Hollywood prides itself on telling tales that problem energy, expose injustice and provides voice to the silenced.
But in the case of “15 Days: The Actual Story of America’s Pandemic Faculty Closures,” the leisure business faces an uncomfortable check. Will it champion a documentary that reveals an inconvenient reality, or stay silent as a result of it implicates establishments that the business helps?
IT’S HERE!
15 Days: The Actual Story of America’s Pandemic Faculty Closures is LIVE NOW, streaming FREE completely on X!
500+ days of closed colleges, remoted youngsters, and damaged belief. The TRUTH is uncovered.WATCH NOW! pic.twitter.com/yxhJHtsG1L
— RESTORE CHILDHOOD (@Rstorechildhood) September 24, 2025
“15 Days” examines how America’s college closures lasted longer than nearly another nation, and the way dissenting voices—together with achieved scientists like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya—have been systematically silenced for questioning the prevailing narrative.
The Censorship Hollywood Claims to Oppose
Hollywood positions itself as a defender of free speech, making movies celebrating whistleblowers and scientists who problem dogma. But when Dr. Bhattacharya, Stanford epidemiologist, raised evidence-based considerations about lockdowns and college closures, he wasn’t debated.
He was blacklisted.
Dr. Bhattacharya, co-author of the Nice Barrington Declaration, was positioned on Twitter’s suppression algorithm. YouTube eliminated movies of his scientific discussions. Stanford’s Chair of Drugs ordered him to cease giving media interviews.
This was a credentialed professor of drugs and economics at one of many world’s main universities.
The response to dissent wasn’t engagement however elimination. When scientists can’t debate science, when mother and father can’t query insurance policies affecting their kids, when uncomfortable truths are labeled “misinformation”—that’s not public well being.
That’s authoritarianism.
If Hollywood received’t defend the free speech rights of scientists presenting peer-reviewed analysis, what credibility does it have championing free expression elsewhere?
The Union Downside and Hollywood’s Hypocrisy
Hollywood is a union city. However “15 Days” exposes how lecturers’ unions used kids and households as bargaining chips throughout the pandemic.
The documentary reveals how unions lobbied to maintain colleges closed far longer than crucial, pressured the CDC to rewrite pointers of their favor, and secured billions in federal funds tied to prolonged closures. Whereas non-public colleges, parochial colleges and constitution colleges throughout America safely opened their doorways, unionized public colleges stayed shut—not as a result of the science demanded it, however as a result of the unions did.
And the place was Hollywood? Silent. Worse than silent—complicit.
Jane Fonda, Hollywood royalty and one of many leisure business’s most celebrated activists, known as COVID-19 “God’s present to the Left” in October 2020. As kids have been falling behind, as households have been struggling, as psychological well being crises have been mounting, Fonda celebrated the pandemic as a political alternative.
That was a horrible factor to say. However what’s worse is that Hollywood’s outrage machine—all the time able to denounce the slightest transgression—remained silent. No open letters. No social media condemnations. No “accountability” campaigns.
Simply crickets.
Now, in 2025, Fonda has relaunched the Committee for the First Modification, signing ACLU letters and organizing 550+ celebrities to defend free speech—however just for Jimmy Kimmel. Solely when it advantages her facet.
Jane Fonda has relaunched the Committee for the First Modification, a McCarthy-era initiative based within the Forties by her father, Henry Fonda, to guard towards assaults on free speech.
“The McCarthy Period ended when Individuals from throughout the political spectrum lastly got here collectively… pic.twitter.com/iFtc8qkb8M
— Selection (@Selection) October 1, 2025
The place was this passionate protection of free speech when Dr. Bhattacharya was being censored? The place was it when mother and father begging to reopen colleges have been being silenced and smeared? The place was it when scientists presenting peer-reviewed analysis have been blacklisted from social media?
The hypocrisy is staggering.
Fonda now claims that is “probably the most horrifying second of my life” as a result of a late-night host confronted penalties for spreading misinformation about Charlie Kirk’s homicide. However when scientists have been systematically suppressed for sharing correct COVID knowledge? When mother and father have been labeled home terrorists? When kids’s futures have been being sacrificed whereas she celebrated the pandemic as a political present?
Silence.
Dismantling ‘We Did the Finest We Might’
For years, we’ve heard: “We did the very best we may with the knowledge we had.” “15 Days” reveals that key scientific knowledge was accessible and intentionally ignored, dissenting consultants have been censored reasonably than engaged, and “comply with the science” was selectively utilized solely when it served predetermined political goals.
As a Soviet immigrant who grew up below authoritarianism, I acknowledged the techniques: suppression of dissent, demonization of questioners and insistence that solely accepted voices may converse. When mother and father raised considerations about prolonged college closures, they have been smeared as extremists, anti-science, even home terrorists.
Dr. Bhattacharya’s testimony earlier than Congress documented how federal companies pressured social media platforms to censor scientific dialogue. The “Twitter Recordsdata” revealed he was particularly focused. This occurred to a tenured professor at an elite college.
Think about what occurred to oldsters, lecturers and journalists with out such credentials who dared to dissent.
The Stakes
The proof is stark: catastrophic studying loss, spiking psychological well being crises and widening achievement gaps that disproportionately harmed minority communities. European colleges reopened after weeks. American colleges in lots of states stayed closed for greater than 500 days.
The distinction wasn’t science. It was politics and institutional self-interest.
Each baby struggling to learn at the moment, each teenager battling melancholy and isolation, each younger grownup unprepared for faculty or work—these are the casualties of insurance policies “15 Days” examines. This documentary provides voice to kids whose training was sacrificed, mother and father who have been dismissed and demonized and scientists who have been silenced for following the proof.
In another context, Hollywood would rush to amplify these voices.
Hollywood’s Alternative
Giving “15 Days” the platform it deserves means confronting uncomfortable truths about establishments many in Hollywood assist. It means acknowledging that unions can betray the very folks they declare to serve. It means admitting that censorship and suppression of scientific debate harmed kids on an enormous scale.
The movie business has all the time been at its greatest when prepared to make audiences uncomfortable, when it challenges prevailing narratives and when it speaks reality to energy. “15 Days” does precisely that.
This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about kids. It’s about reality. It’s about guaranteeing that when the following disaster comes, we don’t repeat the identical catastrophic errors.
Dr. Bhattacharya, now main the NIH, has been vindicated by time and proof. However vindication doesn’t restore the childhoods misplaced, the training sacrificed or the psychological well being destroyed. “15 Days” preserves this historical past as a warning and a lesson.
Hollywood claims to face for the powerless towards the highly effective, for reality towards handy lies, totally free expression towards censorship. Right here’s your probability to show it. Watch “15 Days.” Reckon with what it reveals. Give it the intense consideration you’d give any documentary exposing institutional failure and the silencing of dissent.
Our kids deserved higher. They deserved school rooms, not political theater. They deserved science, not scientism. They deserved advocates, not opportunists utilizing them as pawns. Till Hollywood acknowledges this reality and amplifies these voices, it stays complicit within the silence that enabled this tragedy.
Natalya Murakhver is the founding father of Restore Childhood and director of “15 DAYS: The Actual Story of America’s Pandemic Faculty Closures.”