SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has been broad­cast on me­dia sta­tions around the world, dis­cred­it­ing claims made by pop­u­lar Tri­ni-born rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj that her cousin’s friend got swollen tes­ti­cles as a re­sult of tak­ing a COVID-19 vac­cine.

CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew host Ja­son Williams was al­so in­ter­viewed on the is­sue by US-based host of The Dai­ly Show, Trevor Noah, for last night’s edi­tion of the show.

Both Deyals­ingh and Williams were recog­nised on Twit­ter for their re­spons­es to Mi­naj’s claim that her cousin in Trinidad was scared to take the vac­cine be­cause his friend took it and be­came im­po­tent.

Health ex­perts around the globe de­bunked Mi­naj’s claim that im­po­tence and swollen tes­ti­cles were linked to COVID-19 vac­cines.

Deyals­ingh was al­so asked to ad­dress it on Wednes­day and said the min­istry had wast­ed time all day on Tues­day try­ing to find any re­port of those types of re­ac­tions to the vac­cine. He said Mi­naj’s sto­ry was false.

Deyals­ingh’s state­ments were picked up by in­ter­na­tion­al news sites such as the BBC, CNN, Reuters and sev­er­al en­ter­tain­ment blogs and sites.

A clip of Deyals­ingh de­bunk­ing Mi­naj’s claims was al­so fea­tured on late-night shows in the US, in­clud­ing The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert and Jim­my Kim­mel Live.

Col­bert opened his com­men­tary say­ing, “Yes­ter­day, Trinidad’s Min­istry of Health was in­un­dat­ed with re­quests to fact-check this claim, so to­day their pub­lic health min­is­ter made this an­nounce­ment.”

He then showed a clip of Deyals­ingh say­ing there were ab­solute­ly no re­ports from T&T or any­where in the world show­ing im­po­ten­cy and swollen tes­ti­cles were a side ef­fect of the vac­cine.

Col­bert then jok­ing­ly asked, “Sir, are you call­ing Nic­ki Mi­naj a liar? Cause to do that takes some re­al­ly big…wait a sec­ond now I know why he’s hid­ing be­hind that gi­ant ta­ble.”

On Jim­my Kim­mel Live, Kim­mel showed a short­ened ver­sion of Deyals­ingh’s state­ment, say­ing jok­ing­ly at the end, “Well, that’s a re­lief, now we can vis­it.”

He al­so re­peat­ed his of­fer to speak to Mi­naj’s cousin’s friend if the man was will­ing.

The Morn­ing Brew host Williams was al­so recog­nised for his re­sponse to Mi­naj’s state­ments on Twit­ter.

“Here is how the Nic­ki Mi­naj sto­ry was cov­ered on CNC3 tele­vi­sion in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. I as­sure you this is worth all 2:20 and it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter than how any US net­work cov­ered the sto­ry,” Tim­o­thy Burke wrote.

He at­tached a clip from Wednes­day’s The Morn­ing Brew show, which up un­til 6 pm yes­ter­day, had al­ready been watched 1.4 mil­lion times.

In the clip, Williams re­called the Car­ni­val Tues­day in­ci­dent be­tween Mi­naj’s hus­band, Ken­neth Pet­ty, who pushed away the hand of so­ca star Iw­er George as he at­tempt­ed to en­gage Mi­naj on a mu­sic truck while per­form­ing, prompt­ing a swift so­cial me­dia back­lash.

“She would have made some out­landish state­ments over the years but this one takes the cake. This is like some­thing you will hear by a neigh­bour­hood par­lour, where some­body would tell you well they cousin friend neigh­bour say x,y,z,” Williams said.

He chid­ed Mi­naj for her state­ments, say­ing she should do bet­ter be­cause she has many fol­low­ers who lis­ten to her.

Williams said Mi­naj’s claims were ir­re­spon­si­ble on all fronts, adding, “Even on a per­son­al note, even it is the case, to ex­pose your cousin’s friend flat tyre in the pub­lic do­main like that...if the man has a flat tyre, ok, he will work on that. There are herbs and punch and cer­tain things the man could eat and bring back ah vibes.”

Williams al­so not­ed that health ex­perts had to de­bunk Mi­naj’s state­ments. He end­ed his com­men­tary call­ing for bet­ter from Mi­naj.

“I hon­est­ly ex­pect­ed bet­ter and be­sides that out­landish state­ment, she al­ways talks about Trinidad and she from Trinidad, she’s yet to col­lab­o­rate with some­body from here but that’s a talk for an­oth­er pro­gramme on an­oth­er day,” he said.

Twit­ter ex­plod­ed with praise for Williams and his com­men­tary, with many users ask­ing for links to see his pro­gramme live every day.

“I vote for this host to take over Meet the Press. He would be in­fi­nite­ly bet­ter than Chuck Todd,” Twit­ter user Art Mar­tin wrote.

“This is ex­cel­lent cov­er­age tbh. Our freak­ing net­works are more like­ly to round up a pan­el of Trump vot­ers and ask them about their thoughts,” Sam Morey wrote.

Oth­ers com­mend­ed Williams for putting Mi­naj on blast.

“Da**. She reps her own is­land but doesn’t sup­port their own artists. Man put her on blast,” Jose said.

An­oth­er user wrote, “I would have to de­ac­ti­vate my whole Twit­ter ac­count if Trinidad read me like this.”