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Dark and light taming cheep6/18/2023 Health experts think it may have originated in bats and then passed to humans, possibly via another species. Reuters looked at further references of “Wuhan-400” in Koontz’s book. 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. Koontz also describes “Wuhan-400” as a disease with a “kill-rate” of a 100%. “Once infected, no one lives more than twenty-four hours. COVID-19’s death rate is far from this, according to the WHO, the case-fatality rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan and 0.7% outside Wuhan ( here). The symptoms described by Koontz are different to COVID-19. In his novel, “Wuhan-400” causes the secretion of a “toxin that literally eats away brain tissue” causing loss of control of bodily function. “The victim simply ceases to have a pulse, functioning organs, or any urge to breathe”, writes Koontz. Meanwhile COVID-19 infections have a wide range of symptoms, including fever, coughing, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. Mild cases can cause cold-like symptoms, while severe cases can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory illness, kidney failure and death. In the novel, “Wuhan-400” is described to be “infinitely worse” than Ebola (EVD), but COVID-19 is less threatening than EVD. According to the WHO, the average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%, while case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks (see here). The new coronavirus death-rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan and 0.7% outside Wuhan. It is worth noting that in the first edition of “The Eyes of Darkness” in 1981, the fictional virus was not named after the Chinese city, but after a Russian locality named “Gorki” (Gorki-400). In the original version of the novel, the virus was developed outside of “Gorki” and it was meant to be the “Soviet’s most important, dangerous new biological weapon in the decade”. This is confirmed by a Google Books’ search of the word “Wuhan” in the 1981 edition ( here). In this edition “Wuhan-400” brings no results.Īccording to the South China Morning Post, the name of the virus was changed on the re-release of the book in 1989, toward the end of the Cold War. Their article here includes photographs of the previous edition that references “Gorki-400”). In this edition, Koontz also published his novel under his real name instead of using his pseudonym “Leigh Nichols”. Reuters tried to contact the author and the publisher but is yet to receive an answer. Some of the posts on social media also share a third image of a book page without any attribution ( here), wrongly suggesting it is part of the same book.
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