Okay, well, it's kind of hard to respond to accusations against "the powers that be" because that could be anyone or any thing. You'll have to be more specific.
Likewise, I don't know what "deepen their hooks into humanity" means.
I'll just say this. If the government wanted to somehow control and force submission of its population, it is super easy and cheap to do. Just withhold all services that the government does for people. Tell them they have to submit or there won't be any education, roads, facilities, security, food assistance, law enforcement, regulation of food safety, etc. Wtihin months people would submit to their evil plans, easy peasy. No need to go to all the trouble of inventing a pandemic, creating a real vaccine for the fake pandemic (or maybe it's a fake vaccine for a real pandemic? I can never keep it straight!), and then pausing the vaccine because it might ... hurt people? I'm lost. Too many intersecting conspiracy theories to make any sense of it all.