Jim Shepard Imagines the Next Pandemic

Can Jim Shepard tell the future?
How else to account for the fact he had nearly completed his novel about a global pandemic, Phase Six, before COVID-19 descended on the planet?
Although Shepard’s seventh novel is triggered by an epidemic that is killing millions around the world, it focuses on three people: the young boy from Greenland, Aleq, who became patient zero and the two female scientists, Jeannine and Danice, who try to identify the pathogen that kills about a 33% of those who contract it (COVID’s morality rate is less than 1%).