No, Nicki Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend Doesn’t Have Swollen Balls from the COVID Vaccine, Health Minister Says

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.

The health minister for Trinidad and Tobago is evidently not afraid of Nicki Minaj’s stans—or her cousin’s friend’s swollen balls. 

Terrence Deyalsingh at last acknowledged Wednesday that “claims are being made.” Indeed, they are. And he doesn’t seem happy about it.

After Nicki Minaj wrote to her 22.6 million Twitter followers Monday that she wouldn’t attend the Met Gala over COVID-19 vaccine requirements—among other statements about the shot—she revealed that her cousin in Trinidad wouldn’t be getting vaccinated because his friend’s balls apparently became swollen after receiving it. It was so serious that his wedding was called off, Minaj relayed. 

This, naturally, raised a lot of questions, to which Deyalsingh answered, basically: Please shut up. 

“One of the reasons we could not respond yesterday in realtime to Ms. Minaj is that we have to check and make sure that what she was claiming was either true or false,” Deyalsingh said. “Unfortunately, we wasted so much time yesterday running down this false claim.”

The verdict is that there’s been no reported ball-related side effect or adverse event among the vaccinated. (Erectile dysfunction can, however, be a short- or long-term complication of COVID-19.)

“What was sad about this is that it wasted our time yesterday, trying to track down, because we take all these claims seriously,” Deyalsingh said. 

Stateside, Dr. Anthony Fauci has also dismissed the claim about impotence. He did not blame Minaj for the information, but said “she should be thinking twice about propagating information that really has no basis."

The ball theory has already made it over to anti-vaxx and conspiracy message boards, anyway. As VICE News previously reported, they don’t really know what to think over there. After all, Minaj said in another tweet that she’ll likely get the vaccine because she has to go on tour. 

Minaj has not yet tweeted about Deyalsingh’s comments, as she is wont to do. However, as she said in a tweet on Saturday, Sept. 11: “I speak to the barbz only. My beautiful fanbase. We don’t talk to the help.”