by Thinus Ferreira
"There was a moment in the Turkish batcave where I got slightly flustered and touched my eye with my finger. After there was so much talk of 'don't touch your face', there I was, not in a supermarket - I'm literally in a batcave - and I touched my eye. I was slightly worried about that."
So says the ABC News foreign correspondent James Longman who was part of a Zoom roundtable presentation that National Geographic held for South African media for the Virus Hunters TV documentary special that will be broadcast on National Geographic (DStv 181 / StarSat 220) on Wednesday 25 November at 21:00.
Before the roundtable presentation, National Geographic also provided media with a digital screener of the documentary to watch and preview.
In the Virus Hunters documentary, James Longman, together with the National Geographic fellow, epidemiologist and ecologist Christopher Golden, travel across the world to talk to "virus hunter" scientists to get their thoughts on virus pandemics and Covid-19.
They look at how scientists across the globe track, test and analyse animals - from bats to pigs - to try and give humanity and the world a fighting chance against diseases like the coronavirus.
Although Virus Hunters on National Geographic is a hard-hitting, often-gritty, investigative hour of documentary television, it is quite beautifully made with several cinematic flourishes right through until the very end when the credits roll.
"The main thing is to do work where you can give people some answers and talk to real specialists. So often in my work, it's a minute, or 2 minutes or 3 minutes on the evening news. Actually now with Virus Hunters it's a full hour of telling people the science and what they can do to empower themselves," says James Longman.
'It isn't just some exotic issue that happens in the far reaches of our world. These are issues that can happen at home.'
"The thing I found most fascinating - all of it was really interesting to me - is that Virus Hunters is a way of giving people a way of better understanding and contextualising why these things happen and explaining to viewers that it isn't just some exotic issue that happens in the far reaches of our world, but these are issues that can happen at home," says James Longman.
"We spend a lot of time I think in the media 'othering' other parts of the world - Africa is obviously the continent that experiences that the most - and to tell the audience that, yes, the next pandemic could come out of a Liberian batcave, but equally it could come out of a farm in the midwest of the United States."
"Hopefully the end result of something like Virus Hunters is that we understand that we all face an equal amount of risk and that it's incumbent on everyone to change their behaviours when it comes to the natural world."
Media could only pose possible questions through typing it in a Zoom chatbox. TVwithThinus asked what some of the challenges were in filming and making Virus Hunters, and travelling internationally during this year's Covid-19 global pandemic.
"A lot of countries are in total lockdown so you have to first get permission to go there in the first place. Luckily when you work with National Geographic, it's such a name that it offers so much access. It's extraordinary the amount of admiration there is for the brand."
'People will be slightly sceptical looking at cameras, and then they hear it's National Geographic and their faces change. They love it.'
"I've never really experienced that. I used to work for the BBC and it had a little bit of that but there's something special about National Geographic. You could be in a Liberian rainforest or on a farm in Iowa and people will be slightly sceptical looking at cameras, and then they hear it's National Geographic and their faces change. They love it. So I suppose that made our lives a little easier."
"The crew - Chris and I and our cameraman and producer, we were in a 'bubble', so we were not worried about each other's infection risk but we were constantly getting tested. We had to get tested when we arrived in Turkey and left Turkey."
"Actually in Liberia, the mandate is that you have to be tested before arriving, and you're tested before you leave - and the threat of possible Liberian quarantine isn't really something that any of us anticipated when we were there."
"We were a little bit worried that we'd end up testing positive and having to live in some kind of military prison. We heard that that's where the Liberians were keeping people. Can you imagine 14 days in some cell with a sponge and a bowl to wash yourself? No thanks. So we were very careful when we saw how strict the Liberian authorities were," says James Longman.
"Why something like National Geographic is so important and why Virus Hunters is so important is because it actually speaks to people who know what they're talking about - get away from the politics and just talk to the scientists."
"So much of the debate around Covid-19 has become much, much too politicised and that's why a show like Virus Hunters is so important. Just present people with the science and that's what National Geographic does best."
During the Zoom media presentation TVwithThinus typed a number of questions specifically about the making of this TV documentary to find out more about the behind-the-scenes production of Virus Hunters; none of these were asked or answered.
