On the Wuhan China Covid front lines

 

Yes, we’ve lived through the Covid-19 pandemic nine months now and we might be beyond exhausted by this beyond distressing topic. But the virus’s original outbreak was in Wuhan China, a time when the rest of the world thought was a particular and strange virus confined only to that country. Foreign news reports showed a city we’d never heard of totally locked down, neighborhoods cut off by blue fences, crews in hazmat space suits roaming streets with disinfectant blowers. And while the virus has since spread worldwide numbing our senses the source of Covid-19 can still hold fascination, if only because the Chinese experienced it before anyone else. The documentary 76 Days (opening today virtually at the Detroit Film Theatre and Cinema Detroit) takes us deep into those front lines, literally into four Wuhan hospitals, with intimate and uncomfortable footage showing what it was like in hospital wards when people were increasingly being admitted with this strange and unpredictable disease. The first scene opens with a woman writhing in anguish as she’s prevented from visiting her dying father. “You’ll forever live in my heart!” she wails. In another scene, hospital staff try to open a door where a group of people are pressing in to be admitted. They’re admonished – “we’ll get to you eventually!” The scenes are punctuated by lone ambulances travelling though a surreal cityscape. The film’s chronology seems a microcosm of the pandemic itself. Eventually the wards settle down as patients are admitted and treated individually. There are four or five patients we follow. Most are aged and the staff have a habit of calling them “grandpa” or “grandma.” One unruly patient is referred to as a “Hubei (province) Local,” a rube. “Bloody big deal,” he scoffs at the virus. A nurse jokes that if he lives longer, he’ll have “even more bliss” with additional family generations. Another patient remarks,” this place is not bad, free medication and hot meals.” But a woman patient gradually deteriorates. “She used to always hold by hand,” a nurse says. Her bracelet is slipped off and saved in a plastic bag with her phone and identity card, eventually given to her weeping daughter. Almost every scene is set in the ICU with staff photographed as they scramble amidst chaos to intubate or set up IV lines. One nurse is philosophical. “Rich or poor, revered or despised, fate befalls all.” While 76 Days, which refers to Wuhan’s total lockdown earlier this year, has three directors, only two – Weixi Chen and “Anonymous” (to protect his identity in China) – had access to the hospitals, sometimes surreptitiously, with the aid of hospital staff who wanted to show the world what Wuhan was facing. Lead director Hao Wu remained back in the US as the pandemic descended on North America. He calls the footage, which he edited, “raw, intimate and deeply human.” Yes, it is.