Celebrity Anti-Vaccine Propaganda Is Starting to Sound Like Your Great-Aunt’s Facebook Posts

Right around the time that the Met Gala red carpet began on Monday evening, Nicki Minaj began responding to tweets from her fans about rumors circulating that she would not be attending the night’s event. Her notoriously passionate fanbase, better known as the Barbz, were upset that their Queen would be missing the fashion event of the year—especially after she was also a no-show at the VMAs the previous evening.

In a response to a fan, Minaj, who is unvaccinated, revealed that she had caught covid-19 while shooting a music video and said she had decided not to attend the VMAs as to not put her young child’s health at risk. It’s absolutely reasonable for a new mother to be extra cautious to keep her child safe—it’s just harder to take that claim seriously when Minaj ended her tweet by saying “Drake had just told me he got covid w|THE VACCINE tho so chile.”

Once again, for those in the back: while the covid-19 vaccine does decrease the chances of you contracting the virus, it’s not some mythical magical protection juice that can defy the laws of science and stop you from ever getting the virus—though it will likely prevent you from getting seriously sick or dying if you do happen to get sick! (Side note: did we know Drake had caught covid-19????? You know what? I actually don’t care, please don’t tell me.)

Minaj continued by explaining that the Met Gala wanted attendees to get vaccinated, saying “if I get vaccinated it won’t [be] for the Met. It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research. I’m working on that now.”

While I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing research on the covid-19 vaccine, and it’s certainly a good idea to wear masks whether you’re vaccinated or not, it doesn’t seem like the process of researching a vaccine that has now been widely available in the U.S. for over 6 months should take a celebrity with Minaj’s significant resources more than, I dunno, an evening? And regardless of Minaj’s personal feelings on vaccines, it’s undeniably harmful for any celebrity to spread vaccine hesitancy to an audience of over 22 million followers.

Now, this could have easily been just yet another story of a celebrity who is irresponsibly spreading vaccine hesitancy during the Delta variant surge that is literally killing hundreds of people daily, if not for the tweet Minaj sent next.

It is of course actually laughably absurd to cite your “cousin’s friend’s allegedly swollen testicles” as an explanation for your vaccine hesitancy, but also sparks the necessary question: exactly how swollen WERE his balls????? Are we talking like tangerine-sized?? Apple-sized?? BALLOON SIZED???????????? Okay, probably not balloon-sized, but you never know!!!! I mean, how engorged would your fiancée’s testicles have to become before it simply became impossible for you to imagine going through with the wedding??????? (Of course, it’s possible that, within the constraints of this questionably true story, that Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s former fianceé called off her wedding because her soon-to-be-husband had suddenly become impotent, but it’s much funnier to think that she was just too overwhelmed by his newly massive balls.)

Despite the mental images (and hilariously gross memes) that this tweet has generated, impotence is in fact not a side effect of the covid-19 vaccine—though it is actually a potential side effect of covid-19! For now, all we can hope is that Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend has gone to see a doctor, and maybe also a couple’s counselor.