National Geographic’s “The First Wave” Displays The Pain and Trauma of The Covid-19 Pandemic
In this raw and heartbreaking film, viewers witness the pain and struggle healtcare workers and patients faced during New York’s first COVID-19 wave.
Still image from The First Wave / National Geographic Documentaries
There’s no denying the Covid-19 pandemic affected every one of us to some extent. Whether that was forcefully having to cancel vacation plans, graduations, or altering the way we took classes in school by transitioning to online school. These sacrifices were difficult and painful to make, but an entire other group of people faced even more difficult and unimaginable challenges. The pain healthcare workers across the globe endured as the pandemic surged is something only healthcare workers are able to understand. In big cities especially, healthcare workers were bombarded with countless patients who at some point couldn’t fit in hospitals due to limited space. These challenges are displayed in The First Wave, National Geographic’s documentary highlighting the experiences of healthcare workers and Covid patients in New York during the first wave of Covid.
I watched this film well over a year of the pandemic coming to close, so it was difficult for me to relive the memories I experienced as well as the heavy news surrounding what victims of the virus and caretakers were feeling at this time. This film does an incredible job at making each scene, each frame, as raw and vulnerable as possible. You can almost feel the pain and hurt both the patients and healthcare workers are feeling through the screen. The heartbreak in this film makes you feel incredibly empathetic towards those most gravely impacted by the pandemic.
The film not only showcases the perspectives of the healthcare workers and patients, but the family members being affected as well. A major point shown in the film is how the pandemic had lasting impacts and inflicted pain on everyone, whether they found themselves in a hospital or not. Children of patients and their family members faced incredible amounts of stress and uncertainty of not being sure when they would see their family member again. Due to the strength of the virus, families had to rely on facetime and calls to communicate with their family, and most of the time the patients were unresponsive and the only person capable of maintaining communication from the other side were the nurses and doctors.
The various sides of desperation during the pandemic are on full display in the film, and the ones I felt most emotional watching was the distress the healthcare workers felt. Having to work day or night long shifts where the only thing surrounding them was the pandemic proved to be incredibly emotionally and physically taxing. Healthcare workers lived with the constant fear of getting sick but had no choice but to risk their lives to help the countless numbers of patients. The way the filmmakers highlighted this through close up shots of the healthcare workers both at home and in the hospital display the amount of emotional distress they were feeling. Many nurses described feeling exhausted and tired of seeing patients die each and every day.
Some of the hardest scenes to watch are where the nurses and doctors are desperately doing everything they can to keep a patient from dying. The suspense and desperation in the air is so intense, and the filmmakers manage to capture it in a way so raw you feel like you’re in the emergency room itself. A piece of film so vulnerable like this one helps shine light on the heroic acts of the healthcare workers and demonstrate to each audience member just how arduous the pandemic was for healthcare workers. While many can agree that the challenges healthcare workers faced was tremendous, the way the film depicts their profession during a global pandemic gives a new perspective on just how intense their experience was.
It’s important that media and film companies like National Geographic use their platform to tell important stories, and this film arguably tells the most important story of the decade. The pandemic is an event that forever changed all of us and impacted so many, and this film underscores just how great the impact was on healthcare workers and their patients. Both groups faced unimaginable difficulties, and this film helps shine a light on their struggles so others can see what the pandemic looked like outside of quarantine. Since most of us spent our time locked in our houses, this documentary sheds light on the frontline battle nurses and doctors faced as they combated one of the greatest challenges in our history. While sad to watch, this film also displays the power of teamwork and how resilience is sometimes the only way to overcome an obstacle.
Despite the heaviness and pain depicted in this documentary, it strangely offers a hopeful feeling once you reach the end. The pandemic proved how strong humanity could be, and how people could come together to overcome an incredibly arduous time. In a way, this film inspired me, and gave me hope for the power of unity, empathy, and above all hope that we can all love and care for each other in times of need. This film manages to break your heart and make you cry, but piece it back together at the end to give you a positive outlook and what’s next. It encapsulates the message that while the pandemic was a substantial time full of pain, loss, and tears, we can always come out on the other side.