A moment during Dallas City Hall's open mic session left officials speechless and social media users in tears after a man performed a COVID rap in scrubs, asking top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci to "give me that ouchie."
Alex Stein, a YouTuber known for his frequent appearances at city council meetings, broke into a satirical performance at Wednesday's gathering in a push to make vaccines "more hip and cool" for kids.
Wearing blue scrubs, Stein introduced himself and told city council members: "I'm here today because we gotta vaccinate our children, you know, we really don't have enough vaccines, like they're not mandatory, and that's the problem, we've gotta mandate these vaccines."
After some technical difficulties with the music portion that was supposed to play from his phone, he broke into an a capella rap.
"Will the real Dr. Fauci please stand up, please stand up, please stand up," Stein began, parodying Eminem's hit "The Real Slim Shady."
"Vaccinate your mom, vaccinate your dad. Vaccinate the happy, vaccinate the sad. Vaccinate your babies, vaccinate them even if they've got rabies. Vaccinate my life, vaccinate my wife. Vaccinate your DNA. Vaccine created by the CIA."
"Vaccinate your body. Vaccinate me at the party. Vaccination free. Vaccination freak-a-leak," he continued. "I want the vaccine in my life. I want the vaccine for my wife."
Halfway through his performance, Stein began showering himself in hand sanitizer and wiping down his face with Lysol wipes while continuing to rap.
"Vaccinate me in my thong. Vaccination right or wrong," he sang. "Dr. Fauci give me that ouchie."
"Vaccinate your mind. Vaccinate your body. Vaccinate your life. It's a vaccination party," he concluded at the end of the nearly 2-minute performance.
Videos of the rap quickly went viral. One clip of Stein has generated more than 2.4 million views on Twitter.
"The way I nearly spit out my coffee from laughing, I was not expecting all this now," one Twitter user wrote.
"Found my new ringtone," another said.
Speaking to the Daily Dot after his city hall appearance, Stein said: "I went up there and played the buffoon."
"I was really trying to be cringe and trying to be stupid," he added. "I didn't know it would go super-viral that fast."
But while many found Stein's satire funny, some fell for his gimmick and thought he was a real nurse promoting the COVID vaccines.
"The TikTok nurses have taken to doing routines at City Council Meetings," Amy Tarkanian, former chair of the Nevada Republican Party, tweeted. "Here's a nurse in Texas giving a performance that is one-of-a-kind."
Stein told the Daily Dot: "That's my favorite part. The true satire is you don't know if it's real or fake."
But while joking about his audience, Stein added that "this virus is real, people are dying." Stein himself reportedly lost his mother to COVID back in October. She was 60.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
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