The Last of Us 2 - Relevance to current situations.

The wait is over. I have finally gotten my hands on The Last of Us 2. Was it worth the wait? Without doubt, yes.
I should first address the infected elephant in the room. The relevance The Last of Us 2 has with current real life is almost too unbelievable to be true. I mean, sure, we are not living in a post apocalyptic world yet but give it time and who knows? Right? The similarities this game has with current events is uncanny. For example, while wandering through abandoned supermarkets in this game you can see signs on the wall indicating the need to stop the spread! The signs also clearly indicate the need to wear face masks. As you progress through the story line one of the tasks of the game is to gather up individual units of supplies and one of these important supplies you are constantly on the look out for is ethanol (alcohol). Do you recall hearing about the recent importance of ethanol in hand sanitisers? Ethanol plants around the world were forced into 24 hour operating schedules just to keep up with the increase in demand! Do you remember how hard it was to find alcohol based anything? For this to be considered so important in the game is obviously eerily relevant, perhaps touching a little too close to home for comfort. Especially if you reside in part of the world where Uncle COVID is really pulling daily life to pieces.
Snap! Back to reality. Originally the spread of Covid 19 pushed The Last of Us 2's release date back indefinitely. This fact caused me to wonder. What influenced the creators (Naughty Dog) to release it now in June of 2020? Was it because they wished to take advantage of all the unemployed or quarantined people still at home? Well, no, right? Because, if they were doing that then they wouldn't have planned to delay the release in the first place. Clearly the relevance of the game to the current dire situations was enough to consider this but it didn't happen. Instead they went ahead and released it in June 2020. The reason? Could it be that they thought there was a real possibility of the pandemic getting worse? Perhaps this is why they back tracked on their indefinite release date? I guess only Naughty Dog will know the answer for sure. But talk about either extremely good or extremely bad luck right? Naughty Dog has spent the last six years developing this game only to have the release of it fall into the heart of the worse pandemic the world has seen since 1918? What are the chances of that? One in a hundred?
Further relevance to current events is the importance placed upon group factions and civil divisions. Like in real life, the game pandemic has caused massive social upheaval. Quarantine Zones were created to control the movements of the people and the police and military were sent in to enforce these QZ's. The only real differences between the game and real life is that the infection is caused by a cordyceps infection not a coronavirus and the other difference is the depth of the civil collapse. Without doubt, I am exaggerating to the extreme but it should be said that the similarities to current real life were probably enough for Naughty Dog to delay the release of the game indefinitely. Luckily for the last of us, this has recently changed with the release of the game.
While playing the game I began to read between the lines, this forced me to ask myself a couple of dark questions. What would it take to push someone over the edge? And, is being pushed over the edge the real reason for anyone going to war?