I was totally shocked yesterday when my good friend Prof. Gabby Lopez, a very good Facebook friend of mine showed in his Facebook page a cover of a book titled “The Eyes of Darkness,” which is a thriller novel by American writer Dean Koontz, which was released in 1981. The book focuses on a mother who sets out on a quest to find out if her son truly did die one year ago, or if he was still alive. While it is a thriller novel, on page 333 it said, that a Chinese defected carrying a diskette record of China’s most important and dangerous biological weapons in a decade.
The book said, “They call the stuff Wuhan-400 because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the City of Wuhan and it was the four-hundredth visible strain of man-made microorganism created at the research center. Wuhan-400 is a perfect weapon. It afflicts only human beings.” What is even more remarkable is what the book says “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.”
I showed the photo of this book to friends who wanted to order it. Although it was merely a thriller, but author Dean Koontz has become some kind of prophet because he wrote and published his book 39 years ago. For sure, no one could have predicted anything happening to the world that long time ago. Anyway, since the COVID-19 appeared in late December 2019, already some netizens wrote that this virus came from a research lab in China that was testing a virus for biological warfare. So there could be some truth to this rumor especially that COVID-19 continues to spread.
Meanwhile, upon further search in Google, I came upon a front-page Taiwan news report dated Feb. 13, 2020 and let me reprint this for our readers,
“As the Wuhan virus claims new victims around the world, Twitter users have pointed out that in the 1981 novel, ‘The Eyes of the Darkness,’ there is a disease called ‘Wuhan-400.’ The American author, Dean Koontz's suspense thrillers have often appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.
“In chapter 39 of his book, Koontz writes about a virus developed in military labs near the city of Wuhan by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a biological weapon, reported Liberty Times. The scientist leading the Wuhan-400 research is called Li Chen, who defects to the U.S. with information about China's most dangerous chemical weapons. Wuhan-400 affects people rather than animals and cannot survive outside the human body or in environments colder than 30 degrees Celsius. The similarities between the made-up virus and the Wuhan virus has got Twitter users struggling to comprehend the improbable coincidence. One big difference: Wuhan-400 has a 100 percent kill-rate, while the Wuhan virus does not.
“Some people were skeptical about Koontz's prediction 39 years ago, however, pointing out that earlier editions of the book refer to the virus as Gorki-400, a production of the Soviet Union. In response, several netizens have posted pictures of the book's newer editions to explain the name of the virus was indeed altered, possibly due to the end of the Cold War in 1991, reported SET News.”
Mind you, there are already other publications about this book that surprised many readers because of its timeline to happen in 2020 and the use of the research near the city of Wuhan. At this point we don’t know for sure whether COVID-19 is really a Chinese biological weapon. I’m sure this will be uncovered soon.
Meanwhile, we learned in the news that 14 Americans who were evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship on US-chartered flights have tested positive for COVID-19 according to the US departments of State and Health and Human Services. The passengers were among more than 300 Americans who had been quarantined on the ship since February 4 in the Japanese port city of Yokohama. The infected passengers were isolated from the other passengers during the flights.
At least the Diamond Princess vessel has no more Americans on board. But I learned that a good number of its Filipino crew have been infected by the virus.