Holy shit, I just had a thought about this a couple days ago. I'm imagining a world where the zombie virus played out like COVID where it came out of China, but they got their shit together and only had like 50,000 deaths. Meanwhile in the United States, chuds are holding parties in their backyards out of spite where they all start biting each other because the government told them not to. By the start of June, Minneapolis looks the same as it did IRL, but for a totally different reason and by August the United States and Canada are completely destroyed

So, just a regular zombie movie. Most of them are dumb assholes who don't take it seriously.

but we haven't learned any economic or sociopolitical lessons from covid

I wrote a short novel like this in the summer of 2020, although this was back when liberals were pretending to care about the pandemic. “Zombies invade a Maine tourist town but nobody notices.”

You should watch Life After Beth, it kinda hits some of these points pretty well

"COVID ate my Neighbors!"

I've always liked the idea of a zombie movie where there's actually a cure and self proclaimed zombie-slayers go nuts

Scene: An Applebees filled with terrified workers. The North side of the building is being besieged by a mob of angry chuds banging on the windows demanding mediocre cheeseburgers. The South side of the building is being beseiged by zombies banging on the windows. It's hard to tell the difference between the two mobs

So kinda like the dead rising series, where zombie outbreaks are just a thing that happens, zombies are commercialized via the media and there is a "cure" that only stops the infections for like 24 hours and its super expensive?

The idea I've always had for a zombie story is actually the only one in which there is a cure for zombification. The thing is, zombies rot and fall apart with time, which means that if and when they get cured, they don't just regenerate, they come back as disfigured people with zero memories of the time they were zombies, as well as the added stigma of probably having killed and eaten somebody while zombified.

So the whole shtick is how do you reintegrate into society as a former zombie, scarred and treated like a monster, even though you're just supposed to be a normal dude again? I'm not mature, insightful or wise enough to do that premise justice, but I think it would be real neat in the hands of someone who's a better writer than I am.

It'd need a Golden Corral scene, maybe where the chocolate fountain is made slightly more gross because zombie movies are edgy like that, and dips in anyway after taking some horse paste or something, maybe even taking a smug up-the-nose selfie afterward in the parking lot to send to his to stick it to the wokes that are too scared to enjoy things, and immediately afterward, he violently thrashes and goes in the cabin of his F-150 and no one notices because it's only a slight behavior change for him.

The novel "World War Z an oral history of the zombie wars" (very little to do with the E N T E R T A I N T M E N T F R A N C H I S E) featured a hogwash vaccine. The interview with the Big Pharma CEO is presented as he is shoveling shit for a power plant under armed guard.