Start by taking a population with a high probability of being previously infected, healthcare workers or long term care residents, say. Offer them the vaccination first, shame them if they object. Ensure they believe that natural immunity is worthless.
Use fear. Intimidation. Peer pressure.
Constantly remind them, through media propaganda and appeals to authority, that the vaccine offers greater protection than being previously infected. Let those that had the virus know they can get it again, and next time will be worse.
Prey on their fatalistic tendencies.
These people will be more likely to get the vaccine. Those who have never been infected or known someone that was infected or live in areas, say rural areas, where there is little chance of infection in the first place, will be less likely to demand a miracle cure. Those without fear will be less likely to be vaccinated without a boot on their neck. That’s fine. You don’t want these people vaccinated fot now.
The goal is to create two seperate populations with completely different characteristics. More specifically, one of the populations will have a much higher level of natural immunity than the other. In fairness, the other population has had little interaction with the virus and there is little reason to believe they are more likely to catch it at this point — but that does not matter for this trick.
Now, suppose the miracle cure is imperfect. In fact, we can assume that it is nearly useless except for doing one important thing: for the first fourteen to twenty-one days after receiving it, people will be more likely to get the virus. In fact, the miracle cure may even give the virus to some percentage of those that take said cure.
Don’t worry. Those fourteen to twenty-one days do not make the cure less effective because they are not even considered in the way you calculate effectiveness. Better yet, declare those who received the cure in this period to be in the same group as those that did not.
Count them as uncured.
This serves two purposes: it further increases immunity in the miracle cure group and makes the uncured group look even worse off.
Tell those in the miracle cure group that experiencing side effects is normal.
Convince them that it merely means the cure is working. They will be less likely to test for the virus if they believe these virus-like symptoms are part of the natural progression of the cure. It is unclear how many actually get the virus this way, but everyone that gets the virus is one more, unaccounted for, with immunity for later.
Bolster their confidence.
Tell them they did the right thing and if they get the virus it will be mild; tell them if they do experience virus-like symptoms that they do not need to get tested and they can just stay home and rest. Send these people out into the population to mingle with those that have not taken the cure.
Create a calculation for effectiveness that directly compares your two populations.
Let’s say the calculation looks something like (uncured group - miracle cure group)/uncured group. Call this vaccine effectiveness. If the virus only appears twice in the same person very rarely, if ever, then simple random selection of newly infected persons in the two populations will show that the miracle cure is highly effective. The fact that those without the cure are in situations where they are less likely to be exposed to the virus does not matter if there is enough uptake of the miracle cure in these areas.
The cured will spread the virus. Blame the uncured to avoid suspicion.
Any individual in the miracle cure group that does get the virus at this point is a bonus. They help bury the data. After all, you have a second dose of the miracle cure lined up.
Publish the effectiveness data so far.
Applaud the miracle cure group for their, clearly, altruistic nature, but remind them they are still at a risk. Suggest that getting the second dose of the miracle cure will provide them and those around them even more protection. The same fourteen to twenty-one day rule applies except the cases in this period will lower the effectiveness of those with a single dose of the miracle cure.
Point to this as evidence that a second dose is preferable — even necessary!
Those in the second dose group will have a much higher level of immunity, but this will wane over time as more of the virus is spread to the uncured group. The rate of spread in each group will slowly begin to converge.
Tell the second dose group that the only solution to this problem is a third dose.
Start with the populations most likely to have already had the virus. This will make the effectiveness of the second dose group even lower, but you have established that the protection wears off. The third dose group will have an extremely high effectiveness because it is mostly those that had the virus previously.
Rinse and repeat.