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?

Indeed. They didn't even know what it was until the end of December so I'm surprised a school in the UK sent a letter about something the country didn't even know much about?

I remember that news including those little vans too. It was very scary at the time.

There were definitely rumblings about it in early December because my husband had a few jobs abroad cancelled because of uncertainty over what this mystery bug in China could be. I took a temporary Christmas job in Tesco to tide us over and then when Covid hit properly in the New Year I stayed on. Ended up there for a couple of years.
Much like the OP I’m sure of my dates. Not only is it in my diary but I’ve got my employment paperwork too.

OMG.
There were no reports of the virus pre Christmas.
The virus did not officially exist until 31/12!
Perhaps if you were high up at the Chinese ministry of health or worked in a specific ward in a specific Chinese hospital you may have known a bit more. But not if you were parents in Tunbridge Wells thinking about whether to go skiiing.
This is literally collective misremembering in real time.
I will promise eat my hat though if anyone can find a western news source that provably was reporting on a virus in Wuhan pre Xmas 2019.

In answer to the question there was 'footage' of all sorts in the early stages of COVID but reputable news sources did not present it as fact. I saw all sorts of videos online but not on real news.

I don't remember anything about this, and know that Covid wasn't officially in the news in Europe until 2020 (January?) but what I do know is that I had the most awful cough ever in November 2019 - I'm normally a healthy person and have hardly any sick leave from work in decades but it was so bad, I had nearly a week off work.

I always do wonder if that was Covid or just a bad cough - as far as I know I never did get Covid during the pandemic.

But at this point, it was a handful of cases. Nothing that the public would have been aware of.

I remember in the US the funeral
homes couldn’t keep up with the dead. Specifically in the black community.

It was so weird because Covid was disproportionately killing certain ethnic groups while leaving others unharmed.

I remember seeing on the news about how Germany had the lowest death levels but a high infection rate.

It always struck me as very strange.

I did find out that my State and Federal governments were prepared. I knew people in the public hospital system and there was a plan for prioritising patients because they couldn’t save everyone. They had a specific rationale for who gets treated and who doesn’t. Also, a friend was in the military and was on standby in case he was needed to collect the dead bodies - that’s how scary it was.

As it was - neither was implemented.

Yes.
I had COVID (confirmed) about five months ago.
Was so weak and breathless I couldn't change a pillowcase, but in three weeks I stood in the garden with a scythe again. Never vaccinated.
I know it provokes hate, but I don't believe ANYTHING the system says, anymore.

Was there footage of people having fits due to Covid in China at whatever early date? The op is right that’s not how it presented.

Thank you! I feel like I'm going mad!

But they were aware of it as they asked the school!!

OP, I did a history degree, and we examined the fallibility of memory. What do you have written down, and what EVIDENCE do you have of the videos, timings etc?

You reference a lot of conversations, habits of family etc, but it's very easy for our brains to pickle up habits and routines. It's why so many people aren't certain about leaving the oven on. We know that our brains process this information differently, so it's no use relying on memory for this. You need hard facts.

I know when I started paying attention to the COVID news - Jan 31st. The night we left the EU, I was depressed by it, my husband was out. I downloaded the game Pandemic to my phone after being reminded by the news. There's physical evidence of that - a download on my phone. I might have heard a news piece first, but that was when I have non-subjective proof that I knew about it.

Whereabouts in China was the school trip going to? Ive just googled BBC news stories from December 2019 and there was a lot of trouble going on in Hong Kong. Could it have been that people were worried about?

The other big stories that month were the general election and Andrew and Epstein.

But OP, there were no reports on the BBC until January. Why are you not accepting that?

This thread is a bit bonkers, tbh.

Perhaps post photos of the pages from your diary with the appropriate dates.

I won't post photos of my diary but I will go and find it and put the dates. I haven't misremembered. I have paper evidence

OP - can you share the date of your diary entry? You can probably find the news from that day and check.

Fascinating how sure people can be about things that must be wrong (no schools were writing letters about covid in December, they just weren't). It's a good reminder how fallible our memories can be.

I think the confusion here could be around word COVID was Jan before it used ect but presume there could also have been news reports about unusual health issues in China before figuring out it was a virus circulating.
I was away in US early December so sick for few weeks after convinced to this day it was COVID before we knew about it.

Because we watched something on BBC at tea time . 6 of us in a room all remember it and were scared by it

Yes I was thinking perhaps it was some other events you saw footage of. Riots in HK fits the bill.

I do remember people footage showing people who had gone out of their houses in breach of the lockdown rules getting swooped on by people in hazmat suits with what looked like fishing nets! Absolutely bonkers. I only watched BBC news so must have been on there.

This thread reminded me of the late great Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan who tried to warn people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang

He clocked that something was happening on 30/12/19 and started talking to other doctors. News in China spread, he got arrested and told to shut up in the first week of January, died of covid in the first week of February.

I definitely remember hearing about news spreading and Chinese people panicking in the January.

I'm wondering this
As a pp said there were health worries about a mystery virus maybe? Before they named it?

The first time it was mentioned on MN was 23/1/2020. Surely there would have been earlier posts if it had been a thing before Christmas. Even the early posts are people telling others not to scaremonger and one berates people for going overboard for purchasing facemasks. (How little we knew).