Do you remember this Covid news footage?

[Sitonyourdressmavis]

Chatting to SIL last night and we were remembering news footage we watched before the Christmas of Covid when the news was coming out of China about this virus. We clearly remember watching as a family news footage (would have been on BBC normal news not online) from China of people collapsing and fitting in the streets then being zipped up on stretchers and body bags and loaded into a black and yellow van by hazmat suited doctors/army. We all clearly remember this , it was not a film. What was this footage? Covid didn't present like that at all? We remember being really scared. SiL is a nurse and we remember her saying "what the hell is this thing"
Anyone else remember this footage?

What did keeping an eye on it look like for the weeks prior to the WHO knowing about it and any news reports having happened? Where were you looking?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archiveservices/written-archives-centre/featured-collections/going-viral

both BBC YouTube and website mention reports in 2019

Could the school have had some parents with family, friends or contacts in China who'd told them about the Wuhan outbreak? Hence then contacting the school. I worked for a university at the time and some Chinese students going back for the holidays knew there was a virus circulating, but at that point just it was a 'pneumonia like symptoms. Might have been similar for the poster whose husband cancelled work trips. I know at work we met mid Jan about planned Faculty trips to China (and other Asian countries) to risk assess it based on emerging news at that time.

It's highly unlikely footage of people dropping dead in the streets was on the news in December. It just hadn't got anywhere near that serious pre Christmas even if reports were coming out of a serious virus,.

This link says the first laboratory confirmed case case in Wuhan was in 1 Dec 2019 with 41 people later reported as having it. The Chinese Centre or Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) sent a rapid response team to Wuhan on 31 Dec as cases climbed. The local health authority issued and epidemiologic alert by which time suspected cases had risen to 59 and the seafood market was shut down on January 1, 2020. A
The outbreak of COVID-19: An overview - PMC

Even the medical profession didn't find out - Dr Sarah Gilbert (lead the first vaccine development at Oxford) reports reading an article about the outbreak on 01 Jan 2020, and the genomic sequencing was released around 10 Jan.
Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green - The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine | How To Academy

This was reported on BBC on 03 Jan
China pneumonia outbreak: Mystery virus probed in Wuhan - BBC News

So who knows what OP saw on the news in December but it seems unlikely it was people dropping dead in the street in China from what we now know to be Covid.

I remember seeing this too but on sm not the news.

I remember seeing TV news footage of a mystery respiratory illness in Wuhan between Christmas and New Year 2019. I paid particular interest because my mum died suddenly of respiratory failure that December after being hospitalised with a chest infection and very low oxygen levels. My dad and brother both had a cold, followed by an odd dry cough that lasted for weeks.

It was definitely then, as we were back at home by then and definitely on a TV news report. I watch news on any of the five main channels, so not necessarily on the BBC. However, I don't remember seeing anyone fitting in the street or body bags in the article. I've mentioned it many times since, as I'd say I had already started panicking about (what became) Covid at Christmastime.

I remember news footage of bodies in the street in China and people in hazmat suits, in the early days of COVID. I seem to recall that the footage of bodies was debunked though.

Ah well, I didn't realise the 18th was being discussed.
The news item I saw - on the BBC, about an unidentified illness - was between Xmas and New Year.
As I've said before, DH and I assumed it was a bird/swine flu type outbreak and while not pleasant news, didn't think it would affect us in any way.

I don't know what WHO knew and when, so I can't help you there. And as I said, it was mainly being reported as a pneumonia thing that had the potential to spread and shut down air travel. Like SARS. When it popped up in Italy people had been waiting for it to show up somewhere outside of China, and I remember thinking my chances of flying anywhere in Europe were probably fucked. Obviously no-one had any idea how widespread the shutdown would be, or that it would spread beyond just air travel.

I remember all the pandemic + lockdown stuff as something that spiralled within about eight days, as people watched the situation in Italy and started to panic.

My news sources at the time wouldn't have been anything special. News videos on YouTube or whatever came up on my Google feed. In 2019 I wouldn't have had much interest in alternative news outlets or podcasts. It's possible I'd have read some articles from European news outlets or The Lancet or something? But I wouldn't have clicked on something like the Communist one linked upthread. I would have thought that was a fake news site or somebody's blog, and skimmed right past it.

@Sitonyourdressmavis you are right

I haven't read the whole thread because it's massive

Don't forget news websites have to remove stuff from online all the time can you imagine how much they would be if you had to keep everything?

Anyway, a PP mentioned working in the hospital yes my sister was told about it in December but it didn't have a name yet they thought it was a new kind of pneumonia or flu

The first case reported in China was between Christmas and New Year I'm sure and then they decided the original case was further back

And a poster was on here talking about it quite a lot and she got told off a scaremongering

there's lots of stuff from the BBC that I would like to look up, but it gets removed quite quickly and it probably affects search engine results and stuff if they leave everything up all the time

You had a letter from the school, so you know what happened i'm guessing you threw away the letter or you wouldn't be so confused.

The thing with the man falling on his face was fake, so I'd be surprised if the BBC showed it

The first report was linked to a food market. Was it a live food market? I can't remember.

You are thinking of Connor Reed. He (and the stray kitten) were all over the media in March 2020. The BBC first spoke to him in February 2020, not December.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51358742

People mentioned Italy that seems really late

There were people in this country wanting things to be shut down long before the scary Italy footsge, which is what really scared my family even though we told them about it ages before

My guess is two school letters have got muddled up. So the China trip could go ahead as school sent a letter (about something else) and a later trip at half term that could go ahead as parent were concerned about covid.

It is very hard to see how the school could have written a letter address parents concerns when there was no coverage about a virus in China at that time. Even if there were cases it wasn’t being reported in the UK, so parents wouldn’t have emailed in concerns so the school would not have had to address them.

There were riots in Hong Kong, which the school could have been talking about.

@lifeisgoodrightnow The video from the Daily Mail is dated Feb 2020. It says the video they show has been circulated widely on social media - so not a UK news outlet.

There's a useful timeline on the WHO website that states that China didn't report the first cases until 31 December so I don't know what the school could have been writing about in early December:

https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19
https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2020-DON229

It sounds like your memory is playing tricks on you, although that doesn't explain the diary entries - very odd!

I think maybe a pp was right about some families having a China connection and feeling worried about the trip. There clearly were rumours before Christmas even if not reported on the news - although my particular case is still a mystery as why did i write that we saw it and why did all my family see it

Are you thinking about YouTube? This was never on msm. I'm a scientist so was watching covid with great scientific interest from the end of November.

It wasn't making much mainstream news. In fact I remember the week or two before lockdown one of the panel members on loose woman saying covid would never reach here ( one of the Nolan sisters?) And pissing myself at the misunderstood nature of pandemics.

No one was worrying about this on mainstream news. The net was flooded with false news however in Dec / jan. In fact 90% of the coverage was BS

FWIW I thought I'd heard rumblings about this virus in China late 2019 - hence it was called covid-19 in the first place. It only was taken seriously by the mainstream media early 2020.

I suggest you research false memories

Yes a relative of mine was very ill with 'flu' in the run up to Christmas 2019. Her son caught it, a healthy man in his 30s and ended up bring hospitalised. Twice in hospital he was asked by medical staff if he had recently been abroad so I think that hospitals were aware of an increase in cases of what they probably thought was a virus very similar to flu but didn't have a name for it.

I remember it, yes.

I remember this. Not sure if it was on the news but It was definitely on social media

The veracity of some of the posters insisting that OP is wrong about what she saw on TV news is weird. Why does anyone else cares so much what someone else remembers? Odd.

I suggest you read my updates and donr be so patronising

According to wikipedia the first confirmed case of Covid in Italy happened in Rome on January 31, they didn't identify their first cluster until 21 February. They did shut down flights to China on 31 January, but the news about it spreading through ski resorts there came after the half term break in Scotland because I know families who came home, heard the news a week or so later and realised they'd had a lucky escape. That's also when it started to feel closer to home for me. Scottish half term holiday is around now, so that would be consistent with clusters being discovered around 21 Feb. It was mid-March that the military was deployed in Bergamo when the health system could no longer cope with the dead. I remember that being the point when I realised how devastating the virus could be.

What I remember of it, and granted memory can be a fickle thing, I recall there was one or two videos purporting to be out of China showing very sick people in a containment area in a hospital. They clearly had ARDS as they had trouble breathing. But that would have been in maybe February, certainly not in 2019. I also recall seeing videos of people collapsing in the street in China but they did look fake.

After we knew what was going on, some people started saying they had been or relatives had been very ill in Dec/Nov 2019 and it 'must have been' Covid but honestly there's absolutely no proof of that.

The actual tale of what went down with the scientists involved is documented on a TWiV episode (This Week in Virology) where Dr Eddie Holmes talks about his association with the Chinese scientist who discovered the virus and sequenced it and his collaboration with the Wuhan lab. Fascinating to listen to, but it is long. They start discussing SARS-CoV-2 at around 15 mins in. He also mentions dates, which helps!