Snopes ‘investigation’ determines it to be “mostly false” despite eerie parallels. A fictional plot from a 1981 Dean Koontz novel predicted that a virus originating in Wuhan would cause a global biological pandemic, but despite the creepy similarities to real life, Snopes soon concluded after an “investigation” that the parallels were “mostly false.”
In his thriller The Eyes of Darkness, the best-selling author describes a man-made bioweapon created at a research center in Wuhan, China that is developed “to wipe out a city or a country.”
“They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan,” a character says in the novel.
Meanwhile, in reality, a study by scientists at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China concluded that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
While the virus in the book is far deadlier than the coronavirus, there are several similarities.
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“I will say it’s damned near perfect. Long incubation, asymptomatic spread, infectious as hell,” another character says in the book.
A Snopes investigation of the matter concluded that the claim Koontz predicted the 2020 coronavirus outbreak was “mostly false” because in his story, the virus has a 100% fatality rate.
In addition, in the original version of the book, the biological weapon was named Gorki-400 and was changed to Wuhan for later editions published after 1989.
Once again, by applying such stringent measurements to declaring the prediction “false,” Snopes has mischaracterized the issue.
Yes it is weird that Koontz accurately predicted a virus emerging out of Wuhan that would cause a global biological pandemic.
That doesn’t mean Koontz had any foreknowledge of a conspiracy, but despite Snopes’ best efforts to throw cold water on the issue, it does make his plot eerily prescient.
Meanwhile, in another book called End Of Days: Predictions And Prophecies About The End Of The World, author Sylvia Browne predicted a “pneumonia-like illness” that would sweep the world in 2020.
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“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,” she wrote. “Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again 10 years later, and then disappear completely.”
No doubt Snopes will “investigate” that too and dismiss it completely.