Virulent: The Vaccine War - Movie Screening and Q and A

Join us on October 20 at 7 PM for a screening of “,” a documentary about anti-vaccine activism in an age of COVID-19, social media influencers, and easy access to misinformation and disinformation about vaccines.

Following the screening, film producer Laura Davis and director Tjardus Greidanus will join an expert panel to discuss the film and the public health impacts of anti-vaccine activism. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with the public in attendance. 

Event Timeline:

7pm - Screening

8:30pm - Q and A with Virulent Producer and Director

About Laura Davis and Tjardus Greidanus:

Laura and Tjardus specialize in making impactful documentaries about science and medicine. Their latest project, Virulent: The Vaccine War, examines the history of vaccine hesitancy and the galvanizing effect Covid-19 has had on anti-vaccination activists. It is their follow-up to the CINE Golden Eagle-winning A Shot to Save the World about the creation of the Salk polio vaccine which featured an exclusive interview with Bill Gates and streamed on Paramount+ throughout 2020. 

Another feature documentary, Burden of Genius, an exploration of Dr. Thomas Starzl’s pioneering work in organ transplantation, is heading to public television in 2023 following weeks of sold-out screenings at the Carnegie Science Center and hundreds of screenings at top transplant centers including Stanford, Columbia, Harvard-Mass General, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, UPMC, Duke and the University of Chicago as well as at transplant conferences around the world.

About Our Panel:

is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. With a background in biomedical informatics, he focuses on computational approaches in complex data settings, especially electronic health records and disease surveillance, to understand infectious disease transmission. This has been demonstrated through his work with blood borne pathogens (HIV and hepatitis C), COVID-19, vaccine preventable diseases, and healthcare associated infections.

, is an epidemiologist and faculty at Temple University’s College of Public Health. Dr. Palumbo has been working in public health and epidemiology for 15 years. In addition to research in social epidemiology, she has training in infectious disease epidemiology, having worked in city and state health departments conducting surveillance and managing public health investigations of infectious disease outbreaks. She is currently an Associate Professor of Instruction and Graduate Program Director for the MPH and PhD programs Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate students the fundamental concepts and methods in epidemiology, with the goal of increasing public health literacy and understanding of health-related research.