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Televangelist Tells Followers to Forget Flu Shot, Inoculate With Word of God Instead

As we experience one of the worst flu seasons on record in a decade — rivaling that of the swine-flu pandemic of 2009 — it’s not shocking that doctors and scientists nationwide are touting the benefits, and perhaps even the necessity, of getting the flu shot. But one Texas-based televangelist, Gloria Copeland, doesn’t agree, telling her followers to instead “inoculate yourself with the word of God.”

Yep. This is real. Copeland advocates against medical science and for winging it by believing really hard in God and hoping that’s all you need to thwart off a strain of flu that’s already killed over 50 children and hospitalized countless others.

In a video posted to Facebook on January 31, Copeland tells viewers:

It’s NOT flu season! Yes, you heard it right. The flu is NOT a season we have around here because Jesus bore ALL our sickness on the cross.

Oh! Flu season isn’t real because Jesus was crucified almost 2,000 years ago? So all these people who have died and wound up tragically ill are just figments of our imaginations? Or is it because they didn’t squeeze their eyes tight enough while praying and God got super pissed at them? Is that why they’re suffering? I mean, this logic works. Totally reasonable. Makes perfect sense.

Sadly, encouraging followers to metaphorically inject themselves with God to ward off the flu isn’t the worst of it.

Copeland has also asserted that people with cancer shouldn’t partake in medical intervention. They should just rely on God to take care of it.

We know what’s wrong with you. You’ve got cancer. The bad news is we don’t know what to do about it — except give you some poison that will make you sicker. Now, which do you want to do? Do you want to do that, or do you want to sit in here on a Saturday morning, hear the word of God, and let faith come into your heart and be healed?

Fucksake, Gloria. All this time, I thought modern medicine had saved me from being killed when that dog mauled me as a child, from dying of common bacterial infections, from perishing during childbirth, but you’re telling me it was just God? So should I like forget about all my annual physicals and just tune in to your show on Saturdays? Is that all it takes?

What else can just watching your garbage broadcast cure? Male-pattern baldness? Might want to give DJT a heads up on that one.

Hemorrhoids? Just be careful not to squeeze the prayer out too hard, amirite?

Urinary tract infections? Those are probably just God’s punishment for putting things in our vaginas, honestly.

Chronic assholery? Guess not, or you wouldn’t continue to suffer so mercilessly.

Here’s the deal, Glo. I have nothing against God, religion, or faith in general, for the most part. It brings great comfort to a good many people. And I don’t even have a problem with people not getting the flu shot if they’ve done research using reputable resources. What I DO have a problem with, though, is somebody such as yourself using your platform to misinform and, quite frankly, corrupt people who are, for whatever reason, unwilling to or incapable of practicing basic logic and reasoning on their own.

What you’re doing is dangerous, Gloria Copeland. It’s unconscionable, really. Particularly when you consider all the innocents, such as children and people who are vulnerable to your viewers’ caregiving, who are likely harmed as a result of your followers’ refusal to seek medical care when warranted.

You (and everyone else) have a right to question medical intervention and seek to be informed about what goes in your body, but you DON’T have a right to brainwash people into taking action (or, more aptly, inaction) that could and most certainly does reap fatal consequences.

And as far as I’m concerned, you should be held personally culpable for any deaths or worsening of conditions resulting from your indefensible practices, too.