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?

Also the China trip letter was definitely before Christmas as they went before Christmas!!

I saw that but not on the news. It was a viral video that went round. My partner showed it to me about a month before the first lockdown (Ireland) and I remember I said “that’s fake.”

This is a timeline. BBC say very first report was on the BBC website 3 Jan.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54337098

What exactly did you write in your diary?

You have though. You can't have seen it on the BBC before they first reported it. You've misremembered and that's pretty common especially during difficult times but it genuinely wasn't big news on the BBC before Christmas 2019.

You wrote what down?

As people have said, viral videos were circulating.

you are mixing up a movie or footage of Ebola or crazy internet reels

I wonder if the BBC showed it then?

I remember news about the virus, from China, with people being locked in their homes.
It was in that weird period between Christmas and new years.
I also saw footage on social media of dead people on the street, others being bundled away and dogs being forcibly removed. It wasn't shown on the BBC but I do recall Sky doing something.

I remember getting really annoyed at the BBC as early Jan they still weren't reporting it, yet whilst working at an East London hospital, bed space was being made.

Could it be a report on the news about a viral video?
What did you write in your diary exactly?

It wasn’t mentioned before Christmas, that’s factully checkable. So your memory must be wrong. It’s VERY weird and destabilising when a firm memory we have turns out to be provably wrong, I had it happen recently. It’s quite good to have to it reminded every now and again that memory is weird though.

What probably happened is you started to notice mentions of COVID around January.
There was probably some sort of retrospective conversation about the trip to China and someone looked up whether the region visited was the affected one. Relief that it wasn’t. Perhaps you then told a few people about the trip and at some point maybe the details started to change that actually you’d checked before the trip but it was not affected so the trip went ahead. That detail started to become the “truth” so now your brain is retconning how you first knew about COVID.
Its really interesting how it all work.

At the end of Jan, my friends son returned from there and ended up in hospital with a flu virus. Nobody in the NHS suspected it was Covid. It was a few weeks after and into late February that the connection was made and then we weee shut down in march. I was a teacher and we closed 20th March. We returned in the September but then got shut down again at Christmas and didn’t go back until Easter. Maybe you are thinking of the second lockdown at Christmas as this was when cases skyrocketed.

They may well have done a report about a viral video circulating but not mentioned coronavirus specifically.

Earlier in Dec I write about the China trip letter then about 10 days later I write about going round for tea (birthday) and us all being scared about the footage and sil saying "what the he'll is this thing"
I write my diary each night so it would have been fresh in my mind

No definitely not. I wrote it down

This might solve the mystery I guess, or I am a time traveller

They may have done a report about the fake videos, but they won't have shown a fake video as news.

I'd love to see a picture of what you actually wrote do you still have the diary because even in China they didn't know what they were dealing with until after Christmas. I believe although might be wrong that the first case in China was the very beginning of December so the fact you think you were writing about it all in early December is surely you just misremembering your timeline again?

Maybe they showed a montage of social media clips or something.

China didn’t even report Covid until 31/12. Before then absolutely no one could possibly
know anything was even happening (except perhaps a few whistleblowers in China, but they certainly didn’t have an international platform).

They might have done at some point but not before Christmas 2019. It wasn't reported until January 2020 on the BBC as people have shown above.

No because I literally still have the diary!
I'm not being grumpy btw. I do find it genuinely fascinating
Also, the school wrote a letter about the China trip being fine as the outbreak was in a different part , this was in Dec. They had to do this as parents had asked so it was definitely on the radar in Dec somehow

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/35v6cBoVn7M

this is interesting though. A lot of people referring to the videos who now can’t find them.

I absolutely cannot work this out at all.
How strange!

I remember as i was living in China at the time and had friends and family phoning me terrified! Argued with a lot of people back home, when i told them this wasnt happening and they said i was lying. It was all madness. 100% as it was the only argument ive had with my dad in my adult life!