In 1555, Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus, published "Les Prophéties," a collection of nearly 1,000 prophetic and poetic quatrains (four-line rhyming verses).
One of them reads:
"From the vain enterprise honour and undue complaint,
Boats tossed about among the Latins, cold, hunger, waves,
Not far from the Tiber the land stained with blood,
And diverse plagues will be upon mankind."
The Tiber is a river in Italy said to symbolize the country and its history, according to Andrew Whalen for Newsweek.
Another quatrain reads:
'The sloping park, great calamity,
Through the Lands of the West and Lombardy
The fire in the ship, plague and captivity;
Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn fading."
One Twitter user speculated that "plague" and "captivity" refer to the coronavirus and lockdown, according to Express. The last line, he said, refers to the beginning of January 23 and 24 in 2020. Wuhan was placed under strict quarantine on January 23. "Lands of the west and Lombardy," he added, refer to Europe, Australasia, America, and Italy (Lombardy).
But this is all pure speculation. While some people avidly believe Nostradamus has correctly predicted events in the past, others say his alleged prediction of the coronavirus is a false claim.
"The straight fact is that nobody has ever used Nostradamus' writings to predict a future event in specific terms which later came true," renowned skeptic Brian Dunning said in his podcast.