met gala

Nicki Minaj Didn’t Want to Get Vaccinated for the Met Gala

Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images

Well, if you were hoping to see Nicki Minaj at this year’s Met Gala, you will be sorely disappointed for two reasons. 1) She will not be attending because 2) she didn’t want to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which was required for entry. To quote Nicki herself, yikes.

It started when Minaj responded to a tweet lamenting the rapper’s lack of public appearances over the past year. “I have an infant with no nannies during COVID,” she wrote. “Not risking his health to be seen.” A fine and understandable response! Then, Minaj proceeded to say she got COVID while prepping for the VMAs and begun posting a series of strange tweets espousing a range of COVID conspiracies and misinformation.

“They want you to get vaccinated for the Met,” she tweeted. “If I get vaccinated it won’t [be] for the Met. It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research.” She also said that Drake told he contracted COVID after being vaccinated. It is true that the COVID-19 vaccine, like other vaccines, is not 100% effective at preventing infection. However, your chances of contracting coronavirus after receiving the vaccine drop to around one in 5,000, according to a recent report from the New York Times. When one person responded to Minaj’s tweets saying the vaccine helps prevent more serious symptoms, she responded, “Babe. That’s not true. I had the exact same symptoms as ppl with the damn vaccine.” This overlooks the fact that the vaccine helps keep people who contract COVID out of already overcrowded hospitals. Additionally, a new CDC report found that unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die of COVID than those who are vaccinated.

Perhaps her strangest claim is was that a friend of a relative became impotent after getting vaccinated. “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent,” she tweeted. “His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding.” There is currently no evidence to support any link between the COVID-19 and infertility. The notion that the vaccine causes miscarriages or leads to erectile dysfunction is rooted in misinformation. However, some early studies suggest that contracting coronavirus could lead to erectile dysfunction and impotence.

She did later walk back her stance on the vaccine a bit, saying that she would likely get vaccinated when she goes on tour. She also posted a poll on which vaccine people would recommend. (Pfizer is currently in the lead, if Twitter polls are the kind of peer research you require.) Ultimately, Minaj said does not care about anti-vax speculation on The Blogs — this one included, I’m assuming. “Who cares what blogs gon do?” she wrote. “This my real fkn life. They can choke.”

There are rumors of other unvaxxed celebs missing the Met Gala or procuring fake vaccine cards in order to attend. Hopefully, these are just rumors given the over 650,000 people in the U.S. who have died from coronavirus to date. God/Rihanna forbid this year’s Met Gala theme become Super Spreader …

See: All the Looks From the Met Gala

Nicki Minaj Didn’t Want to Get Vaccinated for the Met Gala