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?

Well yes -- it originated in bars before either being modified in a lab or passing through an intermediate species (like a raccoon dog) before being transmitted to humans. The rubbish part were the rumours that people got it from eating bats!

Oooh yes sorry the eating bats rumours. Gotcha.

OP - I've just found this article and image by searching "early reports wuhan pre covid being officially named" - tit aligns with one of your later descriptionsl. There are all sorts of clips on youtube that might fit the description in your first OP, I am not sure they would have been on BBC News, but I can't be sure.

Trigger warning, Image with telegraph article includes a dead man.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/31/inside-wuhan-dead-man-lies-empty-streets-coronavirus-ground/#:~:text=Soon%20after%20this%20harrowing%20picture,are%20not%20taking%20any%20chances.

I now see someone already shared that image.

Nobody is denying that the reports the OP remembers didn't happen - just that they didn't happen before 31 December 2019, so either she has her dates wrong or the report she saw on 18 December was unrelated to the outbreak that became covid-19.

This is from 1 February 2020 though. OP has convinced herself she saw this in mid-Dec 2019...
(But if you're saying maybe she saw something like this in Feb and got confused then yes I agree)

Yeah it was definitely on TV.

Remember discussing it with grown up children.

Thing is, there seems to be some weird collective amnesia as I have asked people myself and they apparently don't remember it despite people properly freaking out at the time.

Lots of things during that time make no sense, it seems that if you were 'aware' at the time you remember it now whereas if you weren't then the cognitive dissonance was so strong that people have filed loads of stuff away into a box in their brain labelled 'stuff that never happened'

It is a kind of self preservation I suppose seeing as they trauma bonded themselves to those in power.

It is solved. You're wrong.

Noone is pretending that there was never coverage of covid on TV before it came here 🙄. It just wasn't in mid December 2019 as OP seems to believe

I find it laughable that people think that when the WHO knew about it, that was the start of Covid. China would've covered it up if they could, but it got so bad they had no choice but to tell them.

Could it be December 2020? A new strain?

Of course a limited number of people in Wuhan China knew before the WHO - but its laugable to think people in the UK knew in mid December when the first hospitalisations were on 8 December and the first sample sent for testing was on 24 December 2019. Maybe if it started in a UK hospital some UK people may have started hearing rumours in mid December but China is very different culturally and their social media platforms are not linked up with ours. I follow Hong Kong and Singapore news pretty cloesly and have many friends with family in various places in China (not Hubei though) and nobody was saying anything before NYE.

I deffo remember this and the same sort of footage from Italy

I can't believe for a moment that you saw footage purporting to come from Italy of people dropping to the ground and being whiake off by others in hazmat suits

Where did you see that?

no, you are completely correct and I didn’t note that in my brain - March 2020 it was. Thank you for you correction.

I remember. It was propaganda. All of it.

It was about the middle of January 2020 that reports of the first cases in China hit mainstream news. We were away at the time and I remember the daily reports with number of deaths going up. By the time we travelled home at the very beginning of Feb travelling with masks was recommended and we managed to buy at a pharmacy at the airport. Our DC’s school had sent out a letter saying if any student had come into contact with anyone from China they couldn’t return to school.

Mumsnet blew up just after Feb half term following all the ski holidays to France and Italy. What I remember was a news article saying that once the UK had 100 positive tests they would stop testing. I wish I had kept a copy of that. Like the OP on the footage, I absolutely know I read that but cannot find any evidence of it subsequently despite quite extensive research.

Yes, but that was February 2020, not before Christmas.

No one is claiming that there weren’t images like this coming out of China in early 2020 but that they weren’t before Christmas 2019.

I'm finding it quite worrying that so many posters are unable to understand your final sentence.

Several posters now have explained that no one is disputing the footage but just the date. Yet still many posters, despite no concrete proof and many facts to show otherwise continue to argue that the virus was a common topic of discussion and that this footage was indeed shown before Christmas.

The Chinese government almost certainly knew about it and covered it up, or at least dragged their heels to tell the WHO. Even if they had been told as soon as the problem was noticed it would have taken a while for an official response.

That though is a far cry from ‘everyone knowing about it’ and discussing it over Christmas drinks in the pub.

Exactly. There is no mention of it on MN before February. All these people claiming that this footage was on the news before Christmas yet not one thread on here?

After Christmas, mid January, it was all anyone was taking about.

There were plenty of threads on here about it in January - it blew up in Feb and got its own topic section at some point but it was definitely talked about from the end of December

This is the most frustrating thread. Yes, lots of covid reports after Christmas. Footage from China, Italy etc. No, not before Christmas. It is not gaslightling or cognitive dissonance or anything else to point out the footage simply didn't exist in December 2019. Yes, the footage did exist in January 2020 and indeed December 2020 (another wave) but that isn't what the OP is claiming.

OP, I clearly remember watching the videos on the news of people lying dead outside hospitals. This was pre- Christmas 2019 and very scary. I'm almost certain it was referred to as a "mystery virus", as with friends and family, I was (not even remotely humourously) wondering if zombie apocalypse was now a reality.
What I cannot remember is whether this was, at the time, linked to COVID or not. I suspect not.
I do remember that in March 2020 (pregnant and terrified being my excuse) I started investigating hospital admissions pre covid, and saw that many large UK hospitals were calling 'code blacks' very early into the flu season of autumn 2019. But it wasn't widely reported or linked to COVID.
I also remember USA and Italy were seeing similar or equivalent 'code blacks' at the same time with no mention of COVID in those reports.
So my personal explanation is I saw stuff prior to COVID being officially acknowledged that was there to start planting caution that something bad was out there. And therefore I was more receptive to the need to fear the virus when the government was ready to publicly announce it.
And when the public learned of COVID, I started to conflate some of this early activity/hints at what was to come with my new knowledge of COVID and my brain made the link - "that scary video in 2019 must have been COVID related".

Well said.

No one on MN or in the pub was discussing it before Christmas 2019. Nor were random NCT mums warning people about Covid in October 2019. 🤦‍♀️

Some of the claims on this thread are ridiculous.