Trump campaign evangelical adviser raises furor with flu remarks

An evangelical minister who advised President Donald Trump's campaign sparked an uproar Tuesday by suggesting that Christian faith makes people immune from the flu.

Texas minister Gloria Copeland, who sat on the Trump campaign’s evangelical executive advisory board, denied the country is in the midst of a severe flu outbreak in a Facebook video that went viral because, "Jesus himself is our flu shot. He redeemed us from the curse of the flu.”

"We have a duck season, a deer season, but we don’t have a flu season and don’t receive it when someone threatens you with ‘everybody is getting the flu,'" Copeland added. "We’ve already had our shot: He bore our sicknesses and carried our diseases. That’s what we stand on. And by his stripes we are healed."

Public health experts immediately panned the remarks while some other members of the evangelical board distanced themselves from the comments.

“We don’t agree with that statement,” said Johnnie Moore, the unofficial spokesman for the panel during the campaign who frequently meets with White House officials on policy and engagement with the evangelical community. “I don’t know a single person in the White House who would agree with that.”

John Auerbach, president and CEO of Trust for America’s Health and a former Centers for Disease Control associate director for policy, said people are best protected against the flu by getting a flu shot. “It would be harmful to suggest that there is a non-scientific approach to preventing influenza particularly during a year where we’re seeing serious illness and even an increase in flu related deaths.”

The White House declined to comment and referred flu-related questions to the CDC, which did not respond to requests for comment.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/06/public-health-groups-pan-flu-comments-from-former-trump-evangelical-adviser-327867