A network of right-wing Christian activists and preachers helped seed fears that public-health measures would one day be used as part of a plot to secretly monitor people.
It meant that there was fertile ground for conspiracy theorists to plant doubts about the vaccines developed during the pandemic. Multiple surveys
suggest that Republicans and white evangelicals are among those least willing to get the shot, overlapping with the most receptive audience for the microchip theory.
Andrew Whitehead, an expert on the Christian right who teaches at Indiana University, said: "One reason some groups and individuals on the Christian right champion anti-vax views is their skepticism or even outright rejection of science as a trustworthy source of authority.
"In their view, science competes with the supremacy of Biblicist authority. Not any and all claims of science, though, just those they perceive to be religiously contested or politically motivated. Vaccines, and especially the COVID-19 vaccine, is in this realm."
The CDC
has said there is no evidence that the vaccines harm fertility, and a growing body of evidence that they do not.