wealth over health.
Another significant thing to note is that Paul Offit fails to mention he’s actually against vaccinating healthy Americans. In a September 2023 interview with The Atlantic, Offit says frequent vaccination ‘invites unnecessary exposure to the shots’ rare but nontrivial side effects’ which goes against the CDC’s Covid-vaccine guidelines. If Scott Kennedy were to acknowledge this in the film, his carefully erected house of cards would come tumbling down. But he doesn’t address this, nor does he address the many concerns many people had about the Covid vaccine (I use this term loosely) at all.
Instead, the documentary includes Paul saying the following:
“The goal of the vaccine was to prevent serious illness, to keep people from being hospitalized, to, in many ways, protect the health care system.”
This line, repeated ad nauseam, contributed to the global gaslighting campaign in which the definition of a 200+ year old term was suddenly changed overnight. Previously, vaccinations were defined as an injection that prevented disease, but they have since been redefined by the CDC (and the world over) to mean that they prevent serious illness. To save face, the CDC argued that the original definition that “vaccines were 100% effective, [has actually] never been the case for any vaccine”—except the CDC’s own website which still makes the claim that some vaccines are“100%” effective.” Perhaps it forgot to remove these references in the whole Covid terminology upheaval shuffle.
Additionally, Offit spoke in admiration about how fast the Covid ‘vaccine’ was developed. He says, ‘you wouldn’t have found a scientist on this planet who would have thought [it was] possible to develop a vaccine so quickly.’ And then he wonders why people were skeptical. This in itself was a topical issue that had many skeptics concerned, but it, too, was completely glossed over in the film.
Offit also complains about the harassment and death threats he’s received for promoting the vaccine1. As Offit speaks, the camera pans over a few misspelled Facebook comments as an attempt to really emphasize the gravity of these threats. If that’s the worst they are willing to show, I’m of the mind to have less sympathy considering the outright years-long assault that we witnessed by the Believers (the compliant) against the Skeptics (non-compliant). Countless ordinary people lost their entire livelihoods over something that neither prevented nor stopped transmission in the first place.
I understand everyone’s experiences are subjective, but to complain about these random public Facebook comments while ignoring the massive global divisive campaign that led to broken families, relationships, job losses, and cancellations undermines many of the positions espoused in the film.
The want us to sympathize with the Believers, but they don’t extend that same grace to vaccine skeptics—the very people we are apparently supposed to view with compassion in this film.
This segment would have been the perfect opportunity to bring up how people on both sides suffered from the global fear mongering campaign. I do sympathize with those who felt pressured to comply, but I also expect this compassion to be reciprocated—and still, it hasn’t to this day.
Peter Jay Hotez
Paul Offit’s counterpart, Peter Jay Hotez, spoke at length against the claim that autism and vaccines are linked. He says that autism is largely attributed to genetics, and he shares how his own daughter, Rachel, was diagnosed with autism.
Hotez says,
“Now we have at least 100 genes, including Rachel’s gene, that we know is involved in early fetal brain development, the processes that ignite autism are well underway by the middle of pregnancy. So there’s no way you could attribute that to a vaccine.”
There is a lot to say on the topic of genes and disease, and I hope to dedicate another post just to speak to this, but I do want to make a few points.
Peter speaks with such confidence that autism is primarily genetic—but the verdict is still out. It’s only been in recent years that researchers are attributing more diseases to a specific gene or clusters of genes.
There’s a simple reason for this and it’s not scientific.
It’s not that we have more knowledge of genetic theory, it’s that there is money in it.
The medical-pharmaceutical industry provides disproportionately more funding to researchers who specifically study the onset of disease through the lens of genetic theory than not.
In Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”, he references UCLA research psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, who writes, “Our DNA is simply too paltry to spell out the wiring diagram for the human brain.” In other words, the claim that there is a singular gene like ‘Rachel’s gene’ for autism is insufficient. The reality is it’s far more complex.
Gabor Mate writes,
“Genes certainly appear to influence, among other features, such traits as temperament and sensitivity. . . In the real world, there is no nature vs. nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects. . . (Mate, p. 203)
He adds,
“Genes are controlled by their environment, and without environmental signals they could not function. . . In effect, they are turned on and off by the environment; human life could not exist if it wasn’t so.” (Mate, p. 203-4)
Hotez’s favourite agency, the CDC, supports this argument. The CDC website directly states that there are multiple causes of autism. Other organizations agree: There is no single known cause of autism, especially not a single gene singularly responsible for a specific disease.
Another very important point Gabor Mate brings up is the function of pregnancy in early fetus development. He writes that pregnancy can already begin to “program” a predisposition for a certain trait. A number of studies found that maternal stress or anxiety during pregnancy can lead to a host of problems in the baby, including developmental setbacks.
So why are narrow genetic assumptions, as demonstrated by Peter, so widely accepted now?
Mate explains:
“Our preference for a simple and quickly understood explanation is another, as is our tendency to look for one-to-one causations for almost everything. Life in its wondrous complexity does not conform to such easy reductions.” (Mate, p. 207)
Mate adds that humans like to cling to genetic theories because we don’t like feeling responsible, especially when it comes to our children. Blaming genetics allows us to recuse ourselves of potential blame. It also creates a perfect, invisible enemy—and that enemy is not us.
More than this, blaming illness or disease squarely on genetics is advantageous to the medical-pharmaceutical industry. When we blame our genes, we are less likely to take personal responsibility to change our environment, our diet, our lifestyles—to change anything we actually have control over. And Big Pharma doesn’t want us to take personal responsibility either or else that would cut into profits. 66% of adults in the United States take at least one form of prescription drugs—a devastating fact considering how dangerous they are (and in many cases, completely unnecessary).
It’s tempting to embrace the reductionist approach, whether it be in science or health care— but this approach only benefits medical-pharmaceutical industry, not people.
Much like Blima, Hotez has no problem spreading inaccurate information. Seems pretty irresponsible and anti-scientific to me, but that seems to be the modus operandi for Believers. They only believe when the narrative suits them, and then simply hand wave away the rest.
Showing a pattern of confusion, Hotez also seems to misunderstand how the Internet works.
He says,
“If you’re a parent now, you put the word ‘vaccine’ into a search engine, you’re more likely to get garbage than real information. . . They’ve monetized the internet through advertising or selling fake nutritional supplements.”
It is true that you get more garbage than real information, but you get government-corporate-approved garbage. The top search results (if you are using a major search engine like Google) will always be the mainstream, milquetoast position on the topic you are looking for. I have a more nuanced view on vaccines and my own top search results include my local health agency, Wikipedia, the CDC, and the government of Canada website. As we have seen with Covid, search engines will censor opposing (wrongthink) voices, while promoting the mainstream narratives. Many governments even teamed up with Big Tech to censor and remove any content that did not adhere to the government-approved script.
Hotez is consistently and impressively way off base, including here when he spoke about the practice of quarantine.
He says,
“I think you know when you’re trying to fight a highly transmissible virus and you don’t have a vaccine, you don’t have a lot of weapons, right, so you wind up going back to the 14th century when quarantine was invented and that’s pretty much what we’re doing.”
He fails to mention that in the 14th century and beyond, quarantine meant only pockets of people were restricted from movement, not entire countries, let alone the entire world.
Just like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Peter may be educated in a specialized area but he expresses generalized ignorance in all other areas. And just like Neil, he oozes a certain arrogance, while hiding under the veil of ‘science’ and ‘objectivity’ while failing to acknowledge how The Science™ has been co-opted by corrupt institutions—including the medical community—who consistently values profit over public health. At no point did Karen or Paul or Peter acknowledge the legacy of corruption in the FDA and other regulatory bodies. Pre-Covid, this well-established fact was hardly questioned.
But in Covid times, suddenly anyone who criticized the FDA, big pharma, or other unelected bodies like the WHO were labelled as ‘conspiracy theorists.’ Covid successfully made it even less popular to speak out against these corrupt institutions.
The Skeptics
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree
On the ‘anti-science’ side, we’re presented with two polarizing figures: TV personality and grifter Del Bigtree, and politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The former is a bombastic, ego-fuelled, loud TV personality who has had no experience of his own regarding vaccines, while the latter is a controversial politician from one of the most prominent American political families, who has managed to alienate both his family and a number of the American public.
It’s no surprise the producers hand-picked two of the most contentious characters to represent the ‘anti-science’ side.
RFK Jr. kindly (I say kindly because he must have known he would be portrayed as a villain) agreed to appear in the documentary, only to have to spend the entire segment having to defend himself. He emphasized that he’s not ‘anti-vaccine’ and explained how the term is used to marginalize and vilify those who are skeptical—which went right over the producers’ heads.
He also says of the term ‘conspiracy,’
“People use the word ‘conspiracy’ to imply that it is a fantasy of some kind. . . I wouldn’t use the word ‘conspiracy’ anymore although that may be applicable because the word now has connotations that it’s a hypothesis by people who are irrationally paranoid.”
In RFK Jr.’s interview, they focused on the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak and heavily blamed him for his alleged role in it. The film states that the Samoan Prime Minister banned all vaccines in 2018, but that’s not actually what happened. He didn’t actually outright ban vaccines; he launched an inquiry following the death of two babies who were give the MMR vaccine and who died shortly after. Turns out, the nurses made a fatal error and mixed the vaccine with expired muscle relaxant instead of water. The inquiry and temporary pause on the vaccination program was a necessary reaction, not unlike something other political leaders would do.
I don’t know how much was left on the cutting room floor, but it was a strange thing to focus on given RFK Jr.’s sheer contributions—whether you agree with him or not—to the vaccine conversation.
Elsewhere in the documentary, Peter Hotez takes a swipe at RFK Jr.’s books. He says,
“Amazon is now the single largest promoter of fake anti-vaccine books” as the camera pans to RFK Jr.’s books. While the producers had the opportunity to ask RFK Jr. directly about these books that they show on screen, they simply didn’t bother.
The ‘fake anti-vaccine’ books in question, as shown in the documentary
Andrew Wakefield
The film also devoted a section of the documentary to rehashing Andrew Wakefield’s retracted 1998 Lancet paper alleging a link between MMR vaccines and autism. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license and is seen as a disgrace among the medical community and the public at large. The strongest point—which is hardly persuasive—made in the entire documentary about vaccine hesitancy is based on a long retracted study, not even related to Covid. No other vaccine concerns were addressed in the film, which by all accounts defeats the entire purpose of the film.
The ‘Extremists’ (aka. The Rest of Us)
There are countless educated and rational voices comprising of people of all backgrounds who have expressed skepticism or hesitancy, but the film unsurprisingly excludes these voices, knowing full well that if the ‘anti-science’ crowd was more accurately represented, the producers might actually inadvertently turn more people into critical thinkers.
Scott Kennedy goes even further with the ‘anti-science’ crowd, framing them as uneducated, irrational, gun toting, far-right extremists. It’s not at all surprising, considering we’ve been bombarded with this exact messaging for years.
We’re shown selective footage from anti-lockdown protests, including far-right extremist flags, QAnon signs, protesters carrying guns, and even Alex Jones speaking into a mic from his armoured InfoWars vehicle.
In one clip, an obnoxious protester is seen yelling ‘freedom’ into the camera, another shows Starbucks customers arguing about mask wearing.
Another shows a fearful young girl saying to the camera, “Every time I hear the word ‘vaccine’ I have a panic attack. That’s how scared I am.”
Despite mounting evidence against mask wearing and discourse around the consequences of Covid authoritarian policies, the filmmaker still chose to recycle outrage content and lazily slap it onto an already shoddily produced documentary. On the skeptic side, we’re not presented with an even playing field—we’re presented with caricatures, stereotypes of people who we think might fit the ‘anti-science’ bill. We got Del Bigtree, RFK Jr., Andrew Wakefield, ‘far-right’ extremists, Alex Jones, and some young women who refused to wear their masks in a coffee shop. It’s not an even playing field, but that’s exactly what Scott Kennedy intended.
The (Almost) Light Bulb Moment
There was a brief moment in the documentary where I thought maybe, just maybe, Scott Kennedy and his team developed some, albeit brief, capacity for self-awareness.
In one part of the film, they acknowledged that the health care industry has a history of working in lockstep with corporations and big pharma to push products they know are harmful to the public. The film showed a physician-approved cigarette advertisement, some statistics about the worsening opioid epidemic, and there was even a brief mention of the Tuskegee experiment in which poor, black men were used as test subjects for a syphilis research study. It’s one of the most significant cases of medical racism, but they devoted not more than 20 seconds to it.
They glossed over this segment so quickly without even bothering to explain the images we were looking at.
Upon reflection, I can only assume that this brief segment was their way of saying, ‘See, we’re totally unbiased. We’re willing to critique the medical industrial complex, too!’ In reality, they missed a huge opportunity to actually educate viewers in a way that is nuanced and thoughtful, but clearly their mission to push propaganda superseded this.
The Threat to Democracy
The real clincher is when the documentary suddenly pivots and covers the events of January 6, 2021, in which skeptics are somehow lumped into the same category as the ‘terrorists’ who ‘stormed the capitol.’
The film showed the most dramatic, Hollywood-style clips of protesters in the capitol—we were shown fistfights, guns, property destruction, and all kinds of MAGA paraphernalia. What wasn’t shown was the peaceful footage of security and law enforcement welcoming the protesters, chatting and laughing, and shaking their hands. Many protesters were just walking around, looking bored. Some were posing with props, others were taking selfies.
The film haphazardly threw in some clips of politicians condemning the events, including one from Mitt Romney who claimed democracy was attacked (or at least the illusion of it), “What happened here today was an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”
Scott Kennedy agrees. He says the protesters “attacked a pillar of our democracy.” And Paul Offit had to chime in with his own opinion saying, “Once facts don’t matter then it’s not a democracy anymore.”
Perhaps this is the most unsettling thing of all: An event like this is considered an “attack to democracy” while the dismantling of rights under Covid was not.
The Patients
It wouldn’t be a good Covid propaganda movie without showing some viral clips of intubated Covid patients warning us of the dangers of Covid.
As expected from Scott Kennedy, the clips didn’t include any information about what we were seeing—we weren’t given sources, who the people were, what pre-existing conditions they had, how they’ve been treated, when they were intubated, and so on.
It was such a classless, tacky way to ‘prove’ a point—especially considering many of these patients died. Scott felt it was okay to plaster their faces on the screen, but couldn’t even bother to include their names. Again, this was his intent. The purpose is not to elicit compassion, but to spread fear.
Patients who warned of the dangers of Covid
No thanks to the documentary, I did my own sleuthing and found that the patient on the right is 43-year-old mother Sara Montoya who sadly passed away shortly after the video was posted to social media.
After Sara’s death, her daughter wrote a post on GoFundMe detailing what happened. Sara had high blood pressure and diabetes, and when her Covid symptoms worsened, she was ventilated within an hour of being admitted to the hospital.
She never received plasma, just a 10-day steroid treatment. Her condition progressively worsened: she developed pneumonia, MRSA, and she was in need of blood transfusions. After a month of being ventilated, sedated, and intubated, Sara died. To this day, her family says they still never got to speak to the attendant on her case. We still aren’t even sure to what extent of a role, if any, did Covid play here. What we do know is health care workers were reactive. Patients were put on mechanical ventilation too early, which produced disastrous results. Human error certainly had a hand in Covid patient deaths. But the documentary failed to mention any of this. In 2020, the U.S. was even dubbed the ‘King of Ventilators’ according to Trump.
Unfortunately, neither the film nor the health professionals involved conducted a retrospective on the early use of ventilators. Another miss.
The Reality TV Stars
While the film doesn’t actually delve into the science of vaccines at all, it does, however, give us a glimpse into the life of Scott Kennedy and his family amid Covid.
We got shots of his family hugging, crying, and overall looking all-too-relatable. It felt like a poorly scripted reality TV show, in which each cast member played up to each of their roles: We saw the benevolent wife who dedicated her life to working in service of others, the earnest, well-rounded kids, and the doting father, standing nearby. This is the all-American, do-gooder family that follows the social contract—the only flaws they have are the most relatable ones.
It all felt so contrived and emotionally manipulative. It did nothing to advance the documentary—it was just filler content in a documentary that has enough filler content.
The Converts
Blima Marcus (again)
Remember Blima? The pro-Science Believer who drove around in her Corona Car trying to convert skeptical Jews into (vaccine) believers?
Turns out Blima was once a skeptic herself. Blima confessed to being ‘anti-vaccine’ (whatever her interpretation of it was), and she said she pursued nursing just so she could educate herself more. According to her, this helped her understand the science better and subsequently turn into a believer herself, much to the satisfaction of Scott Kennedy, who uses this as a good story to sell. What better way to persuade people than show them the skeptic-to-believer pipeline?
Lynette Marie Barron
We’re introduced to another skeptic-turned-convert, mother Lynette Marie Barron, who was initially described as an ‘anti-vaccine activist.’ By the end of the documentary, Lynette is shown speaking with Paul Offit on her podcast. She says her views on the vaccine were silly, and now she knows better than those ignorant skeptics. It’s a success story for the believers, and one that Scott Kennedy latches onto to prove that there are indeed sides, and the wrong side to be on is that of the skeptics.
It’s no coincidence that the film both starts and ends with skeptics-turned-believers.
Hand-picking these ‘success stories’ highlights once again that the purpose of the film is not to bridge divides, or try to understand both sides, or to even conduct rudimentary research on the science of vaccines. Its express purpose is to convert people to the pro-Science side—the side that hijacks health in the name of profit. Much like religion, its believers are dogmatic, irrational, and reactionary. The only acceptable way to exist is to be a Believer, lest you risk being an outcast.
The second biggest miss in the film, aside from its dearth of actual science, is that it doesn’t address Covid vaccine hesitancy at all. It fails to acknowledge the fact that many people who are Covid vaccine hesitant are indeed vaccinated against other diseases. The film conflates all vaccines as if they’re the same—both in development and roll-out. But that is not the case. The Covid vaccine both redefined the very meaning of vaccines, but also ushered in what many called the ‘mRNA revolution.’ TIME magazine even published an issue called ‘The Vaccine Revolution’ in January 2021.
To many, it was deemed the most important scientific breakthrough of our time—you’d think the that pro-science camp would talk about it, but not a single word was uttered.
These careful omissions and outright lies further confirm that this film isn’t meant to educate, or show compassion for ‘anti-vaccine’ activists, but to shame and demonize or convert non-believers.
We know more than we ever did about the disastrous Covid policies that many warned about from the very beginning. But the documentary ignores everything that happened beyond 2022. It’s as if it’s still stuck in March 2020, when we were still trying to piece together what was going on—when we all shared the same excuse that we were simply lacking information.
I would somewhat understand if something like was made in 2022, but there is no excuse to release something like this in late 2023. And this is perhaps Scott Kennedy’s biggest mistake: He released something that should have been scrapped altogether.
‘Shot in the Arm’ is a case study in the efficacy of modern propaganda and how it both continues to form, and is influenced by public opinion. It’s a 90 minute, ad-free regurgitation of the propaganda that has long either been debunked or is actively being questioned today. It’s not worth your, or anyone else’s time.
Do Your Part, y’all
Lastly, what wouldn’t be a good piece of Covid propaganda without including clips of health care workers filming themselves dancing for TikTok while their Covid patients are on life support?
When I write ‘vaccine,’ I am using the term very loosely and according to the long-standing definition. I only use it to maintain brevity, not necessarily for accuracy.
I do have a question though. You accurately highlighted how the film's producer and several of his "vax-enthusiastic" subjects tended to lean on the use of such undefined and often demonstrably inaccurate smear terms such as "anti-vaxxer".
That said, it feels like you gave Del Bigtree a similar treatment, describing him as a " polarizing figure", " a grifter...a bombastic, ego-fuelled, loud TV personality who has had no experience of his own regarding vaccines".
It's not a crime to have a TV show, especially in the context of this topic, one dedicated to applying journalism to the vaccine products / infectious disease arena. If that endeavor is what you're referring to, it doesn't seem justification for using a word like "grifter" which implies someone trying to con people out of money, a serious charge. Especially without offering any evidence of any "grifting" or even a definition of what you mean by that term.
It sounds like you don't enjoy his personality, but using a term like "ego-fueled" while making no attempt to catalogue any of his significant achievements in dealing with censorship and a highly embargoed topic, and trying to make it possible for the public to hear from vaccine skeptics of many different stripes, seems without journalistic merit, and rather beside the point.
He's been viciously attacked by the pharma-public health juggernaut from the moment he made Vaxxed. I'm sure that has presented difficulties, but it can't be denied: He's walked the walk, done the fundraising, and, made a lot of valuable information and interviews available to the public free of charge. I'm not sure what the point was of dragging him, rather than dragging the producers of "Shot in the Arm" whomever you think would have been a better choice.
Again, I'm glad you took the time to try to lay bare how that particular film was put together seemingly to smother another perspective, rather than to steel man it. Thank you.
Thanks for the detailed review. It makes me sad that I can't use the word fascist any more, for what is blatant fascist propaganda. I don't think I could sit through the film without losing my cool either. What a horrible bunch of good little boys and girls eh? Such spinelessness, such unforgivable whoring.
Interesting and thorough review.
I do have a question though. You accurately highlighted how the film's producer and several of his "vax-enthusiastic" subjects tended to lean on the use of such undefined and often demonstrably inaccurate smear terms such as "anti-vaxxer".
That said, it feels like you gave Del Bigtree a similar treatment, describing him as a " polarizing figure", " a grifter...a bombastic, ego-fuelled, loud TV personality who has had no experience of his own regarding vaccines".
It's not a crime to have a TV show, especially in the context of this topic, one dedicated to applying journalism to the vaccine products / infectious disease arena. If that endeavor is what you're referring to, it doesn't seem justification for using a word like "grifter" which implies someone trying to con people out of money, a serious charge. Especially without offering any evidence of any "grifting" or even a definition of what you mean by that term.
It sounds like you don't enjoy his personality, but using a term like "ego-fueled" while making no attempt to catalogue any of his significant achievements in dealing with censorship and a highly embargoed topic, and trying to make it possible for the public to hear from vaccine skeptics of many different stripes, seems without journalistic merit, and rather beside the point.
He's been viciously attacked by the pharma-public health juggernaut from the moment he made Vaxxed. I'm sure that has presented difficulties, but it can't be denied: He's walked the walk, done the fundraising, and, made a lot of valuable information and interviews available to the public free of charge. I'm not sure what the point was of dragging him, rather than dragging the producers of "Shot in the Arm" whomever you think would have been a better choice.
Again, I'm glad you took the time to try to lay bare how that particular film was put together seemingly to smother another perspective, rather than to steel man it. Thank you.
Thanks for the detailed review. It makes me sad that I can't use the word fascist any more, for what is blatant fascist propaganda. I don't think I could sit through the film without losing my cool either. What a horrible bunch of good little boys and girls eh? Such spinelessness, such unforgivable whoring.