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In addition, this summer the WHO paid PR firm Hill & Knowlton Strategies $135,000 to identify micro-influencers, macro-influencers, and what it calls "hidden heroes" who "shape and guide conversations" to promote WHO messaging on social media and promote the organization's image as a COVID-19 authority. Hill & Knowlton are controversial for having previously manufactured the false "incubator baby" testimony delivered in front of Congress that propelled the U.S. into the first Gulf War in the early 1990s.
"The Public's Role in COVID-19 Vaccination" also urges using groups such as faith-based organizations, schools, homeowners' associations, and unions trusted by "hard-to-reach audiences" to convey positive vaccine messages and to "modulate public perceptions of vaccination." Accordingly, the July CHS paper notes "the importance of using outside groups who have relationships with the community, instead of direct government involvement." It should be noted that during the Tuskegee experiments, the U.S. Public Health Service hired Eunice Rivers, a black nurse with a close relationship to the local minority community, to maintain contact with those who were part of the experiment to ensure they continued to participate.
This outsourcing framework as laid out by the CHS is reproduced in the federal government's own literature. An October CDC report, Interim Playbook for Jurisdiction Operations, describes the importance of engaging what minority populations would consider "trusted sources" such as union representatives, college presidents, athletic coaches, state licensure boards, homeless shelter staff, soup kitchen managers, and faith leaders to "address hesitancy" in relation to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Operation Warp Speed's document "From the Factory to the Frontlines," released the same day as the CDC Interim Playbook, gives more specific examples of the government's ongoing work with organizations "representing minority populations," stating that faith-based organizations can be critical. "HHS's Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives is working with minority-serving faith and community groups " and encouraging participation in the vaccination program," the document reads. It also states that an "information campaign" led by HHS's public affairs department is already working to "target key populations and communities to ensure maximum vaccine acceptance."
Of note is that a member of Biden's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team is Bridget Dooling. The OMB houses the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews all regulations across the federal government. Dooling previously worked at OIRA, and from 2009 until 2011 worked under the direction of then-OIRA administrator Cass Sunstein. On Twitter, Dooling regularly interacts with Sunstein. She has frequently promoted Sunstein's work on Twitter, especially this past month.
Notably, in 2008, Sunstein authored a paper encouraging the U.S. government to employ covert agents to "cognitively infiltrate" online dissident groups that promote antigovernment "conspiracy theories" and to maintain a vigorous "counter misinformation establishment."
Elements of his strategy for tackling anti-government "conspiracy theories" are analogous to the aforementioned CHS theme of using "outside groups who have relationships with the community" instead of the government directly. "Governments can supply these independent bodies with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes," he contended in his paper.
Sunstein was recently made chair of the World Health Organization's Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights and Sciences for Health to ensure "vaccine acceptance and uptake in the context of COVID-19."
In September he also wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg, "How to Fight Back against Coronavirus Vaccine Phobia," suggesting that "high-profile people who are respected and admired by those who lack confidence in vaccines" will help sell the public on the safety of vaccines. "Trusted politicians, athletes or actors - thought to be 'one of us' rather than 'one of them' - might explicitly endorse vaccination," he writes.
When all else fails, coerce
In addition to this information warfare approach to combating "vaccine hesitancy," the government also intends to stave off possible hesitancy through economic coercion, that is, by using economic incentives, even linking vaccination to entrance into the workforce, housing assistance, food, travel, and education.
Sunstein's Bloomberg piece, for example, states that when a vaccine is available, "an economic incentive, such as a small gift certificate, can help" make it easy for "people who are at particular risk. Such gift cards will inevitably be more effective at swaying decisions of the poor."
Former 2020 Presidential Candidate and U.S. Representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district John Delaney recently penned an article in the Washington Post, "Pay Americans to Take a Coronavirus Vaccine," in which he argues a way to overcome the "historical level of distrust" in the vaccine development process is to take advantage of the current economic crisis and "pay people to take a COVID vaccine." Delaney writes, "Such an incentive might be the most effective way to persuade people to overcome suspicion or even fear --
CHS's "The Public's Role in COVID-19 Vaccination," paper also details how bundling services like "food security, rent assistance, [and] free clinic services" with vaccination can increase vaccine intake. "Local and state public health agencies should explore opportunities to bundle COVID-19 vaccination with other safety net services," it suggests. One way of doing this is to simply provide "food aid, employment aid, or other preventative health services" that "may be urgently needed" at vaccination sites. "[And] in some cases," says the CHS, "it also may be acceptable and feasible to deliver vaccination via home visits by community health nurses when vaccination is bundled with delivery of other services."
This strategy for increasing vaccine intake parallels what the CHS proposes in order to make digital contact tracing technology (DCTT) widespread in the population without mandating it outright. "Instead of making use fully voluntary and initiated by users, there are ways that DCTT could be put into use without users' voluntary choice," a recent CHS paper "Digital Contact Tracing for Pandemic Response" reads. It continues: "For example, use of an app could be mandated as a precondition for returning to work or school, or even further, to control entry into a facility or transportation (such as airplanes) through scanning of a QR code."
Palantir and priority populations
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