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Original poster

Do you remember this Covid news footage?

869 replies

Sitonyourdressmavis · 19/02/2026 09:00

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?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
45
Brewtiful · 21/02/2026 16:46

lifeisgoodrightnow · 21/02/2026 16:10

Yes.

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Yes what? I'm confused by your response.

Just because some people posted about pneumonia symptoms doesn't mean that was evidence of discussion about COVID?

WonderfulSmith · 21/02/2026 16:52

Brewtiful · 21/02/2026 16:46

Yes what? I'm confused by your response.

Just because some people posted about pneumonia symptoms doesn't mean that was evidence of discussion about COVID?

Show quote history

And even so still very far from the footage people claim to have seen and discussed over Christmas.

It’s worth remembering that the period of lockdown seemed to do odd things to our perception of time, well it did for me anyway. I was sure I’d had Covid really early on, but it was actually March 2021!

Original poster
Sitonyourdressmavis · 21/02/2026 16:55

Sorry haven't abandoned

I think the trip must have been reassured due to people hearing about a different outbreak of something and god knows what we saw on telly. All I know is the dates are right due to my diary writing habit but it must have been ebola or something

OP posts:

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Covid-19 General health News
FunnyOrca · 21/02/2026 17:07

The first footage from China that I remember, was around the lunar new year.

The scary images I first saw were the nightingale-style hospitals in northern Italy just around Feb half-term when everyone went skiing.

Mithral · 21/02/2026 18:30

My date anchor for the whole thing is that I was buying a company (for the business I worked for) and it completed early February. I remember during the negotiations in late January the guy we were buying it from (eccentric entrepreneur founder) saying he was busy preparing for a pandemic. At that point we absolutely knew what he was talking about but thought he was pretty crazy.

kameranrocks · 21/02/2026 18:31

I 100% saw this on the news too - you are not misremembering!

charlieandjenna · 21/02/2026 18:43

I know a few people who believe they had Covid in the run up to Christmas before the news broke about the virus. Possibly they had a similar strain of flu but also possible they could have had an early strain of Covid before it mutated to the more infectious strain. No doubt it was already out there well before Christmas though

WonderfulSmith · 21/02/2026 19:19

kameranrocks · 21/02/2026 18:31

I 100% saw this on the news too - you are not misremembering!

Oh well that clears that up then. 🙄

The op might have seen it on the news, but not before Christmas 2019.

Brewtiful · 21/02/2026 19:25

WonderfulSmith · 21/02/2026 19:19

Oh well that clears that up then. 🙄

The op might have seen it on the news, but not before Christmas 2019.

Show quote history

I appreciate it's a long thread but I feel like we're rapidly running out of ways to make two very simple points.

  1. There is zero confirmed evidence of any news relating to COVID or it's symptoms before Christmas 2019. I'd love someone to prove otherwise but as yet there's been no concrete proof.
  2. No one is disputing that there were harrowing scenes shown on both the news and social media but these videos were not circulating before Christmas in 2019.
WonderfulSmith · 21/02/2026 19:37

Brewtiful · 21/02/2026 19:25

I appreciate it's a long thread but I feel like we're rapidly running out of ways to make two very simple points.

  1. There is zero confirmed evidence of any news relating to COVID or it's symptoms before Christmas 2019. I'd love someone to prove otherwise but as yet there's been no concrete proof.
  2. No one is disputing that there were harrowing scenes shown on both the news and social media but these videos were not circulating before Christmas in 2019.
Edited
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The scary thing is that the people who won’t listen. The op has agreed that she is misremembering but there are some people who just won’t have it. It’s important to understand that memory is not a video. It’s possible to be wrong (this is not the case when I remember something differently to my DH, I always right in that situation)

WonderfulSmith · 21/02/2026 19:46

The earliest mentions of the video I can find on Twitter are from late January 2020.

x.com/badiucao/status/1220374770308374528?s=46&t=n3TGWvcUPBoRAtP2fA66qw

kameranrocks · 21/02/2026 20:36

People were adamant the OP could not have seen this on
the news - specifically showing people in body bags in China - I was agreeing that it WAS on the news, because I saw it! Why the need for sarcastic comments?

Whinge · 21/02/2026 20:38

kameranrocks · 21/02/2026 20:36

People were adamant the OP could not have seen this on
the news - specifically showing people in body bags in China - I was agreeing that it WAS on the news, because I saw it! Why the need for sarcastic comments?

Because the OP is adamant that she saw it before Christmas 2019. Which isn't possible.

EarringsandLipstick · 21/02/2026 20:40

charlieandjenna · 21/02/2026 18:43

I know a few people who believe they had Covid in the run up to Christmas before the news broke about the virus. Possibly they had a similar strain of flu but also possible they could have had an early strain of Covid before it mutated to the more infectious strain. No doubt it was already out there well before Christmas though

It wasn’t. HTH

it was in China, alone, until at least late December. It was not ‘out there well before Christmas’ and that is factually proven.

Brewtiful · 21/02/2026 20:41

EarringsandLipstick · 21/02/2026 20:40

It wasn’t. HTH

it was in China, alone, until at least late December. It was not ‘out there well before Christmas’ and that is factually proven.

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Just a heads up facts don't seem to matter much to many posting on this thread. Wink

EarringsandLipstick · 21/02/2026 20:46

Brewtiful · 21/02/2026 20:41

Just a heads up facts don't seem to matter much to many posting on this thread. Wink

Show quote history

Indeed 😀

I was on it yesterday but had to abandon it due to the proliferation of posts ‘remembering’ they’d Covid in late 2019, or they had seen footage on ‘alternative news sources’. Etc.

Crackers.

CypressGrove · 21/02/2026 21:00

I find the number of people convinced they had covid in 2019 fascinating - I wonder if there are any studies on what makes people think like that.

I do remember in very early 2020 there was a nasty bug going around the office and a few people panicking because at that stage you could only get tests in very limited situations. One guy was so convinced he had covid he lied about his travels to get a test and of course it wasn't (influenza b from memory). Even now its pretty clearly documented when and how the first case of covid came into my country, backed up by waste water testing, and you'll still get people saying I definitely had covid way before then.

ProfessorBinturong · 21/02/2026 21:12

lifeisgoodrightnow · 21/02/2026 15:23

We analyze data from Twitter to uncover early-warning signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe in the winter season 2019–2020, before the first public announcements of local sources of infection were made. We show evidence that unexpected levels of concerns about cases of pneumonia were raised across a number of European countries.

then

Figure 1a shows the cumulative distribution functions of the normalized number of tweets mentioning the word “pneumonia” in the selected European countries: France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, UK. To better understand the change in slope exhibited by the curves in the first few weeks of 2020, for each country we conducted a two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) test of the null hypothesis that the cumulative distributions over two corresponding winter seasons (2018–2019 and 2019–2020) are the same against the alternative hypothesis that they differ. Figure 1b suggests that, with the exception of Germany, the distributions in the two winter seasons are statistically different for all countries: at the 0.10 level of significance for Poland, and at the 0.05 level of significance for the remaining countries (see also Supplementary Table S1 for the details on the specific time periods in which the distributions differ). To check for robustness, we also computed the Anderson–Darling (A–D) test and obtained similar results (Supplementary Fig. S1; Supplementary Table S2). Finally, we further performed similar robustness checks (i.e., KS and AD tests) by comparing the 2019–2020 winter season with each of the corresponding winter seasons since 2014 (i.e., 2014–2015, 2015–2016, 2016–2017, 2017–2018, and 2018–2019), and obtained similar findings (Supplementary Figs. S2, S3; Supplementary Tables S3, S4).

and

With the exception of Germany, the series of cumulative mentions of pneumonia unmask unexpected statistically significant variations in public interest in pneumonia-related cases already in January 2020 (Fig. 1a). Interestingly, findings suggest a significant increase in tweets mentioning pneumonia in most of the selected European countries well before the outbreak of COVID-19 was officially reported in the news. In Italy, for example, where the first lockdown measures to contain an emerging threat of endemic COVID-19 infections were introduced on 22 February 2020, the rate of increase in mentions of pneumonia during the first few weeks of 2020 (shaded bar B, inset of Fig. 1a) substantially differs from the rate observed in the same weeks in 2019

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This says tweets were higher over the winter season as a whole, in the first few weeks of 2020, and in January 2020.

I can't get into the supplementary tables to check specific dates, but nothing in the text says that there was an increase in tweets in December 2019.

CypressGrove · 21/02/2026 21:18

lifeisgoodrightnow · 21/02/2026 14:04

Here’s a summary of the findings - in case posters are unaware nature is probably the most respected science journal there is

Using the same procedure, we also computed the K–S and A–D tests to compare the cumulative distribution of number of tweets citing pneumonia in the winter season 15 December 2019–21 January 2020 with the distributions for each of the corresponding seasonal periods since 2014. For each country, Supplementary Figs. S2 and S3 show the average of the p values obtained using each of the five winter seasons from 2014–2015 to 2018–2019, and computed from the K–S and A–D tests, respectively. Once again, the p values related to each individual season are averages over moving window widths w computed with daily frequency. For each country, Supplementary Tables S3and S4 report, respectively, the values of the K–S and A–D statistical tests (and corresponding p values) comparing the 2019–2020 winter season with each of the preceding five seasons individually. Findings from all these tests are in agreement with previous results: with the exception of Germany, in the winter season 2019–2020 all selected European countries witnessed an excess posting of pneumonia-related tweets, with cumulative distributions that are statistically different from the ones obtained from each of the five preceding corresponding winter seasons.

That paper is showing an increase from 30 December- as clearly shown in the charts you linked - and hence aligns with what we are discussing.

EarringsandLipstick · 21/02/2026 21:32

CypressGrove · 21/02/2026 21:00

I find the number of people convinced they had covid in 2019 fascinating - I wonder if there are any studies on what makes people think like that.

I do remember in very early 2020 there was a nasty bug going around the office and a few people panicking because at that stage you could only get tests in very limited situations. One guy was so convinced he had covid he lied about his travels to get a test and of course it wasn't (influenza b from memory). Even now its pretty clearly documented when and how the first case of covid came into my country, backed up by waste water testing, and you'll still get people saying I definitely had covid way before then.

There weren’t any tests for Covid in very early 2020 though? There were no cases of Covid outside China at that point?

CypressGrove · 21/02/2026 21:36

EarringsandLipstick · 21/02/2026 21:32

There weren’t any tests for Covid in very early 2020 though? There were no cases of Covid outside China at that point?

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You could get tested for Covid by late January 2019 (can't remember the exact date) if you'd been to one of the 'hotspot' countries. And they've since run tests on earlier saved waste water samples.

PortSalutPlease · 21/02/2026 21:50

Sorry but you must be misremembering - the earlier reports of COVID weren’t til January. The outbreak wasn’t even confirmed in China til 31st December. The only patients in December were a small cluster tied to the Wuhan seafood market, which was noticed by a local clinician 26th Dec, reported 27th Dec, confirmed on 31st Dec and reported internationally in early Jan.

I don’t know what your family were watching, but it wasn’t a COVID news report.

PortSalutPlease · 21/02/2026 21:51

CypressGrove · 21/02/2026 21:36

You could get tested for Covid by late January 2019 (can't remember the exact date) if you'd been to one of the 'hotspot' countries. And they've since run tests on earlier saved waste water samples.

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Considering the first case of confirmed COVID19 was 1st Dec 2019 in Wuhan, what do you think was being tested in Jan 2019?

WonderfulSmith · 21/02/2026 21:53

Askingforafriendtoday · 21/02/2026 21:50

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I’m not sure what point you are making there. That agrees with what I was saying. There was nothing on the news, main stream media or general knowledge before Christmas 2019. Certainly not on the 18th of December, which the op agrees is a false memory.