I share the frustration of all on this thread and have quoted @thrivetp in my blog post on this issue. I do wonder if Intuit has been the victim of a security breach (perhaps related to the ongoing Solarwinds incident) and that this patch pushes out some kind of mitigation. I can think of no other excuse for such a heavy-handed forced update process.

https://www.mcbsys.com/blog/2020/12/quickbooks-desktop-forces-upgrade-days-before-year-end/