Lord, as much as I love Joe I cannot get over this paragraph: "I believe deeply and unequivocally in vaccinations and boosters for myself and my family and anyone I love, and I’m like many other people who can’t help but wonder why Djokovic couldn’t have just gotten two painless shots that protect against this scourge, like virtually every other top ATP tennis player has done. I’m also like many other people who can’t help but think Australia and the Australian Open couldn’t have handled this worse — don’t tell the guy he can come if he can’t come."
Before I start let me tell everyone that I'm vaccinated, and furthermore, I probably got the vaccine before most of you, so this isn't a thing against vaccine, but we are so far into this thing, enough to know that the vaccines aren't infallible but also, are we that arrogant that we think we know more about putting stuff in our bodies than professional athletes?
But this is nothing compared to the "bend the knee" line: "why Djokovic couldn’t have just gotten two painless shots" Why couldn't Kaepernick just play the game? Why couldn't Carlos wait until he got back from the Olympics and express his opinion here? Why can't Lebron just shut up and dribble? See? Joe fell for the same cowardly rhetoric he's written about when defending the aforementioned athletes. Aaron Rodgers just went public stating that we can't have free speech when opinions from one side are censored. Joe pretty much ask Nolan to shut up and swing the racket. Very disappointing.
Great piece -- love Djokovic the player, hate this behavior of his.
Here's my take on this whole affair, which of course is colored by the fact that I'm a tennis fan who happens also to be a specialist in Infectious Diseases:
It is a little like learning about a favorite artists misdeeds (take your pick - Rowling, Card, Bradley, Cosby, etc. - the list goes on and on). I, too, am mostly just saddened ...
... but after that passes I know that I won't enjoy their gifts nearly as much, if at all, as I would before. In some cases their actions taint their art for me beyond further enjoyment. I suspect that's where I'll end up with the Joker, as I just don't have any patience for vaccine deniers in the face of a global pandemic.
I had never before heard the quote about a crowd seeing something with their hearts. But I heard it twice today. Either that was a great Bader Meinhoff moment or Al Michaels is a Joe Blogs reader.
The annoying thing is that if Novak didn't want to get vaccinated, why didn't he just willingly stay out of Australia then? The money? He doesn't have to get vaccinated and countries don't have to give him a visa. Both parties can make up their own minds and that's fine with me. I personally couldn't care less who is and who is not vaccinated anymore than I care who does and does not receive a flu shot every year. If guys like Novak and Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving don't want to get the Fauci Ouchie, that's fine, but they can prepare to lose a lot of money while doing so.
Perfectly put. He doesnt want to get vaccinated; it is his choice and i respect it. But, it is the belief that choices dont have consequences that rankles me. The country has specific laws, and he tried to bypass it blatantly assuming that everybody will make way for him.
Commenting just to move the anti-vaxxer and their disinformation down for those of us sorting by newest first. Commenting on Djokovic I think he deserves much more of the blame and his maskless photo opp after testing positive horrifies me.
Horrifies you? How do you get out of bed each day. I worked next to someone with Covid last week. 30 hours close contact. When I found out they had Covid... I shrugged my shoulders. This thing isnt lava. Its a freaking cold.
Took two days to get a test because of peoole like you
I’m fully vaccinated and boosted plus taking safety measures and have a few at home tests on hand for me and my family. The real reason it took you two days to get a test is people like you that believe and spread misinformation about a deadly virus during a pandemic. No cold kills a million Americans in two years.
No it took me two days because all the urgent cares had signs that said full and all the shelves were empty from scare mongers like you hoarding. You choose to be a slave to this. People like me got vaccinated and wore our clown masks and went to work everyday and dont hoard and tie up the doctor.
You lie every time you type. 1 million dead Americans? Not even close. You probably built a bomb shelter for Y2K.
They very much work. Vaccinations make infection less likely and breakthrough cases are less severe and over more quickly giving the virus less of an opportunity to infect others or mutate into another variant. The unvaccinated are still very much driving the continuation of this pandemic and their selfishness is killing fellow humans by the hundreds on a daily basis.
You do realize that the worst flu shot ever (I'm talking about the influenza shot) still saves thousands and thousands of lives?
30 years experience in a Pediatric ED. Nothing has had as large of an impact on my job as vaccines. H. Flu, Meningococcus, Varicella, Rotavirus, Hepatitis. And those are just the ones off the top of my head that have been developed during my career. Put the Covid vaccine right up there. I truly thank God that he has blessed us with these miracles of medicine.
Quite simply, if every venue said that only the vaccinated may enter he would get vaccinated. He persists in this behavior because it is tolerated. Like most people, I have lost all patience for this kind of nonsense.
Tennis was beautiful before him and will be whenever he is gone. Someone will come along who does things that players of today only imagined. The same with all sports. It’s the nature of things.
When millions are dead from a scrounge that can now be contained with the simple act of getting a shot and wearing a mask, I have no sympathy for Novak Djokovic. There were better players before him and there will be better players after him. He's not playing? Good. Let's find a new more unselfish player to cheer for. I'm looking forward even more to the Australian Open because he would have been a distraction while he was there. Players ready? Serve on.
I'm pretty close to where you are, Joe, in terms of Djokovic. For a player of such amazing accomplishment, his place next to Federer and Nadal still makes him come off, in some respects, as an underdog, and I tend to root for the underdog. He takes so much criticism, and a decent amount of it is unfair. That being said, there's still a substantial amount that is fair.
As for this situation, this should have been handled better by the Australian Open and the Australian government. But this is like complaining about the officiating when you turn the ball over five times, with a couple of those being pick sixes. Ultimately, where the Open and Australia failed is not being firmer from the get go (and that's really more about the Open, from my perspective -- it sure seems they didn't communicate sufficiently with the government before this all went down). Otherwise, the government has the right to restrict the unvaccinated from entering the country, and, personally, that is the right policy.
While it seems unfair, at some level, that Novak got jerked around a bit, this all revolves around a personal decision he made, and a decision that happens to be extremely stupid. As the recent Omicron wave shows, the failure to vaccinate makes you much more susceptible to the worst consequences of COVID-19, and diminishes the ability to transmit it (but not as much with Omicron, unfortunately). So there was an easy way for Djokovic to play in the Open. Instead, he chose the hard way (and, like most, I'm skeptical about the basis for his exemption), and it didn't work out. It was a risky bet, and he lost.
I'm at a place that's pretty close to this. But I think it's ultimately the hubris of the guy who's at the top of his profession trying to finesse his way into the tournament. There aren't a ton of unvaccinated players, but the ones that are, are just not playing in Australia. Pretty simple. They don't want to get vaccinated, Australia requires people entering the country to be vaccinated, so they take a pass. Only Djokovic tried to go for a "medical exemption". While there are a few people out there who do have conditions that would make it risky to take the vaccination, the vast majority of exemptions attempts are by vaccine deniers. People who are "vaccine hesitant" seem to get over it pretty quickly in the face of a mandate. This is just a patently naked attempt to game the system by Djokovic. It's too bad. He was also a favorite of mine & it's painful to watch someone I liked & respected behave in an entitled, dishonest & ill informed way.
The initial stuff, where he was approved and then the Australian federal government revoked, OK. But that got overturned. And then he got rejected again because apparently he provided some kind of false information, about which nobody knew at the time. So I'm in the camp that it's ultimately all on the player.
Another beautifully-written blog by JP. Thanks for your insights Joe, I think you've become my favorite writer in the last year and a half. Please keep up the amazing work!
Both sides handled it poorly. He should have never been issued a visa in the first place, but I suspect had he been completely truthful in the application process he would have bot received the visa.
That being said, I put most of the blame on Djokovic's side (both him as an individual as his team, who lied on the application, etc.).
He is unvaccinated, but obviously wanted to keep that under wraps. The AO obviously wanted him to participate, so helped facilitate the original visa citing a "medical exemption" (where they didn't even mention the reason for the exemption - recent Covid diagnosis - it only came out in court).
Bottom line, nobody else who is unvaccinated would be allowed in the country, and he should not have even traveled to Oz in the first place. No vaccination, no visa.
He obviously doesn't respect the guidelines regarding Covid, in general. Much has been made of the interview with the French journalists, but far more damming was the youth tennis camp he conducting, completely maskless, the DAY AFTER he received a positive test. He KNOWINGLY potentially infected hundreds (?, not sure how many participants there were at the camp) of people, many of whom were unvaccinated (due to both the kids age, and also the generally low vaccination levels in Serbia) because his ego wouldn't allow him to do the right thing and isolate. The positive Covid result was emailed to him the day before the camp started, and the excuse has been that nobody can prove he actually saw the positive result before doing the camp. Really????
The Australian visa situation was a public example of how he has conducted himself by his own set of rules throughout the pandemic. According to CNN, he is by far the most popular person in Serbia, and his vaccination stance is one of the biggest reason's the country's vaccination rates are so low. So he is indirectly responsible for thousands of illnesses and deaths.
Put away the ego, do what is right for the greater good. He legacy should be permanently tarnished.
That Vin Scully quote is equally applicable to American politics these days. Though I’m not a tennis watcher, I am dumbfounded by the alert athleticism the elite players possess. Djokovich, as Shakespeare would say, was hoist upon his own petard.
It’s hard for me to blame the Australian government if he lied on his visa application. Or, his people lied and he signed his name to the form with the lie on it.
And even that accepts his claim that he tested positive for COVID — which I lack sufficient reason to doubt to the degree I do.
I find it quite difficult to blame anyone other Novak for any of this at all.
Well, it is a LITTLE more complicated than that. And understanding that can...ummmm......increase our suspicion of his claim of a positive test.
You are not supposed to get vaccinated in the few weeks immediately after COVID infection or illness. There are American employers with vaccine mandates for employees that granted short waivers for people who tested positive shortly before the deadline. So, it's not true that they have "not ever served as a vaccine waiver."
If one doubts Novak's test results, one might suspect that it was timed to support the claim that he COULDN'T comply with the requirement, because of this. Now, I don't buy that argument, even on its face. It would just mean that he missed his deadline.
I’m kind of neutral on Djokovic the player. He’s a great player, sometimes I’ve rooted for him, sometimes not. But he should not have been allowed to come to Australia to play in the AO. Other top players who had not been vaccinated (Tsitsipas for sure) got vaccinated so they could come play. You could tell how pissed Tsitsipas was in his statement, when it looked like Djokovic was going to be allowed to play. I remember when at the USOpen Tsitsipas said he wasn’t vaccinated and wasn’t going to be. I was surprised when I saw him on the list of players in the tournament. He must have changed his mind so he could go to Australia. And felt the fool after Djokovic’s initially being allowed to play.
I assume the Australian Open put a lot of pressure on the government to get Djokovic in. Unlike Joe if Djokovic had been allowed to play I would have watched very little, if any, of the AO as my own personal mini protest.
Lord, as much as I love Joe I cannot get over this paragraph: "I believe deeply and unequivocally in vaccinations and boosters for myself and my family and anyone I love, and I’m like many other people who can’t help but wonder why Djokovic couldn’t have just gotten two painless shots that protect against this scourge, like virtually every other top ATP tennis player has done. I’m also like many other people who can’t help but think Australia and the Australian Open couldn’t have handled this worse — don’t tell the guy he can come if he can’t come."
Before I start let me tell everyone that I'm vaccinated, and furthermore, I probably got the vaccine before most of you, so this isn't a thing against vaccine, but we are so far into this thing, enough to know that the vaccines aren't infallible but also, are we that arrogant that we think we know more about putting stuff in our bodies than professional athletes?
But this is nothing compared to the "bend the knee" line: "why Djokovic couldn’t have just gotten two painless shots" Why couldn't Kaepernick just play the game? Why couldn't Carlos wait until he got back from the Olympics and express his opinion here? Why can't Lebron just shut up and dribble? See? Joe fell for the same cowardly rhetoric he's written about when defending the aforementioned athletes. Aaron Rodgers just went public stating that we can't have free speech when opinions from one side are censored. Joe pretty much ask Nolan to shut up and swing the racket. Very disappointing.
Great piece -- love Djokovic the player, hate this behavior of his.
Here's my take on this whole affair, which of course is colored by the fact that I'm a tennis fan who happens also to be a specialist in Infectious Diseases:
https://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/novak-djokovic-thinks-he-can-play-by-his-own-rules-australia-says-think-again/2022/01/18/
(Got to quote and cite you, Joe.)
It is a little like learning about a favorite artists misdeeds (take your pick - Rowling, Card, Bradley, Cosby, etc. - the list goes on and on). I, too, am mostly just saddened ...
... but after that passes I know that I won't enjoy their gifts nearly as much, if at all, as I would before. In some cases their actions taint their art for me beyond further enjoyment. I suspect that's where I'll end up with the Joker, as I just don't have any patience for vaccine deniers in the face of a global pandemic.
You need help. Bill Cosby?
I had never before heard the quote about a crowd seeing something with their hearts. But I heard it twice today. Either that was a great Bader Meinhoff moment or Al Michaels is a Joe Blogs reader.
You're right. It was Michaels. I had just attributed it to Nantz, and I thought the exact same thing. Hi, Al!
The annoying thing is that if Novak didn't want to get vaccinated, why didn't he just willingly stay out of Australia then? The money? He doesn't have to get vaccinated and countries don't have to give him a visa. Both parties can make up their own minds and that's fine with me. I personally couldn't care less who is and who is not vaccinated anymore than I care who does and does not receive a flu shot every year. If guys like Novak and Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving don't want to get the Fauci Ouchie, that's fine, but they can prepare to lose a lot of money while doing so.
Perfectly put. He doesnt want to get vaccinated; it is his choice and i respect it. But, it is the belief that choices dont have consequences that rankles me. The country has specific laws, and he tried to bypass it blatantly assuming that everybody will make way for him.
Commenting just to move the anti-vaxxer and their disinformation down for those of us sorting by newest first. Commenting on Djokovic I think he deserves much more of the blame and his maskless photo opp after testing positive horrifies me.
Commenting just to keep the hilarity of this guy being horrified over a photo shoot.
Horrifies you? How do you get out of bed each day. I worked next to someone with Covid last week. 30 hours close contact. When I found out they had Covid... I shrugged my shoulders. This thing isnt lava. Its a freaking cold.
Took two days to get a test because of peoole like you
I’m fully vaccinated and boosted plus taking safety measures and have a few at home tests on hand for me and my family. The real reason it took you two days to get a test is people like you that believe and spread misinformation about a deadly virus during a pandemic. No cold kills a million Americans in two years.
No it took me two days because all the urgent cares had signs that said full and all the shelves were empty from scare mongers like you hoarding. You choose to be a slave to this. People like me got vaccinated and wore our clown masks and went to work everyday and dont hoard and tie up the doctor.
You lie every time you type. 1 million dead Americans? Not even close. You probably built a bomb shelter for Y2K.
Ugh. The vaccinations dont work. Everyone is getting Covid. Give it a rest moralizing.
This guy just showed up,recently on Joes blog. He is a garden variety troll. Don’t engage.
Youve been here forever and are part of an ass kissing hive mind. Go away
They very much work. Vaccinations make infection less likely and breakthrough cases are less severe and over more quickly giving the virus less of an opportunity to infect others or mutate into another variant. The unvaccinated are still very much driving the continuation of this pandemic and their selfishness is killing fellow humans by the hundreds on a daily basis.
Ugh, I don't even know what to say to people like you who clearly don't believe in science or numbers.
Ugh I dont know what to say to sheep like you that think this is vaccine. Its the worst flu shot ever.
You do realize that the worst flu shot ever (I'm talking about the influenza shot) still saves thousands and thousands of lives?
30 years experience in a Pediatric ED. Nothing has had as large of an impact on my job as vaccines. H. Flu, Meningococcus, Varicella, Rotavirus, Hepatitis. And those are just the ones off the top of my head that have been developed during my career. Put the Covid vaccine right up there. I truly thank God that he has blessed us with these miracles of medicine.
Wrong. These arent vaccines. Stop spreading disinformation
Says "knuckles the clown" 😂😂😂😂
:)
Thank God for these shots that keep people from dying
Quite simply, if every venue said that only the vaccinated may enter he would get vaccinated. He persists in this behavior because it is tolerated. Like most people, I have lost all patience for this kind of nonsense.
Tennis was beautiful before him and will be whenever he is gone. Someone will come along who does things that players of today only imagined. The same with all sports. It’s the nature of things.
“Djokovic sent home.” Yawn. If that’s the extent of ‘heat’ in today’s headlines, it’s a good day in the world.
When millions are dead from a scrounge that can now be contained with the simple act of getting a shot and wearing a mask, I have no sympathy for Novak Djokovic. There were better players before him and there will be better players after him. He's not playing? Good. Let's find a new more unselfish player to cheer for. I'm looking forward even more to the Australian Open because he would have been a distraction while he was there. Players ready? Serve on.
I'm pretty close to where you are, Joe, in terms of Djokovic. For a player of such amazing accomplishment, his place next to Federer and Nadal still makes him come off, in some respects, as an underdog, and I tend to root for the underdog. He takes so much criticism, and a decent amount of it is unfair. That being said, there's still a substantial amount that is fair.
As for this situation, this should have been handled better by the Australian Open and the Australian government. But this is like complaining about the officiating when you turn the ball over five times, with a couple of those being pick sixes. Ultimately, where the Open and Australia failed is not being firmer from the get go (and that's really more about the Open, from my perspective -- it sure seems they didn't communicate sufficiently with the government before this all went down). Otherwise, the government has the right to restrict the unvaccinated from entering the country, and, personally, that is the right policy.
While it seems unfair, at some level, that Novak got jerked around a bit, this all revolves around a personal decision he made, and a decision that happens to be extremely stupid. As the recent Omicron wave shows, the failure to vaccinate makes you much more susceptible to the worst consequences of COVID-19, and diminishes the ability to transmit it (but not as much with Omicron, unfortunately). So there was an easy way for Djokovic to play in the Open. Instead, he chose the hard way (and, like most, I'm skeptical about the basis for his exemption), and it didn't work out. It was a risky bet, and he lost.
I'm at a place that's pretty close to this. But I think it's ultimately the hubris of the guy who's at the top of his profession trying to finesse his way into the tournament. There aren't a ton of unvaccinated players, but the ones that are, are just not playing in Australia. Pretty simple. They don't want to get vaccinated, Australia requires people entering the country to be vaccinated, so they take a pass. Only Djokovic tried to go for a "medical exemption". While there are a few people out there who do have conditions that would make it risky to take the vaccination, the vast majority of exemptions attempts are by vaccine deniers. People who are "vaccine hesitant" seem to get over it pretty quickly in the face of a mandate. This is just a patently naked attempt to game the system by Djokovic. It's too bad. He was also a favorite of mine & it's painful to watch someone I liked & respected behave in an entitled, dishonest & ill informed way.
The initial stuff, where he was approved and then the Australian federal government revoked, OK. But that got overturned. And then he got rejected again because apparently he provided some kind of false information, about which nobody knew at the time. So I'm in the camp that it's ultimately all on the player.
Also, the initial overturn was based on process, not on the idea that he could not/should not actually be expelled from the country.
Another beautifully-written blog by JP. Thanks for your insights Joe, I think you've become my favorite writer in the last year and a half. Please keep up the amazing work!
Both sides handled it poorly. He should have never been issued a visa in the first place, but I suspect had he been completely truthful in the application process he would have bot received the visa.
That being said, I put most of the blame on Djokovic's side (both him as an individual as his team, who lied on the application, etc.).
He is unvaccinated, but obviously wanted to keep that under wraps. The AO obviously wanted him to participate, so helped facilitate the original visa citing a "medical exemption" (where they didn't even mention the reason for the exemption - recent Covid diagnosis - it only came out in court).
Bottom line, nobody else who is unvaccinated would be allowed in the country, and he should not have even traveled to Oz in the first place. No vaccination, no visa.
He obviously doesn't respect the guidelines regarding Covid, in general. Much has been made of the interview with the French journalists, but far more damming was the youth tennis camp he conducting, completely maskless, the DAY AFTER he received a positive test. He KNOWINGLY potentially infected hundreds (?, not sure how many participants there were at the camp) of people, many of whom were unvaccinated (due to both the kids age, and also the generally low vaccination levels in Serbia) because his ego wouldn't allow him to do the right thing and isolate. The positive Covid result was emailed to him the day before the camp started, and the excuse has been that nobody can prove he actually saw the positive result before doing the camp. Really????
The Australian visa situation was a public example of how he has conducted himself by his own set of rules throughout the pandemic. According to CNN, he is by far the most popular person in Serbia, and his vaccination stance is one of the biggest reason's the country's vaccination rates are so low. So he is indirectly responsible for thousands of illnesses and deaths.
Put away the ego, do what is right for the greater good. He legacy should be permanently tarnished.
That Vin Scully quote is equally applicable to American politics these days. Though I’m not a tennis watcher, I am dumbfounded by the alert athleticism the elite players possess. Djokovich, as Shakespeare would say, was hoist upon his own petard.
It’s hard for me to blame the Australian government if he lied on his visa application. Or, his people lied and he signed his name to the form with the lie on it.
And even that accepts his claim that he tested positive for COVID — which I lack sufficient reason to doubt to the degree I do.
I find it quite difficult to blame anyone other Novak for any of this at all.
Well, it is a LITTLE more complicated than that. And understanding that can...ummmm......increase our suspicion of his claim of a positive test.
You are not supposed to get vaccinated in the few weeks immediately after COVID infection or illness. There are American employers with vaccine mandates for employees that granted short waivers for people who tested positive shortly before the deadline. So, it's not true that they have "not ever served as a vaccine waiver."
If one doubts Novak's test results, one might suspect that it was timed to support the claim that he COULDN'T comply with the requirement, because of this. Now, I don't buy that argument, even on its face. It would just mean that he missed his deadline.
But I can follow the reasoning.
I’m kind of neutral on Djokovic the player. He’s a great player, sometimes I’ve rooted for him, sometimes not. But he should not have been allowed to come to Australia to play in the AO. Other top players who had not been vaccinated (Tsitsipas for sure) got vaccinated so they could come play. You could tell how pissed Tsitsipas was in his statement, when it looked like Djokovic was going to be allowed to play. I remember when at the USOpen Tsitsipas said he wasn’t vaccinated and wasn’t going to be. I was surprised when I saw him on the list of players in the tournament. He must have changed his mind so he could go to Australia. And felt the fool after Djokovic’s initially being allowed to play.
I assume the Australian Open put a lot of pressure on the government to get Djokovic in. Unlike Joe if Djokovic had been allowed to play I would have watched very little, if any, of the AO as my own personal mini protest.