Game Theory: Ellie Is NOT Immune! (The Last of Us Part 2)

No corny jokes here, let's get to the point Ellie is not

immune

. End of story and today I'm going to show you because the implications of what this means for the entire franchise are enormous. Hello Internet, welcome to

game

theory

. that was bitten by an infected nerd in 2009 and hasn't shown any symptoms of nerd rage since then, honestly no, at least stacking boxes makes sense, but today I'm not here to talk about my anger, I'm here to talk to you. about a

game

that makes you angry or makes you think it's trendy depending on the perspective you're coming from, that's it folks, today I'm tackling the

last

of us,

part

of the game with ratings of 8 plus 10 out of 10. some zero stars out of 5 from others and a big discredit from you, that's how it is today, I'm not here to take sides on whether this is a good game or a terrible game, I'm just here to tell you that there is something serious that we all have been through overlooked in the game and that shakes the foundations on which this franchise was built, more specifically, the main character of the game, Ellie, is not the axis of the story they tell us, in fact, there is nothing special about her.

She, most likely, is not

immune

to the zombifying fungus that plagues the Last of Us universe and the craziest thing of all is that I think the developers might know this. You thought you were angry about the story decisions made by this game before, just wait until you hear about the decisions they've been hiding in plain sight all along, but let's rewind to fully understand what I'm talking about today, we need to rewind briefly to catch up with everyone on the latest of us, the first

part

, so we can immediately take it apart right after, the

last

of us, you know, takes place in a universe where the cordyceps mushroom, a real-world fungus from which We've already talked about it on the channel, it mutates to use humans as hosts if you're not familiar with the fungus.

The closest you'll get to a real-life version of the alien movie in the game, Cordyceps takes over a large portion of the human population and protagonist Joel loses his daughter in the initial outbreak and becomes a smuggler to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. One day in the Wasteland he is asked to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl who was bitten by an infected zombie but magically never turned into a monster. Suddenly, all hope for humanity depends on this girl, as she needs to cross the country to reach a group. of scientists so they can create a vaccine using it to resolve the outbreak once and for all.

I just covered that topic in a recent

theory

and talked about the fact that it's not only a bad idea but a complete scientific daisy since vaccines are created. to combat viruses and not fungal infections, but you know, with today's theory we are going to move forward anyway, since there is the last of us in the second part, you can imagine that things do not go as planned in the end from the first game. Turns out the scientists are going to kill Ellie to get her blood for this impossible vaccine and she's a protagonist so that's not going to work it would have killed you so I stopped it.

Joel decides to save Ellie's life from the stupid vaccine doctors, which you know. He doesn't make Ellie very happy in the sequel when she finds out that she was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would have mattered, but you took it from me from there. The Last of Us Part 2 is basically Ellie's revenge drama, which I don't do. I don't really have to spoil it for you to understand this theory, suffice it to say that the game turns into a violent killing spree because I mean it's a video game, so unless you're exercising your interior decorating skills on your own private island, We're going on a killing spree and it's also worth noting that almost everything we see Ellie do in the second part of Last of Us would be scientifically impossible based on the information the game explicitly gives us, but we're about to get there to that.

Right now, so no more nonsense, it's time to get into the nitty-gritty, let's talk about Ellie's supposed immunity, she's the only person who has it and both games revolve around the idea that she has one. special medical magic inside her that can help save the rest of the world after you took me out of the firefly hospital you said there were dozens of people like me I've never met another immune person before but you see, that's all we understand though About that, that's not all. The game tells us. The first part of The Last of Us actually has a single recording from a surgeon that gives us a much greater understanding of Ellie's condition.

The girl's infection was unlike anything she had ever seen. The cause of her immunity is uncertain. That's us. We have seen in all the previous cases the antigenic titer the patient's cortisol blood culture is taken from the patient quickly in the laboratory, however, the white blood cell lines, including percentages and absolute counts, are completely normal, there is no elevation of proinflammatory cytokines and an MRI of the brain show no evidence of fungal growth in border regions that would normally accompany the aggression program and infected patients. Ah yes, some high quality medical mumbo jumbo, my friends, very insightful, very intriguing, I'm sure you are like 99.9 of the gaming population.

Without an advanced medical degree, you heard the word titles, laughed that it sounded like giggles, and then reached for the skip conversation button to continue the zombie slaughter. It turns out that there is a lot of information hidden within that little paragraph, enough to tell us that Ellie is I don't have a normal reaction to yeast infection and also that something is not right with the way the science is done. Let's analyze what this audio log really tells us. We know that Cordyceps is the fungus that infects people, so we already know one. word we're on our way an antigenic titer is just a test to see if what's infecting you is really infecting you so in the first sentence here it basically says we tested for cordyceps yeah it's there this line here about serums and fluids says to tell us that it's in her brain and in her spine, if you continue it basically translates to that it should turn her into a zombie, but oh look, this is not important here, her white blood cells, which usually go crazy when they find an infection in your body it's not doing anything the rest of the recording is basically saying that everything that should be swollen, raised, angry and zombie-like in your body just isn't there, even though you're technically infected, in short your system immune system is not reacting to this infection.

Not at all, they go on to say this is like the greatest medical breakthrough ever yadda yadda turns out these guys didn't exactly graduate at the top of their medical school class or at least fail their immunology course. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like is the study of how and why people are immune to things and how their immune system works under normal circumstances. Your immune system regulates itself. Your body discovers something that shouldn't be there and they all come together in your bloodstream. To expel it, get off my lawn, and by lawn I mean get it out of my body, this involves an inflammatory response that includes your white blood cells going into overdrive to devour invading bacteria, viruses, fungi, or whatever.

Sometimes there are many other inflammatory reactions like your body gets a fever, swells, turns red around the infection, all of that is because your immune system is doing everything it can to fight something that shouldn't be in your body. In the latest universe of us, the cordyceps fungus attacks your body and your body has a huge inflammatory response while you turn into a zombie, so what's different about Ellie, as we just heard in that audio log? Her immune system isn't reacting, so that's why she has this magical medical protection against the fungus, no, but we don't.

I don't know until The Last of Us Part 2 that you'll see it again, like in the first game we get a brief glimpse of the detailed inner workings of how Ellie's condition works. Here we take a look at Ellie's medical records and immediately get started. To rewatch something that doesn't quite add up, we're presented with what looks like junky science garbage, but what it really is is a fairly intelligible CBC blood panel that we've seen on every major medical drama most of us have ever had. . one of these graphs we make ourselves when we do blood tests and it shows the different levels of substances in your blood system.

You will notice several things on this graph labeled with an l which means that your levels are low relative to normal. In Ellie's blood work we see that her white blood cell count, her white blood cells, her red blood cells, her hct or hematocrit cells, and her hemoglobin or hgb are all a head scratcher for a girl who is supposed to be infected with a fungus that is causing inflammation. In fact, she's supposedly infected with this fungus, but she's experiencing the opposite of what you'd expect, what we would call immunosuppression, and by the way, it's worth noting that these numbers themselves are a little outlandish even for a video game if they were Real Life Numbers Ellie would almost not function with such a low red blood cell count.

You can see from this graph that the lowest levels of red blood cells should be approximately 4.0 microliters. Ellie is half of that, which means she suffers from severe anemia. In reality, she would be cold, incredibly weak, her hands would be numb, her lips would be blue. Also notice that her white blood cell count, the cells that fight infection, is also in the middle of its normal range, meaning the deadliest thing for Ellie in this game is It's not Abby or the zombies or anyone coming after her. , she's coming down with a cold, so anyway we're assuming she's still standing at this point, but let's get back to the zombies because here's the big reveal, dude, the truth of all of Ellie's medical information points us in the right direction. to a conclusion she has cordyceps, she just has the wrong type of cordyceps.

You see, Cordyceps, the magic zombie mushroom, is not a single mushroom, not even close. Cordyceps is actually a family of fungi that contains around 400 different species, some of which turn animals into zombies, some of which, believe it or not, cause the exact symptoms we see present in Ellie, the last of us , the developers likely modeled the game's fungus after the cordyceps unilateralis species, which is the actual fungus that actually turns ants into zombies. as you see what happens to people in the game right down to the fungus that sprouts right from the head, but cordyceps brings a lot more to the party. meet a totally different species piccladium inflatum that sounds like a mushroom-shaped pool float or a forgotten harry potter's spell, this separate brand of cordyceps is used to create the drug cyclosporine, the most commonly used immunosuppressive drug in the world or, In terms of normal people, a medication that gives you all the results we see in Ellie's medical history reduces your white blood cell count prevents all your In short, inflammation wipes out your immune system and all because of a cordyceps fungus.

Normally this fungus cannot interact with the human host but remember that in the Last of Us universe it is well established that these fungi have mutated so that they can infect humans if the zombie strain of Cordyceps can do it why not any strain of Cordyceps, including the one that destroys your immune system. The fact is, this is a more reasonable explanation for why Ellie doesn't respond to the zombie fungus like everyone else and still tests positive for Cordyceps. She is not magical, she is simply not infected with the same strain and you see, this explains everything.

Remember in that first recording, the surgeon says that she tests positive for cordyceps. The antigenic titers of the patient's cordyceps remain high in both the serum and the fluid. cerebrospinal well if she was in fact infected with this other branch of the fungus, this would be true, she is testing positive, but not for the zombie species of cordyceps, a different one to get that type of false positive, the antigen test she is doing the surgeon just isn't specific enough to tell the difference between the two closely related fungal strains, it's not that hard to believe and there's more, this explanation not only addresses his strange medical condition but also explains why he continues to walk in the game without getting infected, remember that bite and the fact that she doesn't wear a mask when she walks to protect her from the fungal spores, we know very well these days the importance of wearing a mask, so why doesn't Ellie get the deadly strain of cordyceps along with the she already has, even if

ellie

is not initially infected with the correct species of fungus, you would think that at some point she would contract it, since she walks around inhaling spores from leftright, right, no, actually, not at all, it turns out that even if Ellie was infected with the bad version of the fungus from the first bite of the spores, whatever it was couldn't have turned her into a zombie because cyclosporine is also an antifungal drug, that is, the good version of Cordyceps that I am theorizing.

She not only suppresses her immune system as we are seeing in her blood work, but she also protects other fungi. She doesn't even feel bad about it. Cyclosporine, produced directly by Poccladium inflatum, is used to treat even serious fungal infections, including serious ones, which we know from the game is the first area the Cordyceps zombie attacks, so having a version of Cordyceps in reality prevents Ellie from getting any other version. This also explains how Ellie can continue walking in the game without a mask, she is not immune to cordyceps in the sense that she cannot become infected, she is immune in the sense that she is already infected with another closely related fungus from the same family as kills any of her brothers and sisters again, those white blood cell counts of hers don't look very good, so she should probably avoid it like almost everything else, but otherwise, she's a walking antifungal machine, so the only thing The one thing you don't have to worry about in this world is becoming a zombie, so there you have it folks, the key to stopping the Cordyceps zombie apocalypse in the Last of Us universe was more Cordyceps, it wasn't about becoming immune. to the Cordyceps fungus, it was just a matter of being infected by the other correct strain, the result here is a global zombie pandemic study on your fungi. and don't assume anything about who is immune and who isn't, just wear a mask and keep a safe distance from anyone who may have been exposed.

There is a lesson to be learned about the current state of the world from this theory, no. It can't be, I mean walking around with a mask, that's just a theory, right, no, that's a fact, but as for Ellie and her immunity, that was a theory, a game theory, thanks for watching or who knows, maybe you're just listening. I've been saying thanks for watching since the first episodes of this channel, but more and more people just listen to youtube and watch it. No, that's how I do most of my YouTube these days and if you want to listen to your favorite.

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Thank you all so much for look. See you next week for a portal theory