‘Frontline’ traces the footsteps of COVID-19
Absurd theatre of Trump briefings is a sideshow to the real tragedy
“The Virus: What Went Wrong?,” a 90-minute instalment of PBS’ “Frontline” premièring Tuesday, resurfaces the story of the pandemic that felt like an inescapable catastrophe just three weeks ago. Making no mention of protests or police, it’s like a courier with an urgent message who lost his place in line.
This is the third consecutive “Frontline” film about COVID-19, following “Coronavirus Pandemic” and “Inside Italy’s COVID War.” (They can be streamed at the “Frontline” website.)
The Italian episode, an intimate, hit-and-run portrait of doctors and nurses at a hospital in Cremona, was a moving example of one “Frontline” approach.
“The Virus” exemplifies another: the sweeping synthesis, a digestible chronological overview of a complicated and still evolving story. Appropriate to its subject, the episode is shot inside a Catskills house, where interview subjects like Dr. Robert
R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and healthcare expert Jeremy Konyndyk appear on the computer screen of correspondent Martin Smith. (Sharing writing and directing credit, as well as the house, is Smith’s wife, “Frontline” producer Marcela Gaviria.)
If “The Virus” doesn’t grab hold like some other “Frontline” tick-tocks — “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump” being a good recent example — it may be because we followed the coronavirus news as it happened more closely than we did less immediately dangerous events like transfers of power and impeachment trials. There isn’t a lot in the report that a relatively attentive person won’t already know. (There’s also no practical information on face masks or immunity or how to social distance.)
The reminders are valuable and often absorbing in their own right, though. Along with Redfield and Konyndyk, Smith enlists several doctors and a couple of New York Times reporters in recounting the COVID-19 story, beginning with its appearance in Wuhan, China, fatefully timed to the mass migrations of the Lunar New Year. Short segments cover the contrasting Chinese and South Korean responses to the disease and the deadly outbreaks in Iran and Italy.
But the focus is on America, and on a series of missteps whose familiarity makes it no less tragic and maddening. Months of inaction by the government; the botching of test kits by the CDC and their continuing unavailability; dismissive and contradictory statements by President Donald Trump and his minions — it’s all there, just as we lived through it.
“The Virus” is judicious in its use of footage from Trump’s formerly daily news briefings. Hydroxychloroquine and detergent aren’t mentioned. There is a clip of the classic couplet:
“What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?” “I say that you’re a terrible reporter.”
And there’s Trump’s false claim March 6 that COVID-19 tests were widely available, which becomes one of Smith’s several opportunities to put Redfield on the spot. “I’m not going to comment on what I think the president believed or didn’t believe” may be Redfield’s lowest moment, rivalled by his bizarre decision to quote Theodore Roosevelt with regard to the administration’s efforts: “At worst we’ll fail by daring greatly.”
The absurd theatre of the briefings is a sideshow, however, to the real tragedy, which the show places back in January and February, when virtually no preparations were being made in Washington despite the alarming news coming out of Wuhan and other parts of the world. The real story of COVID-19 in America, “The Virus” posits, was a lack of leadership that took the form of a failure of imagination. It was mediocrity rather than malfeasance. A programming note: ABC will carry a documentary about the 1992 Los Angeles riots while “The Virus” makes its national première Tuesday night. The other major networks, meanwhile, have scheduled “World of Dance,” “Gordon Ramsay’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back” and a rerun of “FBI.” Anyone looking for coverage of ongoing protests will have to look outside network prime time — apparently the revolution still isn’t being televised there.