The First Wave

The stories of those who overcame, and the care of the medical professionals towards their patients, was absolutely breathtaking.

Anyone who says differently, trivializes the suffering of others and the work of the healthcare professionals. In fact, those who marked a 1 and voiced their opinion, made clear their ignorance.

I thought Matthew Heineman did justice by being able to film what was going on in the ICUs at the time. The hospital they were at was in Queens and I was in Brooklyn at the time. It's accurate. I was surprised the film crew was able to capture more of the intimate moments that the public doesn't get to see. It's a necessary watch, despite the flashbacks. Part of me thinks if they were releasing footage like this early on in the pandemic, it would've changed a lot of public opinion. The other part says some people still would've turned a blind eye. Also, beware of the other reviews calling this fake. Those Herman Cain award nominees wouldn't even know...

As a nurse who worked in the icu this is the most accurate documentary I've seen. I hesitated to watch it since I'm trying to work through it all still. When she was explaining the frustrations of not being able to actually help anyone it really hit home. In the beginning patients would get better and we would tell their families and give them hope because we didn't know better yet. Then they would suddenly crash and code. It was completely soul crushing to not be able to help these people who were suffering. Everyone was calling us heroes but we were barely saving anyone early on. I felt like such a failure. Also how attached we get to our patients, we say we try to separate it but I think we all had those that we got close to, them and their families, who hit us harder when they passed. The first thing we would do when walking in the door is check and see if they are still alive. I'm glad this gives a glimpse of what it was like for both the patients and staff. Also glad PT's got airtime, those that were lucky enough to survive had a long road ahead of them. Wish they had also focused on a RT, they are so crucial always but especially during covid. I think it was very well done overall.

I think this documentary is extremely accurate in telling this story that needs to be told from the lens of healthcare providers. It literally was like this. The emotions, the dialogue, the sentiments, the difficult conversations, the intersection with racial injustice and unrest. It is all accurate, and seeing this made me feel heard. It validated that many of the things// conversations I saw and experiences I/ my colleagues had were in fact happening everywhere.

We as a society failed here massively. This all could have been avoided if we would have gone into a strict globally coordinated lock-down as soon as the first cases started showing up. I am glad that I was able to convince my parents to isolate, move to our remote condo, and stay away from everybody until they finally got vaccinated.

That being said, those who down-vote this documentary and call it fake, are exactly the same people who have been downplaying the pandemic and making it much worse for everybody else. They should be ashamed of themselves instead of continuing with their bull.

Lastly I would like to express my condolences to everybody who lost a loved one to this disease, and thank everybody who was involved into saving people's lives despite all the struggle and disbelief about how some patients got sick.

It's hard to watsch because it's a documentary about just the first wave. We all had multiple of those. And many less fortunate countries got much worse outcomes. And it's still not over as of now.