I'm hate-reading it for my book club. It already sucks for a bunch of reasons but it's also nakedly jingoistic in ways I don't even think the author understands because I think he's just a dumb rich kid (his father is Mel Brooks).
It's a zombie apocalypse book. The baseline we're working with is: if a country is a 
country its policies are good-to-neutral (for example Israel wisely accumulates all evidence of outbreaks and is the first to publish a report to warn the world, then is the only country to quarantine BUT SINCE THEY'RE SO WISE AND GRACIOUS THEY ALSO GRANT RIGHT OF RETURN SO PALESTINIANS CAN QUARANTINE WITH THEM) but any official enemy is disastrous evil (China hides the outbreak from the world, Russia slaughters their own troops to maintain rank, Iran starts a nuclear war). Also doesn't hesitate to slip in liberal conspiracy theories about them - the PLA makes millions selling human organs (extracted from live, unwilling subjects), Iran completes their nuclear program with assistance from DPRK.
I haven't got into the armed forces idolatry like there's so much that sucks about this book but this is the quote that made my eyes bulge out of my head:
Now, I am a good soldier, but I am also a West German. You understand the difference? In the East, they were told that they were not responsible for the atrocities of the Second World War, that as good communists, they were just as much victims of Hitler as anyone else. You understand why the skinheads and proto-fascists were mainly in the East? They did not feel the responsibility of the past, not like we did in the West. We were taught since birth to bear the burden of our grandfathers’ shame. We were taught that, even if we wore a uniform, that our first sworn duty was to our conscience, no matter what the consequences.
Fuck this dumb book how did it receive such universal praise 
I think that's why a lot of later zombie media have an alternative vector to the zombie infection other than biting.
Like the Last of Us happens due to the fungal spores being in contaminated flour, randomly infecting swathes of the worlds population. The Walking Dead generally has that everyone alive is infected through an unknown vector (aerosol?), but when you die or get bitten you turn into a zombie. Daybreak had the HPV vaccine be the reason why teenagers survive a biochemical weapon which adults didn't etc.
Yeah that is true. Like the flood in halo being spread by airborne spores. That was more believable. Just spreading by bite I don't see it. Give someone with skilled blood lust armour, sharp weapons and clear instructions he'll take out a decent amount before going down. Have a group of em even more. Have an army and make it some Thermopylae scenario (real armour not that magazine cover outfit they wore in the movie) with a narrow passage it becomes interesting. Give them projectile weapons it becomes a bloodbath especially if you use hit and run.
It also makes sense. Like with any infection in real life. Take Covid19 before vaccines and antivirals, you could be asymptomatic or you could die depending on comorbidities and luck. Or the Black Death, some people survived the bubonic version, others didn't but if you got the septicaemic or pneumonic version you were basically dead. But they were the same bacteria.
There being an initially spreading airborne wave turning some people and sparing others etc.
Facts. I read about 20% of cases are asymptomatic. Thats a slick way spreading as opposed to a foaming at the mouth maniac attacking you. I've seen people say it might work because of the shock of seeing loved ones turn which catches people off guard..... We'll ill run out of loved ones though