Think about it. Black Friday, right? What better time to flood the media with a "dangerous new variant". Plunge the markets are pick up cheap shares.
Here's another angle: why did this strain supposedly start in South Africa, according to the media? We now know it didn't start there, but why did they choose Sth Africa? It's because people were starting to realize Africa was virtually free of covid deaths, despite having an extremely low vaccination rate. Pharma had to try to counter any info that could hurt their profits.
These are the sort of schemes that would have gone unnoticed previously. Take note: the big players - the really big players - manipulate the markets.
