COVID-19 is the realisation of Nostradamus' 'Great Plague'

The argument

Nostradamus was an extraordinary prophet. Till now, no event in history has correlated with his belief a 'Great Plague' was coming to inflict suffering on the world, which he wrote about in section 53 of his book “Les Propheties”. This, coupled with his claim the plague would start in a 'Sea City' bears startling similarities to COVID-19, a port town, and its alleged origins - the Wuhan Seafood Market. The excerpt comes from Century 2:53, and states 'Will not cease until there be avenged the death. Of the just blood, condemned for a price without crime.”

Context

(ALERT: Visit the WHO for accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic) The French, sixteenth century philosopher Nostradamus has been considered a powerful visionary who could predict the future for centuries. Some believe he accurately foresaw the fire of London, Nazi Germany, the French Revolution and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, amongst other major world events. This argument feeds into other theories that the virus was foreseen by those with the ability to predict the future in prophecy and in text, including the writer Sylvia Browne and the mystic Baba Vanga.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Many of Nostradmus' so-called predictions were extremely vague writings that his supporters have spun to fit past world events. There is no evidence whatsoever of his writings accurately forecasting. His only specific prediction - "in 1727, in October, the king of Persia [shall be] captured by those of Egypt" - was never realised. Additionally, the plague Nostradamus predicted was said to originate from a seaside town. Wuhan is in central China.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The quatrains are short, allusive verses in an archaic idiom carrying no dates or place names, and the reading offered is not in the text: the lines quoted from Century 2:53 concern avenging a death, not the origin of a disease. A coming "Great Plague" is also unremarkable as a prediction in sixteenth-century Europe, where plague was recurrent — and a verse general enough to fit any epidemic will fit every epidemic, which is why these writings are read as predictions only after the event. [Rejecting P2] The correspondence fails on its own terms. Wuhan lies far inland in central China, several hundred kilometres from the sea, and a market selling seafood does not make a city a sea city; the market was an early cluster rather than an established origin, so the premise matches a reinterpreted phrase to a detail that is itself uncertain.