The Coronavirus pandemic was a strange and almost unthinkable time for much of the world, but perhaps things would have been different if we’d heeded the advice of a random social media user.
To use our former glorious prime minister’s favourite word, it really was an ‘unprecedented’ time for the whole world, as we were thrown in and out of various lockdowns and told to go and eat in restaurants and pubs, despite things being far from over.
While things seemed fairly relaxed in the first few weeks, when we were told we didn’t have to go to school or work and we enjoyed some lovely sunshine, it’s hard to believe that it would go on to claim so many people’s lives across the world and completely change the way we think about our health.
Even now, we’re still hearing about new variants of the disease, and although the tests might be a thing of the past for many of us, we probably all know somebody who’s had a horrible cough in the past few months.
Does anyone else miss the daily conferences? (Leon Neal – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Nobody could have predicted the impact that the global pandemic would have, but our resident psychic Baba Vanga did seem to suggest that something along the lines of Covid would arrive around 100 years after the last global pandemic (the Spanish Flu), which took place between 1918-20.
However, the blind Bulgarian mystic seemingly wasn’t the only one to claim that Coronavirus was coming, as X user Marco Acortes, or Twitter as it was called back then, suggested in 2013 that ‘Corona virus… its coming’.
Perhaps even more strange is that he hasn’t posted a tweet since 2016, so we can’t even blame Elon Musk for his disappearance, which has led many to speculate that he might have been from the future.
Replies on his last tweet from 2016 are filled with people from five years ago, when the pandemic was at its worst and we were all praying for an end to social distancing, even asking him for a cure.
Are these the words of a time traveller? (X/@Marco_Acortes)
While we did end up getting the vaccine, which meant that we could all start living our lives normally again, people are still asking their old friend Marco for the lottery numbers after believing that he might be a time traveller.
One user said: “Goodbye time traveller. You tried to tell us about the virus but we didn’t see it till now.”
Another commented: “He was from a different time and he violated the rules of the timeline that’s why he left us with a smile.”
Corona virus is actually much more of a general term for illnesses (Getty Stock Image)
However, other folks, who are perhaps more scientific believers, pointed out that Corona virus is more of a general term, and it was perhaps just a coincidence that we happened to have a virus of that kind so soon after that fateful tweet back in 2013.
Coronaviruses are a large family of diseases which can cause illness in humans, and they actually range from things like the common cold to more serious illnesses, as we saw with Covid-19, which was the official term for the pandemic which struck over five years ago.
Unfortunately, some experts have suggested that another huge pandemic is not far off, and that it could kill around seven million people, which makes Marco’s tweet seem far more innocent by comparison.
