COVID-19 was predicted!

Sabina Saktaganova Staff Reporter, The Pawprint

Dean Koontz, the author of the 1981 thriller novel called “The Eyes of Darkness”, predicted the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The novel talks about a Chinese military lab that invents a virus as a part of its biological weapons programme. Ironically, the lab is located in Wuhan, where COVID-19 came from too. The location of the lab is the reason the epidemic was named “Wuhan-400”. So is it a literary coincidence or a prophecy?

The book was spotted by author Nick Hinton and featured in his Twitter account. The “prediction” has since gone viral, triggering a number of conspiracy theories as to the origins of COVID-19.

In Dean Koontz’s novel, the virus is called the “perfect weapon” as only humans get infected. It also cannot survive outside the human body for more than a minute. 

One of the most interesting quotes from the book is: “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments.” Similar to the coronavirus, isn’t it?

And there is another interesting passage: “A Chinese scientist named Li Chen defected to the United States, carrying a diskette record of China’s most important and dangerous new biological weapon in a decade,” one character explains in “The Eyes of Darkness”. “They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ but it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made microorganisms created at that research center.’’

In addition, the 2011 film Contagion is also believed to have predicted coronavirus as it talks about a global pandemic, which came to humans from animals and spreads rapidly around the globe. 

On the other hand, the novel didn’t predict the symptoms and many other details. For example, Wuhan-400 would have a “kill-rate” of 100% and the mortality rate of COVID-19 is only 3.4%. Even though the novel did not predict everything, it did launch a couple of conspiracy theories related to the reason why COVID-19 originated. 

However, the author of the novel, Dean Koontz, did not comment on any of the conspiracy theories and whether or not the novel is just a literary coincidence or a real prophecy.