This flu season is being billed as the worst in more than a decade. According to The Washington Post, more than 12,000 people have already been hospitalized with confirmed cases of the flu and 37 children have died.

Enter Gloria Copeland, televangelist and member of President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board. She recently made a video insinuating that the flu shot is just a load of hooey and, rather, folks should inoculate themselves with the “word of God” in order to stave off sickness.

As a matter of fact, Copeland dismissed the very idea of a flu season. She suggested that calls to receive the flu shot were, essentially, threats.

“Well, listen partners, we don’t have a flu season,” she said. “We’ve got a duck season, a deer season, but we don’t have a flu season. And don’t receive it when somebody threatens you with ‘Everybody’s getting the flu!’ We’ve already had our shot, he bore our sicknesses and carried our diseases.”

She added, “If you’ve already got the flu, I’m gonna pray for you right now. Flu, I bind you off of the people in the name of Jesus. Jesus himself gave us the flu shot. He redeemed us from the curse of flu, and we receive it and we take it, and we are healed by his stripes.”

She also suggested that viewers simply repeat the mantra “I’ll never have the flu” and urged people to “inoculate yourselves with the word of God.”

On a related note, a megachurch the televangelist founded with her husband, Kenneth Copeland, was the site of a severe measles outbreak in 2013. The cause? A lack of vaccinations among its flock.

[image via screenshot]

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