Zombie variant: will it destroy the economy? Or will it just kill you?
And how can you benefit from it?
Ten years from now, two kids will be playing Covid cards.
Virus: Let's start. "Wuhan market outbreak".
Victims: I play "Chinese lockdowns".
Virus: My first combo! "Global spread" plus "Western inaction".
Victims: You don't scare me. I've got "March 2020 lockdowns".
Virus: OK, I'll play a "Multiple waves", "Alpha variant" and "Delta variant" combo.
Victims: Hmm... Wait, I play the best card in the world! "Vaccines"!
Virus: That was a good one.
Victims: Yeah, I told you... but... what is that card? Nooooo! Not the Zombie variant!!!!
By now, you'll be asking:
What's the Zombie variant?
The Zombie variant is the next chapter of the pandemic if written by Stephen King. The chapter's title would be "The nightmare".
A Zombie variant is a variant that specifically targets the vaccinated and kills them. There would be no way to develop a new vaccine against the Zombie variant. The only way to protect people would be to force a permanent Zero Covid policy of hard lockdowns and almost zero international travel.
A permanent March 2020.
How is this possible? Due to a phenomenon called "Antibody Dependent Enhancement" (ADE). Your body recognises the virus as the one in the vaccine (or a previous infection) and produces antibodies according to that old blueprint. Problem: those antibodies help the new variant kill you.
ADE exists in many viral diseases, most notably dengue. You get dengue once and you survive; you get it twice and it kills you due to ADE.
ADE is known to exist in coronaviruses. There are many lab studies where vaccine-related ADE increases disease severity in other coronaviruses, including SARS1.
How likely is the Zombie variant? Frankly, I don't know. The best virologists I've talked to tell me it's very unlikely but possible. I recently proposed them a scenario where something similar to a Zombie variant emerged in India next December:
A sort-of consensus was reached that it would spill over and it would force hard lockdowns until erradication, since it would probably kill 1 out of 3 infected very fast.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Zombie Number Two
- Victims: Great! I erradicated the Zombie variant with hard lockdowns.
- Pandemic: Then I’ll play... da-dah! "Zombie 2 variant!"
Zombie 1 (an ADE Zombie variant) is not the only literary trick in Stephen King's hand. A new highly deadly mutation could appear that produces no ADE but evades previous immunity.
That’s Zombie 2 and it would kill around 1 in 10.
Why 1 in 10? Depending on how more deadly it was, it could be erradicated through local lockdowns before it spilled over. Thus, a 10% deadly Zombie is pretty disgusting and even more dangerous than a more easily detectable 100% deadly Zombie.
In the proposed scenario above, it was suggested that a Zombie 2 with an Infection Fatality Rate (IRF) of around 10% would escape quick detection in the Third World and spread globally. That would produce such a huge increase in deaths that it would return the West to March 2020 lockdowns.
For all purposes, both Zombie 1 (ADE) and Zombie 2 (non-ADE) would make governments try and erradicate the virus through lockdowns, no matter how unlikely that might seem. The death toll (in the millions in a very short time) would simply be too high to avoid them.
The only practical difference between Zombie 1 and Zombie 2 is that, if erradication efforts failed, you could have a vaccine for Zombie 2 after several months. On the contrary, there is no known way to produce a vaccine against Zombie 1; erradication efforts simply won't fail: the alternative is a permanent Black Death situation.
Endgame: how to win
- Victims: Hey, you are playing one Zombie card after another! Isn't there a way to win?
- Pandemic: The only way for you to win is letting a Zombie card spread.
- Victims: WTF?! With a 10+% death rate?
- Pandemic: Yup. It allows you to play a "Better vaccines", "Global travel moratorium" and "Synchronized global lockdown" combo. That's the only thing that erradicates the virus.
- Victims: And how do you win?
- Pandemic: If you don't win in the first rounds, I'll play the "MDE after reinfections" card.
- Victims: What does "MDE" stand for?
- Pandemic: "Mass Disability Event".
The Mass Disability Event card
If you're young and you get Covid for the first time, you will most likely develop flu-like symptoms. Covid will basically feel like an intense flu, probably twice as long as the flu.
That's what happens *the first time*. The thing here is that, if unerradicated, you'll probably get Covid many, many times over a lifetime. And its effects compound.
Have you ever heard about "compound interest"? Money Twitter calls it the "largest force in the Universe. It's good financial advice; it happens to also be good health advice. You'll see: Covid reinfections are the compound interest of disease.
Each time you get Covid, especially if symptomatic, you get one or more hits: T-cell depletion (accelerated aging for your immune system), autoimmunity (leading to chronic autoimmune diseases), lower IQ, memory loss, smaller lungs, heart inflammation, kidney problems...
The first hit will be so small that, if young and healthy, you won't probably notice it. But you'll get Covid for a second time. And then a third time. And then a fourth time. And after a while, you'll have been *hospitalized* for Covid on *several* different occasions.
It all compounds and a time may come when it either kills you or leaves you disabled. What's the cumulative death rate for the current variants of Covid if you get frequently reinfected over the years? It's anybody's guess.
I know people in their 30s and 40s that are currently disabled after just one Covid infection: mostly due to fatigue, brain fog & memory loss, but I also know young people with some weirder effects. A relative's friend, a young woman, developed Guillain-Barré 8 months after Covid infection and lost the ability to walk. A friend's co-worker, a young man, developed strabismus.
It's the kind of roulette you don't want to play too frequently. Two or three severe hits and you're out of the job market and the prime sex market.
This "mass disability event" is what worries me most as a parent. Smarter people than me, like this Stanford researcher, believe that reinfections over several years would kill 1 out of 3 people, even with no Zombie variants.
Actionable advice
- Don't get Covid. Don't let your family get Covid. Vaccinate even if young.
- Prepare for a financial scenario of protracted March 2020 lockdowns as soon as Zombie variants are detected.
- Consider a likely mass disability event for your long-term financial planning (assume a shorter working life for many, higher taxes in the future & how this would affect individual industries).
- Until imminent erradication looks likely, go long social distancing (e-comm, crypto, drones), short brick-and-mortar. Use uranium funds to diversify (why uranium? Check out my next letters.)
And the golden rule: Use your brain. It’s up to you how to best apply this information considering your own specific situation. Nothing in this entertainment substack is financial advice, nor health advice. Always do your own research.
P.S.: Some will be asking why vaccines alone won’t be enough to end the pandemic. I warned about it in the spring:
Excellent article thought provoking.
Stephen King needs to write the final book in the trilogy and it should go in the no fiction section.
Avoid covid like the Plague.
Excellent final advice do it yourself.
Love the card game!
This is the best piece I've read about the pandemic. And I've read quite a bit about the pandemic.