The opposition is rooted in a mix of religious faith and a longstanding wariness of mainstream science, and it is fueled by broader cultural distrust of institutions and gravitation to online conspiracy theories. The sheer size of the community poses a major problem for the country’s ability to recover from a pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of half a million Americans. And evangelical ideas and instincts have a way of spreading, even internationally.

That includes everything from some vaccines being tied to so-called “aborted cell tissue”, or illness/health being “God’s will,” distrust in how the vaccine science works (experimental), a generalized sense of “oppression” (including mask mandates), and dichotic thinking (fear vs faith, good vs evil, right vs wrong, etc).