{"id":398174,"date":"2021-11-20T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=377516"},"modified":"2021-11-20T12:00:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T12:00:48","slug":"the-first-wave-shows-what-we-havent-seen-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/11\/20\/the-first-wave-shows-what-we-havent-seen-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"“The First Wave” Shows What We Haven’t Seen of Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
At Long Island<\/u> Jewish Medical Center, a loudspeaker announces an emergency in one of the rooms.\u00a0It is March 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic has just begun to take hold in the U.S. A\u00a0team\u00a0of nurses and doctors in the hospital is preparing a patient for intubation. A doctor leans over the patient.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge,\u201d the doctor shouts, \u201cdo you want to be put on a respirator?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPut me on,\u201d George responds weakly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll let your family know, OK?\u201d the doctor says.<\/p>\n
George is struggling to breathe\u00a0and knows it\u2019s his last hope.<\/p>\n
\u201cPut me on now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
If you have survived the pandemic without going inside a Covid ward, you will likely be stunned by the grim intimacy of this scene and the fact that you are witnessing it, with real-time urgency, in Matthew Heineman\u2019s new documentary, “The First Wave.” The scene offers\u00a0the kind of life-and-death drama that medical staffs have staggered through every day\u00a0while the rest of us rarely or never saw it. We were \u2014 and are \u2014 isolated from the traumatic realities inside U.S. hospitals as more than 750,000 souls perished from the virus.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0opening scene, not yet 30 seconds long, twists in ways you cannot forget.<\/p>\n
A nurse puts a phone, encased in a plastic bag, in front of George\u2019s face. On the other end, seeing him via FaceTime, is George\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you, baby,\u201d she cries out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you too,\u201d George responds.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK, be strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBye,\u201d George says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you,\u201d she repeats.<\/p>\n
\u201cBye bye,\u201d George says. \u201cBye bye bye bye bye bye.\u201d<\/p>\n
This\u00a0scene is not done with us but I won\u2019t say what happens next. What I can say is that \u201cThe First Wave\u201d is necessary to watch. Unless you have already seen and heard the kinds of events it shows, you have an incomplete understanding of the pandemic and of what three-quarters of a million deaths mean \u2014 when instead of a\u00a0statistic\u00a0in a news story, the casualties\u00a0are a man on his back, his wife on the phone, and the nurses and doctors doing everything they can to save his life.<\/p>\n