Debates claiming that the novel coronavirus is lab-made were prevalent during previous outbreaks as well. Indeed, humanity is also the victim of the evils it is exposed to. History has already revealed what people who lack a moral compass are capable of. Remember Hiroshima!
During the Cold War, the world was terrified of the possibility of a nuclear world war. The production of chemical and biological weapons is one of the most striking examples of the exploitation of science. It is of course possible that bio-weapons in the form of viruses can be man-made. We talk of an issue that has been subject to a myriad of movies and books.
In a U.S.-published novel, I read that one specific virus developed in a science lab would only affect “Blacks.” The novel, the name of which I cannot recall, spoke of a White Supremacist network that circulated a virus developed to prevent the political-cultural changes that an increase in the population of Black Americans would bring about.
All evil is fair game for a savage mind. I now want to move on to our main subject while keeping this in mind. Our story starts with U.S. President Donald Trump calling the coronavirus, “The Chinese virus.”
There is no doubt that it originated in China’s city of Wuhan. However this fact does not justify it being branded as the Chinese virus. The Spanish Influenza, which emerged in Europe in the 1918 and caused the death of tens of millions of people, did not come from Spain. The flu, which emerged in a military training camp in the U.S., spread to Spain from American soldiers dispatched to Europe and from there to the whole continent and many regions of the world.
In thriller novels written about the Cold War, there has been smear campaigns claiming that viruses produced by human beings originated from Soviet Russia. After the "Soviet Union" collapsed, the new Devil for the U.S. became "rising China". American spy novels blamed China for cyber or terrorist attacks on the U.S. I have read and watched dozens of novels and movies on the subject.
“Eyes of Darkness” written by American author Dean Koontz in 1981 has become a hot topic once again with the emergence of the novel coronavirus. Apparently the novel was the harbinger of today’s epidemic. It tells of the “Wuhan 400” virus that was produced in a military lab in China. The novel has inspired many conspiracy theories. “Koontz’s prophecy” quickly became a trend on social media, and many writers gave their two cents without spending any of their gray cells.
Koontz speaks of the “Wuhan-400” virus, not in the 1981 edition but the one published in 2008. the first case of the coronavirus was recorded in Asia in 2003. It was spread to passengers going to Hong Kong from China and from there to other passengers traveling to Singapore and Canada. When the 2008 edition of the novel was published the world had already experienced the coronavirus.
In fact, the virus mentioned in the 1982 edition of Koontz's novel was not "Wuhan-400" but "Gorky-400." The novel was written in the midst of a heated period of the Cold War era. As the name suggests, "Gorky-400" was of Russian origin. Gorky is one of the great writers of the Soviet Russian era, and his name was given to a park frequented by tourists in the center of Moscow.
As it is, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the “Cold War” period ended and the bipolar world system collapsed. The U.S. in its turn branded China as the new “devil” and started a whole new kind of Cold War. Koontz kept up with the fashion and quickly changed the name of his biological weapon from “Gorky-400” to “Wuhan-400.”
It is clear as day that millions of people around the world are prone to believing in false information. However there are volunteer groups (such as Snopes) that question incomplete or false information that circulate on social media. Websites like these are beneficial to readers who have an interest in conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, let us be vigilant against global commercial, ideological or political opportunists who want to realize their filthy ambitions by exploiting the fears of the masses who suffer from “learned helplessness syndrome.”
