In recent days I’ve been seeing more casual reporting that we’re coming up to the 2 year anniversary of covid-19 arriving in the UK. In general, these reports talk of how covid-19 was found in China in December and started to migrate around the world in January 2020 only to be delayed by a few months by travel restrictions worldwide. I specifically recall the stories of people evacuated to the UK from Wuhan at the end of January and having to be isolated in case they were contagious — I recall this so well mainly because for some bizarre reason they ended up using three Horseman coaches to signal the apocalypse transport the evacuees (someone in the government’s procurement department clearly has a sense of humour…)
Of course, all the attempts to control covid-19 resulted in failure; covid escaped our biosecurity and went on to wreak havoc in the UK in spring 2020.
Or had it already spread around the UK before the biosecurity measures were announced?
I’ve shown this graph before — ambulance call-outs in England for cardiac arrest over the past few years. Note the spike in call outs in December 2019:
Or what about emergency service calls in Wales related to fever or sore-throat?
Again — that spike in calls in December 2019.
I believe that covid came to the UK around November-December 2019… the only problem was that people didn’t notice. It took them about 3-4 months to realise that we were already in what we’re told has been the worst respiratory disease pandemic for 100 years.
What’s more, if it had arrived in the UK around November-December 2019 then, given the amount of travel for the Christmas season, the chances are that it had already pretty much spread worldwide by the time international travel restrictions were announced in early 2020.
When people talk with you over the next month or so about how we’re at the second anniversary of covid coming to your country, perhaps you could tell them that they’re probably a few months too late; it was just that people didn’t notice until they started testing for the disease.
I am 100% convinced that I contracted the virus in November 2019: in my town there is a large community of Chinese school pupils coming and going from a well-known public school for holidays back home in China. I had every single one of the symptoms, as well as a horrible feeling I was on the verge of pneumonia. I got over it. Obviously. Needless to say, I haven't had any fear of reinfection throughout the past couple of years. I have never worn a pointless mask or observed social distancing to much of a degree, despite working in a customer-facing retail position. Unjabbed too. Obviously.
My missus and I had a (presumed - no test available) infection early March 20 before everyone started to get all excited.
The BBC (whom I still watched in those days!) showed a map of known infections in mid March (pillar 1 tests) and it showed little clusters of 6 or 20 throughout the UK, even the far north of Scotland. It was obvious to me that it was well and truly established by then.