Why Designated Survivor devoted Season 3 last year to a pandemic

Variety

Showrunner Neal Baer met with experts from Johns Hopkins University, Harvard and MIT in preparation for writing the season, and found that they were so concerned he decided to revolve the entire third season -- the first on Netflix --  around a pandemic. “It’s amazing that we can be so technologically advanced in some areas, but we’re asking people in Boston to make (protective) masks out of clothes like we’re in the time of Betsy Ross,” he say of the coronavirus pandemic. Baer adds: "I’m hoping that COVID-19 provides us with a drill. Even though it’s caused terrible calamity, it’s also preparing us for what could be much worse. That was my idea in doing it in Designated Survivor."