Anti-vaxx Christian broadcaster Marcus Lamb dies of Covid aged 64

Marcus Lamb, founder and CEO of conservative Christian broadcaster Daystar Television Network and a vocal anti-vaxxer, died at the age of 64, weeks after he tested positive for Covid-19.

In a statement on Twitter, the network did not specify his cause of death but said: “It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning.”

“The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer,” the statement added.

Lamb’s son Jonathan had earlier described his father’s infection as “a spiritual attack from the enemy” to take him down, in a broadcast on the network last week, reported CBS19.

“As much as my parents have gone on here to kind of inform everyone about everything going on to the pandemic and some of the ways to treat Covid — there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that,” Mr Lamb said.

“And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad,” he added.

Mr Lamb’s mother Joni had also earlier thanked viewers for their prayers in a telephone call from her husband’s hospital bed.

Describing her husband’s illness, Ms Lamb had said: “It’s like, you’ll just be up and everything’s great, and then you have a little lull, and then you come down low and then you come back up, but from everybody that I talk to — I think that’s the pattern.”

The network which has over 70 stations across the country was launched by the Texas televangelist in 1997. It has also expanded outside the country and is broadcast in 74 countries across the world.

The network became a platform for misinformation and conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It hosted conspiracy theorists like misinformation group, America’s Frontline Doctors who had claimed in a viral video that Covid-19 could be cured not through mask mandates and shutdowns but through the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.

The network also brought in Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nephew of the former US president John F Kennedy, who is a prominent anti-vaxxer.

Last month, the Daystar Television network along with a Mississippi based Christian fundamentalist organisation, American Family Association, moved court against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate at workplaces.

The two companies said in their filing in a Texas court that the vaccine mandate is “sin against God’s Holy Word” and put their employees in a position to potentially sin as well, reported Deseret News.

Recently other known anti-vaxxers such as conservative radio hosts Dick Farrell, Phil Valentine, and Marc Bernier also died due to Covid-19, reported NBC.