Since no abnormal MCO behavior has been identified and it seems the problem is likely with the kataconfig, moving to sandboxed-containers
Jira KATA-1465 moved to CLOSED/WONTFIX with the following comment : "... the pods needs to be removed first. It's documented in the prereq section - https://docs.openshift.com/container-platform/4.10/sandboxed_containers/uninstalling-sandboxed-containers.html#sandboxed-containers-deleting-operator-deployment-cr_uninstalling-sandboxed-containers" Closing.