The coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed over 1000 lives in China, was predicted about 40 years ago. A thriller novel 'The Eyes of Darkness', written by Dean Koontz in 1981, mentioned a virus named Wuhan-400. In the novel, the virus was created as a weapon in a laboratory. The novel talks of a Chinese military lab that creates a virus as part of its biological weapons programmed. The lab is located in Wuhan, which lends the virus its name, Wuhan-400.
"It was around that time that a Chinese scientist named Li Chen moved to the United States while carrying a floppy disk of data from China’s most important and dangerous new biological weapon of the past decade. They call it Wuhan-400 because it was developed in their RDNA laboratory just outside the city of Wuhan," an excerpt from the book read.
A Twitter user, who goes by the name Darren of Plymouth, posted screenshots of the excerpt from the novel which has the mention of the virus Wuhan-400 in it.
"It is a strange world we live in," the tweet read.
Netizens were taken by surprise over the fiction book predicting the virus 40 years ago. Here's a look at some reactions.