Rep. Fred Wood (R, Burley) at the Idaho Capitol on April 6, 2021. Wood, a retired physician, was one of few Republican lawmakers to follow public health recommendations for masks as the Legislature met in Boise. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
by AUDREY DUTTON/Idaho Capital Sun
Editor’s note: This is the first story in a series on health misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and distrust in Idaho. The Idaho Capital Sun interviewed dozens of people, asking how the state ended up on a path to catastrophe — and what, if anything, can turn it around.
State legislators, public health officials, lawyers, health care workers and a media scholar all described one common theme: distrust, fueled by forces within Idaho and beyond.
Coming Thursday, a look at how deregulation in Idaho has affected public health.
Fred Wood trained as a doctor in major medical centers. Then, he moved to Idaho in 1977 and spent the next few decades practicing modern medicine in a place where cows and sagebrush outnumber people — and where many of those people didn’t trust modern medicine.
“This is America. You do get to choose … for better or worse,” Wood said in an interview last month.
More than 40 years later, that distrust of modern medicine remains.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Idahoans sought to make sense of a once-in-a-century threat. For some, the distrust left an opening that health misinformation rushed in to fill.
“Reliable information is strictly in the eye of the beholder,” Wood...
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