A theory widely shared on social media claims that American author Dean Koontz predicted the 2019-2020 Coronavirus outbreak in 1981. Posts featuring the cover of “The Eyes of Darkness” book and a page in which Koontz allegedly describes the coronavirus in his novel have at least 39,000 shares (examples here and here) and at least 2,000 retweets on Twitter (examples here and here as of February 27, 2020.
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Most of the claims circulating on social media show the book’s cover and a page in the book mentioning a virus called “Wuhan-400”. The widely circulated photo of Koontz’s book page includes some highlighted text reading: “They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed in a at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and It was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made microorganisms created at that reaserch center”.
Some claims circulating also include an additional page that mentions the year 2020 and the outbreak of a “severe pneumonia-like illness”.
The symptoms and behavior of Koontz’s “Wuhan-400” are very different to COVID-19. In the novel, the virus has an incubation period of “only four hours”. COVID-19’s incubation period is between 1-14 days. According to World Health Organization (here), the most common incubation time is around five days.
The symptoms and behavior of Koontz’s “Wuhan-400” are very different to COVID-19. In the novel, the virus has an incubation period of “only four hours”. COVID-19’s incubation period is between 1-14 days. According to World Health Organization (here), the most common incubation time is around five days.
This claim is therefore partly false. Dean Koontz did write about a fictional virus called “Wuhan-400” in the 1989 re-release of his 1981 novel “The Eyes of Darkness”, but symptoms and effects of the disease do not match the official description of COVID-19. The additional page present in some claims suggesting an outbreak “around 2020” is from a different book.
reference internet.
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