In Louisiana, Vaccine Misinformation Has Public Health Workers Feeling ‘Stuck’

Facing deep mistrust stoked by rampant conspiracy theories, local health officials are fighting for influence when the only sure strategy for beating back the virus is getting more people vaccinated.

SHREVEPORT, La. — Dr. Martha Whyte, the top public health official in the northwest corner of Louisiana, was sitting at the back of a City Council meeting here on a muggy day recently when she was called to the front of the room to respond to an attack on the coronavirus vaccine. Candy Peavy, a resident, had warned that the Biden administration would send people door to door to “document unvaccinated Americans” — a false but widespread conspiracy theory. Not only that, Ms. Peavy had told the hundreds in attendance, but the vaccine was an “experimental gene therapy” that had killed thousands in the United States. “We should refuse to be tracked, discriminated against, bribed, controlled, threatened, shamed or coerced into compliance,” she had shouted to applause.