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Dispelling Vaccine Misinformation and Myths in California’s Breadbasket

By Heidi de Marco

MECCA, Calif. — Dust swirled in the air as Luz Gallegos parked her SUV on the side of a dirt road. She had just learned that her aunt died of covid-19 — the third family member to succumb to the disease in only two weeks.

She stepped out of her car at about 11:30 a.m. onto a bell pepper farm in this agricultural community in the Coachella Valley, a little northwest of the Salton Sea.

Gallegos, a daughter of farmworkers who had worked in the fields herself, had only 15 minutes to make what she considered a life-or-death pitch to roughly 20 workers who had just finished a break.

The farm had already seen two workers fall ill to covid.

“We’re losing people in our community each day,” she said.

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