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Tidbit. The novel “The Eyes of Darkness” talks about a viral epidemic. An Italian writer and blogger, Maurizio Blondet, has aptly pointed out the difference between the first edition, published in 1981 under the name Leigh Nichols, and the 1989 edition under the (allegedly real) name Dean Koontz. In the 1981 edition, out in the Cold War, the germ was called “Gorki-400”. In the 1989 book this was changed to “Wuhan-400”. Both editions say that “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes” only to vanish again suddenly. While the part on the infection is nothing special, it might be said that the mention of 2020 is either a premonition – not impossible – or that some parties in the biowarfare “industry” with a black sense of humour read the book and decided to apply it, thus providing a talking point on “predictive programming”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_Darkness