Rapper M.I.A. is advocating against vaccines amid coronavirus, despite health experts and scientists worldwide scrambling to develop one and end the pandemic.
“If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death — YALA,” the singer, born Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, tweeted Wednesday morning, referencing her 2013 song “Y.A.L.A.” The title signifies “You Always Live Again.”
If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I'm gonna choose death – YALA
— M.I.A (@MIAuniverse) March 25, 2020
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The 44-year-old rapper continued her point in a series of tweets.
“Most of science is in bed with business,” she claimed. “Business is in bed with banks, banks are in bed with tech, techs [sic] in bed with us, we re in bed with corona. Corona is in bed with science. So on .. the best is prevention.”
When a user responded by dubbing her “an anti vaxxer,” the “Paper Planes” singer retorted by saying she was forced in America to vaccinate her son ahead of school admission.
“It was the hardest thing. To not have choice over this as a mother,” she said. “I never wanna feel that again. He was so sick for 3 weeks then Docs had to pump him with antibiotics to reduce the fever from 3 vaxins [sic].”
“Have a healthy life. Don’t live in fear!” she wrote in one tweet, claiming in another, “As an adult you have choice! By then you’ve built your immune system. You have a choice as an ‘adult’ wishing you all good health.”
And lastly, there was the assertion that people are “ok.”
“You are not gonna die,” she tweeted. “You can make it without stressing the medical systems. Just breathe. You are going to be ok. You can make it through without jumping in the frying pan. You are fine. All the vaccines you ve already had is enough to see you through.”
At the time of publication, over 451,000 cases of coronavirus, formally known as COVID-19, and over 20,000 associated deaths were reported worldwide, according to the running tally by Johns Hopkins University & Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Nearly 113,000 recoveries were also reported.
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