The misery was unrelenting. Exceptionally sick people flooded emergency rooms, and New York City was the epicenter of it all. It was the first wave of COVID. Death not only hung in the air; it was threatening to come for everyone. Now that we flash vaccination cards as quickly as we show driver's licenses, those wretched days are easy to forget. The first shocking months of the pandemic -- when a vaccination was not ready, Andrew Cuomo was a popular governor giving daily updates, and anyone paying attention was terrified -- are documented in a gripping National Geographic documentary, The First Wave, streaming on Hulu December 5.
Nat Geo's "The First Wave" Takes a Cinema Verité Look at the Beginning of the Pandemic in New York City
