Well considering that they told everybody that if you get vaccinated you can take off your mask, and then they scared everybody into putting their masks back on indefinitely over Delta! Delta! Delta!, I don’t think they’re worried too much about coming up with some plausible explanation that the sheep will happily accept.
Well, in the Biblical prophesies, it does mention that 33% of the world population will die thru famine, war, etc, but I could readily believe the virus deaths might actually be the reason.