World War Z by Max Brooks

 I know.  I had a plan to make 2025 about reading women authors...but this book was calling me from an end-cap at the library- an old friend from those giddy zombie days in the early-20-teens.  I caved.  I must say that this story read differently 10 years later: post COVID, post trump/ICE.

Take this for example:

You were't worried about public disclosure?

From who?

The press, the media.

The "media"? You mean those networks that are owned by some of the largest corporations in the world, coporations that would have taken a nosedive if another panic hit the stock market? That media?

So you never actually instigated a cover-up?

We didn't have to- they covered it up themselves.  They had as much, or more, to lose than we did. And besides, they'd already gotten their stories the year before when the first cases were reported in America...It had become "manageable." People were learning to live with it and they were already hungry of something different.  Big news is big buisness, and you gotta stay fresh if you want to stay successful.

But there were alternative media outlets

Oh sure, and you know who listens to them? Pansy, overeducated know-it-alls, and you know who listens to them? Nobody? Who's going to care about some PBS-NPR fringe minority that's out of touch with the mainstream? The more those elitist egghead shouted "The Dead Are Walking," the more most real Americans tuned them out.

Even though you'd received warnings to the contrary, that it could never just be woven into the fabric of public life and that it actually was a gloal catastrophe in the making.

(Mister Carlson pauses, shoots me an angry look, then heaves a shovelful of "fuel' into his cart.)

Grow up.