Saturday, 12th October 2024

White House offers call to 'Nicki Minaj' over vaccine impotence remarks

The White House offered to contact Nicki Minaj with one of doctors from the Biden administration to answer her questions about COVID vaccine

Thursday, 16th September 2021

Rapper Nicki Minaj arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala (Met Gala) to celebrate the opening of “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., May 7, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
US: The White House on Wednesday offered to contact Nicki Minaj with one of the doctors from the Biden administration to answer her questions about the COVID-19 vaccine, after the wrong tweet from the born in Trinidad, claiming that the vaccine causes impotence, went viral.

The White House said it had made such calls with others concerned about the vaccine, part of an aggressive public relations campaign to prevent rampant disinformation about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1437532566945341441?s=20

Minaj tweeted on Wednesday that 'the White House invited me' and 'yes, I'm going, but a White House official said the rapper simply got a call.

Minaj made headlines earlier this week when she noted in a tweet to her more than 22.6 million followers that the Met Gala requires participants to be vaccinated, and that she would not get the chance until "I feel I have done enough research has." She later released a tweet in which she told an unverified story about a cousin's friend in Trinidad. Minaj claims the unidentified individual "became impotent" and "his testicles swelled" after receiving the shot.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the country's leading expert on infectious diseases, dismissed the allegation during an interview with CNN on Tuesday as misinformation.

"There is no evidence that this is happening, nor is there any mechanistic reason to think it would happen," he said.

The White House has struggled throughout the year to find resistance to a chance, especially among younger and more Republican demographics. In particular, the administration pointed to false or misleading information about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines as a driver of the hesitation. It referred to a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit organization that studies extremism, which linked a dozen accounts to spreading the majority of vaccine disinformation on Facebook.

The administration was looking for new ways to refute disinformation and reach young vaccine skeptics, and earlier this year invited teen pop star Olivia Rodrigo to the White House to show her support for the shot. Trinidad and Tobago Minister rubbishes all claims

Trinidad and Tobago Health Minister Terrace Dyalsingh said that the post which Nicki Minaj posted was false and wasted the time of his department. He said that the Health Department of Trinidad and Tobago hasn’t seen a single recorded incident of testicles being swollen because of the Covid 19 vaccine in Trinidad and Tobago or anywhere else in the whole world.

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