How American Author Predicted Coronavirus Outbreak 40 Years Ago

‘The Eyes of Darkness’, a book by an American author Dean Koontz, appears to have rightly predicted the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) about 40 years ago.

COVID-19 has killed no fewer than 1,665 people since its outbreak.

It first broke out in the city of Wuhan, Chaina, and has infected over 45,000 people across several countries, include including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, America, Australia, Nepal, France, Malaysia, Canada, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Germany, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, India and Finland. 

Interestingly, Koontz’s book which was based on fiction, mentioned a virus named Wuhan-400 as a biological weapon developed by the Chinese in the city of Wuhan.

A paragraph in the book written in 1981 reads: “…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.

“They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and it was the four hundredth viable strain of man-made micro-organisms created at that centre.”

The book describes Wuhan-400 as a “perfect weapon” that afflicts only human beings.

“No other living creature can carry it. And like Syphilis, Wuhan-400 can’t survive outside a living human body for longer than a minute, which means it can’t permanently contaminate objects or entire places the way anthrax and other virulent microorganisms can.”

Part of the book also predicted that, “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like virus will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatment. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, then disappear completely.”

The author of the book has over 105 novels to his credits.

Koontz’s books are mostly suspense thrillers with elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and satire.