One Cincinnati megachurch pastor posted a parody video this week, reminding Christians they have nothing to fear regarding the novel coronavirus.
Crossroads Church’s Brian Tome said the virus, COVID-19, “has got us utterly freaked out.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, there are 423 cases of the virus in the U.S. There have been 26 deaths to date and several lawmakers (and pastors) have self-quarantined themselves over fear of exposure to the illness.
Tome noted that the majority of people dying from COVID-19 are the elderly or those who are immunocompromised in some way. His words echoed those of Larry Burchett, an ER doctor and board-certified family physician who told The Washington Post that there is little to no risk of fatality for young, healthy people.
“I just want to say you’re going to be OK,” Tome said. “Jesus said, ‘Don’t worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself.’ … This is critical, friends. We can’t overreact to things that are going wrong in our world today.”
“America is not the land of the free,” he continued. “We’re the land of the fear. We just fear thing, after thing, after thing, after thing. Folks, the world is not coming to an end. You are going to be fine. Your life is gonna go on as expected. The Dow Jones is going to rebound eventually.”
At the beginning of the video, the pastor joked about the 38% of Americans who, confused about the origin of the novel coronavirus, which was in Wuhan, China, declared they wouldn’t buy Corona beer until the outbreak passed.
When the video concluded, a man decked out in a hazmat suit handed Tome a bottle of Corona beer. After taking a sip, the pastor said, “We all just need to calm down, have a Corona beer, and say to yourself and everyone else, ‘I’m going to be fine,’ because you will be.”