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?

I think all the people claiming you’re wrong OP are the ones misremembering! I remember seeing the videos though can’t be sure of the date but way before the Italy videos. They were very similar to these.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/china/video-2094890/Video-Dramatic-footage-shows-people-collapsing-suddenly-Wuhan-city.html

These early articles are interesting given the scale of what then unfolded.

I definitely read about a virus affecting China on New Year’s Eve 2019. It was on the daily mail website before they put so many articles behind pay walls.

We're querying the date of the videos not the fact they occured though. As yet no one has shown proof that any such videos were being shared either online or on any news sites in December.

If you can’t be sure of the date then what’s your point? 😂

I think that the Mandela effect is very interesting. All the people who are so sure that they can’t be wrong, they can’t possibly be misremembering, it has to be that the entire universe has changed.

The article is dated 4th February 2020.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7963481/University-orders-students-self-isolate-traveled-China-amid-coronavirus-scare.html

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3805469-are-you-worried-about-coronavirus

This is the earliest MN thread I can find (26/01/20), though it suggests there had already been other threads. It references videos of people fitting in the street.

That thread also has someone on it saying news started in November!!

Yes. But that’s a long time after the 18th of December.

There’s mention of severe seizures clip in that thread. The last post angry about another thread is pretty funny given how many were to come.

This is from page 1 of that thread

TheHagOnTheHill ·26/01/2020 00:21
How can you only realise today,the news trickled through on November but the news has been saturated about it for a few weeks now.
Not worried yet but sooner or later we will get a pandemic.

Trickled through to random Mumsnetters in November but the WHO were unaware until the end of December? Unlikely to say the least

I suspect it's probably a typo and the poster meant December. I've yet to see any article or news report from early - mid December let alone November.

It fits with my memories so I’m ok with it.
The mystery virus would’ve been around prior to identification. That’s what I remember.

Of course random MNetters knew about it in November, they were next in line after the random NCT mums who told @Sunshineandgrapefruit all about it in October.

I didnt see all the responses but I didn’t see “many people”.
who?

That person isn't correct though, they are exaggerating.

It is interesting that on that thread people are claiming to have heard about it in the November. I’d be interested to know where and how. It seems that the first known case was actually on the 1st of December, but wasn’t recognised as such then.

This is right. I knew about a mystery virus in December but it wasn’t given the name by who until January

Retrospectively, I am pretty sure I had Covid in November 2019 - I had all the symptoms but no tests, obvs. Then, despite being in close contact with lots of people who had it in 2020-2023, I never got it again, so assume I had natural immunity.

There is documented evidence from donated blood that the virus was circulating in France and Italy from around September 2019. It took a while for everyone to realise what was happening and to identify the source. I am sure some people were talking and speculating about it before Christmas but it didn't really come onto my conscious radar until Jan 2020 - that's when I realised why I had been so sick in November.

Here is a scientific paper: the first DOCUMENTED case was December 8, 2019. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7864798/

Thank you. I feel totally mental on this thread but I know it was being discussed that something was going om before Christmas

I think I’ve found it.
The New York Times ran its first story about Covid on the 6th of January https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/asia/china-SARS-pneumonialike.html
but the interesting thing for the op is a comment on the article.

There's a BBC news story on their website for 20 December 2019 about swine flu in Asia with focus on China. Maybe the TV report speculated on this and referred back to previous viruses in China?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50833054