KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The on­go­ing furore of Unit­ed States rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj’s claim that a COVID-19 vac­cine caused im­po­tence in a Trinida­di­an man took cen­tre stage on the Dai­ly Show with Trevor Noah last night, fea­tur­ing CNC3’s Ja­son Williams and Health Min­is­ter Terrence Deyals­ingh.

The pop­u­lar in­fo­tain­ment show, aired a clip of Williams as he host­ed The Morn­ing Brew, com­ment­ing on Nic­ki’s claims. Noah then in­ter­viewed Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh and end­ed with a glow­ing trib­ute to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the cul­ture of the na­tion, and gave well wish­es to the en­tire coun­try for hav­ing to go through this in­ter­na­tion­al con­tro­ver­sy.

On Mon­day, Nic­ki, a na­tive of T&T, tweet­ed that her cousin’s friend in Trinidad took a COVID-19 vac­cine and be­came im­po­tent af­ter his tes­ti­cles swelled.

“His friend was weeks away from get­ting mar­ried. Now the girl called off the wed­ding. So just pray on it and make sure you’re com­fort­able with your de­ci­sion, not bul­lied,” she tweet­ed.

Williams, de­scrib­ing the al­leged im­po­tence as a “flat tyre” said there were things the al­leged vic­tim could do to treat his con­di­tion. How­ev­er, he said Nic­ki should not have shared it with the pub­lic.

“I mean come on, Nic­ki. You have 180 mil­lion fol­low­ers. Peo­ple lis­ten to you... I mean, it is ir­re­spon­si­ble on all fronts. One, ir­re­spon­si­ble based on the mis­in­for­ma­tion that is go­ing out there re­gard­ing this vac­cine. You know, there was no ver­i­fi­ca­tion of this sto­ry. And fur­ther­more, to ex­pose your cousin’s friend flat tyre in the pub­lic do­main like that,” Williams said.

Noah de­scribed Nic­ki’s con­tin­ued rants as the “on­go­ing saga of Nic­ki Mi­naj’s friend cousin swollen tes­ti­cles”.

Af­ter play­ing the clip of Williams, he told his au­di­ence that Williams was his “friend’s cousin” and ad­vised that he had called Williams to re­do a Cialis ad­ver­tise­ment. The drug is used to treat male sex­u­al func­tion prob­lems (im­po­tence or erec­tile dys­func­tion-ED).

Williams’ voice was then played over a video of the Cialis drug, talk­ing in his usu­al Trinida­di­an jar­gon, ad­vis­ing on its use for “flat tyres” and warn­ing users not to let Mi­naj know or else she would “put you on blast”.

Af­ter a short break, Noah re­turned with an in­ter­view with Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, in which Deyals­ingh spoke of the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve in T&T and all that the Gov­ern­ment and health of­fi­cials were do­ing to curb the spread of the virus.

Noah men­tioned his in­ten­tion to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go for Car­ni­val and to eat dou­bles, say­ing that he had to fit in a cos­tume to play in “Machel’s band”.

At the end of the in­ter­view, he paid glow­ing trib­ute to the peo­ple and cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go and thanked the na­tion for the way it was han­dling the con­tro­ver­sy.

Noah ac­knowl­edged that peo­ple make wild claims about the COVID-19 vac­cines all the time, but most peo­ple did not have mil­lions of fol­low­ers. He said the tweet has caused a gi­ant up­roar, so big that even Dr An­tho­ny Fau­ci had to give his in­put.

Fau­ci is the Di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Al­ler­gy and In­fec­tious Dis­eases and the Chief Med­ical Ad­vi­sor to the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, Joe Biden. Speak­ing to CNN, Fau­ci said there was no ev­i­dence that the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech, Mod­er­na or John­son & John­son vac­cines caus­es re­pro­duc­tive dam­age.

“There is no ev­i­dence that it hap­pens, nor is there any mech­a­nis­tic rea­son to imag­ine that it would hap­pen, so the an­swer to your ques­tion is no,” Fau­ci said.