No, Nostradamus Didn’t Predict COVID-19—But I Did!

The French esoteric writer Michel de Nostredame (lived 1503 – 1566), who is better known by his Latinized name “Nostradamus,” is famous for his book Les Prophéties, a collection of quatrains published in 1555, which Nostradamus’s supporters claim contains accurate predictions of future events.

Immediately after any major event happens, Nostradamus’s supporters always flock to claim that he predicted it. They are especially keen to claim this after major disasters and international tragedies. It is only natural, then, that Nostradamus’s supporters are now claiming that he successfully predicted the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hundreds of years in advance.

Unfortunately for fans of the famous French mystic, he did absolutely nothing of the sort. Some of the alleged “prophecies” attributed to Nostradamus online are just outright hoaxes; others are real things he wrote that have just been contorted and misinterpreted to make them seem like genuine predictions.

There is someone, though, who did correctly predict this pandemic long in advance: me!

About Nostradamus

Nostradamus’s supporters claim that he has predicted every major event in world history, including the Great Fire of London in 1666, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, both world wars, the Apollo moon landings, the attacks on the World Trade center on September 11, 2001, and the rise of Donald Trump.

The funny thing about Nostradamus’s prophecies, though, is that the actual prophecies are so vague and convoluted that you can pretty much read anything you want into them. Furthermore, because the quatrains were originally written in sixteenth-century French, translators have often taken tremendous liberties in effort to make his prophecies seem to match real-world events.

ABOVE: Posthumous portrait of the French esoteric writer Michel de Nostredame, painted c. 1614

Nostradamus and COVID-19

Now Nostradamus’s supporters are claiming that Nostradamus correctly predicted the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. For instance, there is a meme going around claiming that Nostradamus wrote the following prophecy:

“There will be a twin year (2020) from which will arise a queen (corona) who will come from the east (China) and who will spread a plague (virus) in the darkness of night, on a country with 7 hills (Italy) and will transform the twilight of men into dust (death), to destroy and ruin the world. It will be the end of the world economy as you know it.”

This would be a remarkably accurate prediction… if only Nostradamus had actually written it. As it turns out, this prophecy does not appear anywhere in Nostradamus’s Les Prophéties, nor does it appear anywhere else in any of Nostradamus’s known writings at all. In fact, this so-called “prophecy” is not attested in any source whatsoever prior to 2020. This so-called “prophecy” is, in fact, a complete and utter hoax.

Nostradamus’s fans should have easily spotted this, considering that the alleged “prophecy” is not even written in the form of a quatrain! (Another slightly less obvious clue that the prophecy is a hoax is the fact that people in Nostradamus’s time did not have a concept of a “world economy.” The word economy itself was not even used in the sense we think of today until the 1650s.)

Other online people are citing genuine quotes from Nostradamus, claiming that they are about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, some people are citing Nostradamus’s Les Prophéties, Century II, Quatrain 56, which reads as follows, as translated by Edgar Leoni:

“One whom neither plague nor steel knew how to finish,
Death on the summit of the hills struck from the sky:
The abbot will die when he will see ruined
Those of the wreck wishing to seize the rock.”

This prophecy is, of course, so vague and convoluted that it is impossible to believably claim that it is a prediction of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic—or anything else for that matter.

ABOVE: Title page of a 1568 printed edition of Nostradamus’s book Les Prophéties, which, contrary to popular claims, did not predict the COVID-19 outbreak

Behold my prophetic powers!

Nostradamus did not predict the pandemic that we are now in the midst of. I, on the other hand, clearly predicted the COVID-19 pandemic over half a year in advance. Six months ago, in September 2019, before anyone had heard of COVID-19, I published a fictional horror story on r/nosleep titled “I discovered a 1,200-year-old manuscript in a monastery library. What it says still haunts me.”

In the story, the anonymous narrator, who claims to be “an academic historian and researcher of the Byzantine Empire,” claims that, in September 2001, he discovered a manuscript in a library at a monastery at Mount Athos. He reports that the manuscript dated to the early ninth century AD and that it contained prophecies written in Greek by a prophet named “Didymos of Thessaloniki.”

To the narrator’s astonishment, these prophecies turn out to be remarkably accurate. He reads through the whole manuscript, finding that Didymos of Thessaloniki somehow managed to predict nearly every single major in event in world history. He is frightened and disturbed to find that these prophecies continue to predict future events that were supposed to take place after the time when he was reading the manuscript. The events prophesied in the manuscript include all sorts of disasters and catastrophes, which the manuscript promises will come in the immediate future.

Here is the second-to-last paragraph of the story:

“Soon, very soon, suffering and death will rain down upon the world. There will be plagues and droughts and food shortages. Many people, especially poor people and people living in poorer countries, will die. There will be terrible wars that will destroy countless lives. Resources will run low. It will be a time unlike any other.”

Behold! I have proven myself to be a true prophet by pure accident! I have given a prophecy far more specific than any prophecy Nostradamus ever gave and it absolutely came true!

Now you must all get your prophetic wisdom from me, because I have proven myself a truer prophet than Nostradamus.

ABOVE: Photograph taken on 15 August 2018 of me, Spencer McDaniel, true lord of prophetic wisdom, in my freshman college dorm room