> A simple visit to the Wikipedia article on Covid timeline showed that to be false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
"Rumors of a deadly SARS outbreak subsequently spread on Chinese social media platforms; Wuhan police summoned and admonished him on 3 January for "making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak.""
> That was literally just a drunk guy falling on street. Covid doesn't just make people drop dead while walking on the street lol.
Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dea...
There were a lot of these at the time: https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-virus-chilling-videos-wuhan-sho...
One of the defining early characteristics of COVID was shockingly low blood oxygen levels without other symptoms until you pass out. (Asymptomatic hypoxia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062941/)
Reddit's what got me to stock up a bit in February, which put me in a good position when shelves got empty in March.
> America suffered a million Covid deaths and we have zero videos of people just drop dead on the street from it.
We benefited from knowing about the virus by the time it hit here in any significant amount. (We definitely had a few: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/woman-dies-of-covid-on-pla...) Wuhan in January 2020 didn't know mild cold symptoms could turn rapidly into hypoxia and walking pneumonia.