The political and mainstream-media churn of the coronavirus variant COVID-19 is about 10% substance and 90% fragrance, but it makes for good fodder and clickbait — which converts to good media advertising revenues.

However, a colleague recently mentioned the “amusing similarity” between an almost-40-year-old work of fiction and the facts about the China virus pandemic – a case of life imitating art. I don’t read novels, but do any of you thriller readers remember the “Wuhan 400” virus Dean Koontz described in his 1981 novel, The Eyes of Darkness?

Koontz writes about “a Chinese scientist named Li” who discloses a “record of China’s most important and dangerous new biological weapon.” Koontz continues: “They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan and … Wuhan 400 is a perfect weapon. It afflicts only human beings…”

Koontz, like most good fiction writers in the Tom Clancy tradition, weaves lots of facts into his novels.

And that brings me to our comprehensive resource page, “The Flu and You,” and our footnote: “Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is not suggesting that COVID-19 was bio-engineered and then intentionally released, but he did make this connection: ‘We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that. We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.’”

Here are the facts.

Located near the Wuhan market where COVID-19 is thought to have been first contracted is Red China’s only P4 (Pathogen Level 4) super laboratory “researching” infectious diseases. The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses among other deadly pathogens, including coronavirus variants. The institute has clear ties to the PRC’s bioweapon programs.

Second, in January, the communist Chinese directorate of disinformation — the “Information Department” of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — began seeding Chinese social-media networks with rumors that the China virus was actually developed by the U.S. and deliberately released in Wuhan. Our sources in the intelligence community conclude that such disinformation is designed to help the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China counter and deflect any claims by the World Health Organization or the U.S. that the current coronavirus release is associated with the PRC’s P4 labs in Wuhan.

Oh, and one more thing about Koontz’s novel: The actual Chinese physician who blew the whistle on coronavirus — and is now dead — was named “Li.”

(Visit our comprehensive China Virus Pandemic response and recovery page, and see our related pages.