(CNN) The coronavirus is officially a global pandemic, so naturally, people are feeding their anxieties by voraciously consuming movies and books about other outbreaks.

Some of them bear eerie similarities to what's happening right now, prompting some people on the internet to claim that certain storytellers "predicted" the spread of coronavirus.

One particularly striking example comes from a thriller novel by Dean Koontz called "The Eyes of Darkness."

In a tweet that has since been widely shared, someone said that Koontz had predicted the coronavirus outbreak based on a screenshot of a page in the book. But to say that Koontz saw all this coming is a bit of a stretch. A novel is a work of fiction, after all.

A Dean Koontz novel written in 1981 predicted the outbreak of the coronavirus! pic.twitter.com/bjjqq6TzOl — Nick Hinton (@NickHintonn) February 16, 2020

So let's break it down.

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