Beyond universal vaccination: planning an exit strategy and cover-up

Crafting an Exit Strategy from Universal Vaccination Failure (Part #8)

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There is some naivety  to early national optimism regarding an exit strategy (Ben Doherty, The Exit Strategy: how countries around the world are preparing for life after Covid-19, The Guardian, 19 April  2020). More recently interest of for-profit corporations in an exit strategy has been framed by the possibility of a successful outcome to the universal vaccination strategy (Kevin Laczkowski, et al, Why your COVID-19 exit needs 'strategy inserts', McKinsey and Company, 22 June 2021; Exit Strategies and Lessons from Covid-19, OECD: New Approaches to Economic Challenges). Doubts with respect to national exit strategies have however been expressed (Rhys Jones, Covid exit strategy? National Forum: Australia, 1 July 2021; The COVID-19 exit strategy:  why we need to aim low, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 11 :February 2021).

Thinking strategically implies acknolwedging the possibility of strategic failure. The antithesis is implied by the management adage, seemingly governing the commitment to the universal vaccination strategy: Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts (Charles H. Granger, The Hierarchy of Objectives, Harvard Business Review, May 1964).

Faced with strategic failure, there are many historical studies of how the key instigators and executives have planned and organized their escape to places of safety, or where they could live incognito. The most obvious example (extensively documented) is provided by Nazis (Atika Shubert and Nadine Schmidt, Most Nazis escaped justice: now Germany is racing to convict those who got away, CNN, 15 December 2018; Dalya Alberge, Red Cross and Vatican helped thousands of Nazis to escape, The Guardian, 26 May 2011). That case includes conscription of over 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers by the US under Operation Paperclip.

Exit strategy: Some sense of the process of designing an "exit strategy" -- prefigured by that of Iraq -- is evident from the following:

• Cinnamon Janzer: Designing An Exit Strategy (SDGFunders, 12 January 2017)
• Keith Jacobs, et al: Developing appropriate exit strategies for housing regeneration programmes (Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, 2004)
• Dirk Van Damme: Educational conditions for a successful exit strategy from school closures [resulting rom the confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic] (OECD, 16 April 2020)
• Thorsten Beck, et al: When and how to unwind COVID support measures to the banking system? (European Parliament Think Tank, March 2021).
• Neal Peirce: Designing an 'Exit Strategy' for the War on Drugs (The November Coalition, 27 August 2006)
• Sarah Lewis, et al: What's it like to be on the receiving end of exit? A partner and country office view (INTRAC for Civil Society, April 2017)
• Business Transition Planning: Designing an Exit Plan (PNC Insights, 15 March 2021)

Further clues are evident in the progressive transformation of strategies in response to the pandemic as its evolution is understood by modellers, health authorities, policy-makers, and through the manner in which it is reframed for public communication processes. These changes can be appreciated or deprecated as "shifting the goal posts". This process may evolve into an end game in which the goal is transformed into a form which is no longer recognizable in terms of any earlier declaration of the nature of the challenge.

Of value in this respect are insights (or the lack thereof) from considerations of the exit strategies from Iraq and Afghanistan:

• Andrew C. McCarthy: Afghanistan: Exit... but No Strategy (National Review, 13 July 2021)
• Daniel L. Davis: A 3-Step Exit Strategy for Afghanistan: America must break free from the chains of status quo failure and adopt strategies that can succeed. (The National Interest, 22 February 2018)
• Tanya Goudsouzian: The Iraq Exit Strategy Will Not Work in Afghanistan: they are two different battlefields with very different variables (The National Interest, 1 January 2019)
• Richard D. Hooker, et al: Lessons Learned from the Iraq and Afghan Wars (Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 2015)
• Tom Hayden: Exit Strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq (The Nation, 8 March 2010)
• Lionel Beehner, et al: What Should Be The U.S. Exit Strategy From Iraq?  (Council on Foreign Relations, 29 November 2005)
• Center for Media and Democracy: Exit strategy from Iraq (SourceWatch)
• Don Hodges: Iraq Exit Strategy Watch (2003-2007)
• Carl Coon: Exit Strategy for Iraq (Progressive Humanism, 28 September  2006)
• Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy: "We'll Go Through Iran" (The Onion, 3 September 2005)

In progressively moving the strategic goal posts, the art will lie in the well-developed reframing skills of propaganda and public relations. These are already in evidence in the shift from "Covid-Zero" to "Living with COVID",  as delightfully described in the case of Australia by Peter Lewis (Morrison's bold new 'Living with Covid™' pitch sounds breezy, but the devil is in the detail, The Guardian, 31 August 2021).

Far more challenging is if it becomes necessary, in the case of universal vaccination, to recognize -- as with Saddam Hussein's hypothetical weapons of mass destruction -- that COVID-19 was never the threat it was so  vigorously claimed to be by the highest authorities. In that case the subsequent investigation into the "global intelligence failure" highlighted two failures (cf Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Pre-War Assessments on Iraq, 9 July 2004; Lord Butler's Review of Intelligence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, 13 July 2004). These were groupthink and failure of imagination, as discussed separately (Learning from the 9/11 response: groupthink and failure of imagination, 2005). How indeed is their incidence to be recognized in the case of management of the pandemic?

Cover-up: A valuable typology of cover-up phases is presented in the relevant Wikipedia entry. The list (reproduced below) is considered to be a typology since those who engage in cover-ups tend to use many of the same methods of hiding the truth and defending themselves.  The methods in actual cover-ups tend to follow the general order of those below.

Phase 1: Initial response to allegation	Phase 2: Withhold or tamper with evidence
Flat denial Convince the media to bury the story Preemptively distribute false information Claim that the "problem: is minimal Claim faulty memory Claim the accusations are half-truths Claim the critic has no proof Attack the critic's motive Attack the critic's character	Prevent the discovery of evidence Destroy or alter the evidence Make discovery of evidence difficult Create misleading names of individuals and companies to hide funding Lie or commit perjury Block or delay investigations Issue restraining orders Claim executive privilege

Phase 3: Delayed response to allegation

Phase 4: Intimidate participants, witnesses or whistleblowers

Deny a restricted definition of wrongdoing (e.g. torture) Limited hang out (i.e., confess to minor charges) Use biased evidence as a defense Claim that the critic's evidence is biased Select a biased blue ribbon commission or "independent" inquiry

Bribe or buy out the critic Generally intimidate the critic by following him or her, killing pets, etc. Blackmail: hire private investigators and threaten to reveal past wrongdoing ("dirt") Death threats of the critic or his or her family Threaten the critic with loss of job or future employment in industry Transfer the critic to an inferior job or location Intimidate the critic with lawsuits or SLAPP suits Murder; assassination

Phase 5: Publicity management	Phase 6: Damage control
Bribe the press Secretly plant stories in the press Retaliate against hostile media Threaten the press with loss of access Attack the motives of the press Place defensive advertisements Buy out the news source	Claim no knowledge of wrongdoing Scapegoats: blame an underling for unauthorized action Fire the person(s) in charge

Phase 7: Win court cases	Phase 8: Reward cover-up participants
Hire the best lawyers Hire scientists and expert witnesses who will support your story Delay with legal maneuvers Influence or control the judges	Hush money Little or no punishment Pardon or commute sentences Promote employees as a reward for cover-up Reemploy the employee after dust clears

Of relevance to this argument is the historical review by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (Merchants of Doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, 2010). The universal vaccination strategy could be understood as calling for a corresponding study: Merchants of Certainty: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from social distancing, masking, lockdowns, sanitisation to vaccination. One example is the controversial study by Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins (The Truth About COVID-19: exposing the Great Reset, lockdowns, vaccine passports, and the new normal, 2021).

Of interest in that respect, are initiatives by authorities to have sale of that book banned in some way, given the fact that its lead author is one of those identified in a survey by the extraordinarily-named quasi-academic group: the Center for Countering Digital Hate (Cecilia Lenzen, Report: Here are the 12 people most responsible for spreading COVID misinformation, Nautilus, 2021). Missing is any corresponding checklist of the "12 people most responsible for promoting the mainstream narrative" regarding the need for universal vaccination -- to the extent that this itself has been perceived by some as misinformation in its own right..

Refining the attribution of blame: Especially noteworthy, and implied to some degree by the sequence of phases of cover-up, is the manner in which the focus of blame for failure of the universal vaccination strategy is narrowing and will further intensify. The term "living with COVID" heralds a transition that may ultimately see blame for cases, illness, deaths and economic damage shifted away from government and onto the individual (Jason Thompson, Get Ready for a Shift in the COVID Blame Game, Pursuit: University of Melbourne)

In the early phases of the strategy those unvaccinated, whether by choice or circumstances, could be recognized as a normal challenge in the deployment of any remedial measures. As percentage targets have been clarified for requisite levels of vaccination enabling a "return to normality", those remaining unvaccinated have become the focus of ever more pointed public relations campaigns (Joseph Choi, Experts warn unvaccinated are greatest threat to pandemic recovery, The Hill, 26 July 2021). These have intensified recognition of the selfish irresponsibility of a group of people upheld as endangering their neighbours and public health.

There is little sensitivity to the irony of the "selfish" failure of developed countries in deliberately hoarding vaccines and in effectively ensuring very limited possibility of vaccination in developing countries. This collective pattern has even been evident between jurisdictions within some countries. Little reference is made to the "selfish" behaviour of the manufacturers of vaccines in restricting access through undisclosed exorbitant pricing and patenting constraints, nor the complicity of countries in this process.

The intensification of the blameworthiness now focused on the unvaccinated naturally increases to an even greater degree as vaccination targets are achieved -- only then to reveal the previously unimagined extent of "breakthrough" infections among the doubly vaccinated. The unvaccinated are readily seen as those primarily responsible for any such failure in the promised return to normality (Breakthrough COVID infections show 'the unvaccinated are now putting the vaccinated at risk', PBS, 29 July 2021).

In addition to being conveniently framed as scapegoats, evoking the requisite popular response (reminiscent of lynch mob psychology), ever more radical modes of ensuring the vaccination of the unvaccinated are envisaged. As noted above, any reservations regarding freedom of choice are set aside in the imposition of mandatory vaccination and the loss of civil liberties -- now reframed as the privilege of the vaccinated alone. Rumours abound with regard to possibilities of the past -- such as internment. Few arguments to the contrary are permitted (Gabriel Scally, Blaming the unvaccinated for Covid's spread won't help stop the virus, The Guardian, 21 May 2021).

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