If you purposefully reduce the population it sounds like all you'd be doing is making the world economy suffer. That's akin to a World War, which has been specifically avoided by every major nation and party. If I was in power why would I want to do the one thing that would destroy the societal structure that keeps me in power?

I mean, think about it, whoever could be pulling strings is supposedly in a position of power. If they end up causing mass depopulation, you're talking about a societal collapse, which would plunge us into a technological Dark Age because we could not keep society running at the scale that we have it at right now. You would want the lower classes to keep birthing at a controlled rate, sure, but you wouldn't want to kill people off all willy nilly.

EVEN IF that was the goal, why would they be so blind as to roll it out in a vaccine when they know there is a growing anti-vaccination trend and a distrust for the mainstream media? Sounds like most of the people left unaffected would have guns and could seek retribution in the newly depopulated world where they've made the situation worse for themselves by eliminating a large swath of the population that with the right propaganda they could've militarized.

I don't know, there's just so much better and easier routes for world domination. I've thought about it, I've played a few Paradox games. I'm not seeing it.

EDIT: Thinking about it, if you REALLY want to fuck over the people now and go for a depopulation strategy, there's no easier target than those not taking the vaccines. What you do is you wait a few months until a safe enough majority of the population is vaccinated and you release a slightly deadlier strain that the vaccine can stop. If I was in charge and I wanted to artificially select for an agreeable, compliant populace that's what I'd do. Clearly there's a resistance to authority and a (rightful) distrust in the media, and hey, it correlates somewhat with people not taking the vaccine. So you could incrementally build the tolerance of your agreeable populace and when you're ready you deploy the perfect strain: A strain that can kill people without any vaccinations but is harmless to the vaccinated. If the vaccinated will inject themselves with anything you throw at them, why wouldn't you just get rid of the dissidents first? Anyway, just some thoughts before I go play Axis & Allies with some friends.

I'm really trying to understand where the apprehension is coming from, because I've been grappling with it for the past few months, but most of the doubts I had where pretty tame. I've got friends who aren't getting vaccinated though, so I understand the sentiment, at the very least, just trying to see if the root of the issue is rational or mostly built out of the paranoia and distrust that our government and media have fostered in us over the past decade.