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?

Start of thread ...

This is pretty normal from the NHS in December every year isn't it?

This is how I remember it.

Yes I've looked...care to elaborate?

Do you not remember posting this yourself at the start of the thread, @Brewtiful?

'I don't think you were watching the news. It sounds like you were watching a film and your brains have merged the two events.'

Exactly. Yes there was flu about, but it was just ordinary flu.

See your own comment at the start of the thread @Brewtiful

That doesn't say the footage isn't real. You're really stretching here if you think I've claimed the footage isn't real.

I simply maintain until someone proves otherwise there was no news footage of the pandemic in early/mid December so the OP cannot have seen it on the day she claims which it appears even she has acknowledge.

I am most impressed by the school trip to China that took place between the 11th and 24th December. That is some dedication. I took trips away over the holidays but Christmas was an absolute No!

I remember first seeing a BBC news report on 31st December 2019. Pretty low key snd around 3rd item.down.

I remember it as so many friends and family were ill that festive period amd feeling it strange a virus in another country was making the news.
There was no suggestion this would turn into a pandemic.

I remember it OP. My sister was living in China at the time and I remember calling her begging her to come back asap to avoid catching anything….. she didn’t thankfully given that it was over here soon after 😆

They left before schoolmended and arrived back after the holiday started.
Lots of school trips have now been moved to half terms etc

It most definitely reads that you do not believe the footage the OP remembers was real.

'I don't think you were watching the news. It sounds like you were watching a film and your brains have merged the two events.'

Nothing in the guardian newspaper on the 18th or 19th of December.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2019/dec/18
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2019/dec/19

granted it might not make the headlines but if it was serious enough to make the BBC teatime news then you’d expect it to be there.

Well I'm sorry you misread my post but I've consistently said throughout the thread the only part I was querying was the timeline of the footage being shown as others have also acknowledged. If you have found my posts confusing then it is not my intention.

The footage exists. I have managed to find it on YouTube via an Indian news site from 2021.

However, OP could not have known about the virus and it has been proven that the BBC did not report anything relating to a virus on the 18th of December.

So either the timeline is wrong, the diary date is wrong or OP is not remembering what she saw correctly and several memories have merged into one.

We didn't know the virus by name but there were definite worries about A virus as other people other than me wrote to the school

It was also proven way back in thread that there was an outbreak of other things in China such as bubonic plague at this time. Again people have suggested that the memory relates to this or reports of Ebola which by December 2019 was reported as the second biggest outbreak of Ebola in history.

This is the first mention it gets in The Guardian.
It’s now tagged as Covid but it wouldn’t have been then.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/05/mystery-illness-to-strike-chinese-city-is-not-sars-say-authorities-wuhan

I definitely remember this. The allegedly 'live from China' footage was all over social media as well in the early months oc the pandemic.

I have often wondered who orchestrated it.

Yep think this could be possible

The next mention

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/07/china-mystery-illness-travellers-checked-as-officials-fear-lunar-new-year-could-spread-bug

Missed one. 4th of January 2020
in this article they talk about the virus being noted the month before, which would have been December 2019.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/04/mystery-viral-outbreak-in-hong-kong-revives-fears-of-sars-epidemic

I’m being pedantic, @DeftWasp, but I am pretty sure Connor Reed was the only British person in Wuhan who caught COVID in 2019 with a kitten who died and gave interviews to the media. I can’t find interviews with anyone else who fits the bill 😂

He gave an interview to the Daily Mail in February 2020 where he says he became ill on 25 November 2019 and recovered on 18 December. It’s not until 30 December that he says he got a tip off fhat there were concerns about a new virus, the day before it was announced officially. It was until later in January that he was told that his “pneumonia” was COVID. It seems unlikely that you would have heard interviews with him before 20 December when he had no idea that there was a novel virus circulating, by his own account.

I guess my point is it seems likely you have conflated at least 2 memories, which is what posters are suggesting OP may have done.

I’ve looked through back issues of The Fortean Times (always an interesting place to find news before it hits the mainstream). They make no mention of it before the March 2020 issue, which was published in February of the same year.

I can’t access Private Eye but it was the front page news story 6th March 2020