https://nypost.com/2022/02/23/russian-tanks-with-mysterious-z-marking-enter-ukraine/

WWZ

The novel is framed around a series of interviews conducted by "Max Brooks", author of the Zombie Survival Guide, as he travels the world a decade after the end of the Zombie War.

The global pandemic begins around twenty years previously in China, which covers up the outbreak and engineers a military crisis with Taiwan to avoid appearing weak internationally. As a result, the disease becomes known as "African Rabies" when cases in South Africa become widely known. Other than Israel, which institutes a "self-quarantine" and constructs a border wall, most of the world largely ignores the threat for the next year. The United States in particular is depicted as overconfident and distracted by an election year, while a widely marketed placebo vaccine, Phalanx, creates a false sense of security.

The following spring, a journalist reveals that Phalanx does nothing to prevent zombification, and that the infected are not victims of rabies but rather walking corpses, sparking an event known as the "Great Panic". Order breaks down around the globe, with rioting, breakdown of essential services, and indiscriminate culling of citizens killing more people than the zombies themselves. South Africa leads other countries in implementing a drastic contingency plan which designates large groups of survivors as human bait, distracting the undead while small safe zones regroup and build up resources…

Covid clean up operations?