Has anyone read "The Stand"? Does that book remind you of anything happening now?

Yes, and nope.

This is not like bubonic plague or Spanish flu. Some may be dying, but mostly people who had underlying health issues, and there's also many people recovering.
Numbers of recovery take a bit more time of course since people first have to heal.

Apart from all that, fear and panic is the fastest route to any disease. Love and gratitude are the vibes of healthy people and healthy bodies.

In the book, nobody panicked.

Have read it but do t understand why you say it is important ?????

I also read Daniel koontz .. the eyes of darkness (1981). Based on a virus he called Wuhan 400... also just a story but with some remarkable similarities .

Blondey, Stephen King predicted a pandemic and how people will react, and what could possibly happen.

There have been many predictions about pandemics cat .. his book was a fantasy horror novel .

I understand, Blondey. I think Stephen King writes a entertaining story, several decades old.

About the same time 9/11 happened the JRR Tolkein book was made into a movie 'The Twin Towers'.

I remember feeling quite sick at the coincidence.

There are also many mentions of Donald Trump being predicted by The Simpsons too.

All it is Cat, is a coincidence. Pandemics are bound to come. Clever writers write about pandemics.

I read a fiction book about a man who wanted to unleash the bubonic plague to take down the population of the earth. A strange co worker of mine insists the Covid 19 is a conspiracy to take down the population of the earth.... Of course that is ridiculous.

Another novel which has been very much on my mind recently, given events, is Station 11,

As has already been said, writers do tend to choose these subjects because it gives them a chance to explore human nature. Other examples are "The White Plague" by John Brunner about the release of a sterilising infection, set in Ireland or even some novels by Sir Fred Hoyle based on his own research which said that a lot of viruses are actually from space.

If memory serves a number actually did. But I didn't mean that. I meant making a comparison to such things, like this book. In the book most of mankind dies, the devil appears and it ain't all that pretty.
What is happening now is much different.
I have 1 Corona patient in my village, a 2nd one on my island, possibly also in my village. But the streets aren't strewn with dead bodies.
As I see it comparing and thinking we now have a similar scenario is fear-based.

Stephen King, himself, had this to say on Twitter:

No, coronavirus is NOT like THE STAND. It’s not anywhere near as serious. It’s eminently survivable. Keep calm and take all reasonable precautions.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 8, 2020

Yes glad to her that

The Tolkien novel previously mentioned in the thread was The Two Towers...it's the middle book in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

For more of your pandemic enjoyment you can try:

The Plague - Albert Camus (1947) - it tells the story from the point of view of an unknown narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran.

The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton (1969) - the story details the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in New Mexico.

The difference between Captain Trips from the Stand and Covid-19 is that their fatality rates are completely inverse of each other. Captain Trips was fatal to about 99.8% of the population it infected, whereas Covid sits well below that 1% fatality rate, even though the media reports that number as higher, they don't actually know how many people have been exposed to Covid and had little to no reaction or had symptoms of a mild cold, recovered and never were tested for the disease.