Protection, Kansas was the first town in the nation to be fully vaccinated against polio. Now it’s an epicenter of vaccine skepticism.

Sixty-four years ago, residents of this tiny town in southwestern Kansas set a public health example by making it the first in the nation to be fully inoculated against polio.

It’s a different story today.

Mis- and disinformation are distorting science and public policy. Subscribe to our Daily and Weekly Digests for incisive coverage of ‘disruptive’ innovations in AI, agricultural biotechnology, food, chemicals, nuclear energy, vaccines, and other disruptive innovations.

Today, some in the town of about 400 people insist that the federal government “invented” the coronavirus so that it could force people to take a vaccine containing a microchip that could track their movements, [72-year-old farmer and Protection resident Steve] Herd says.

In 1957, Herd says, “We didn’t have people who believed such crazy stuff.”

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