Northern Idaho's anti-government streak hampers COVID fight

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (AP) — Northern Idaho has a long and deep streak of anti-government activism that has confounded attempts to battle a COVID-19 outbreak overwhelming hospitals in the deeply conservative region.

A deadly 1992 standoff with federal agents near the Canadian border helped spark an expansion of radical right-wing groups across the country and the area was for a long time the home of the Aryan Nations, whose leader envisioned a “White Homeland” in the county that is now among the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Hospitals in northern Idaho are so packed with COVID-19 patients that authorities announced last week that facilities would be allowed to ration health care.

“This is extremism beyond anything I ever witnessed,” Tony Stewart said of people who refused to get vaccinated and wear masks.

Stewart is a founding member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, which battled the Aryan Nations for decades and helped bankrupt the neo-Nazi group. “I’m almost speechless in seeing so many people have lost concern for their fellow humans.”

Only 41% of Kootenai County's 163,000 residents were fully vaccinated, well below the state average of about 56%, officials said.

Anti-government sentiments are strong in northern Idaho.

State Rep. Heather Scott, a Republican from Blanchard in the northern part of the state, refused an interview request, saying reporters were liars. Scott promoted mask-burning protests around northern Idaho and the rest of the state earlier this year. She is also among the lawmakers that have frequently pushed misinformation about COVID-19 on Facebook.

Stewart called fierce opponents of vaccines an “irrational segment of the population.”

But not everyone agrees there is a problem.

David Hall, 53, who co-owns a restaurant...