Djokovic

That might be true about his fitness...but it can hit incredibly fit people as well.

Kimmich and Choupo Moting at Bayern out for months....both not vaccinated

Two MMA fighters (at least) I read about died with covid...soooo

This is the nub of it really.

And I'll just add that Australia (and Victoria) does also give an option to the unvaccinated to do quarantine, so they're not excluded from the country. He chose the medical exemption route instead, but whatever he did with the requirements or paperwork, it seems he messed it up. It's much more an issue of legal requirements and bureaucracy than vaccination. And the same rules being applied to him as anyone else.

aaaaaaand all the anti-vaxxers have arrived

He can leave any time he wants, but he thinks he has a chance with the appeal, so he's choosing not to. No issue with that (other than it being spun as him being imprisoned). Maybe there's an element of trying to be a martyr in it too.

Buy why, if you were him, would you say you'd never play there again? Why would one be so petulant about being subject to the laws and rules of entry into a sovereign country? Why would he not play there in the future when he can fulfil the legal requirements to enter the country?

we all know Bobby Sands, seen as a martyr for his hunger strike to death, but in reality he was under huge pressure from the Ra to keep it going, what would have happened to his his family if he hadn't ? I'm not saying Novak is under the same threat of violence, but it's clear Serbia do not want him to back down with their president and others getting involved. I don't think he could back down now and take a vaccine even if he wanted or he would be seen as weak in his home country.

i think you're trying WAY too hard to be offended.

I posted elsewhere on another topic today about "perfect being the enemy of good", so I suppose the idea is in my head.

Assuming this is true, isn't a marginal benefit at massive scale much better than no benefit at all? None of this - good or bad - should be looked at through the lens of the effect on the individual; it's the overall impact that matters.

No just being fair. If it was Osaka claiming they were picking on her for being Japanese the right wing anti vaxx crowd on here would break their arms they would be jumping so hard and fast at their keyboards to attack her.

Novac's father thinks "is it cause I is Serbian" which is fking absurd

Well it may not be since it is so transmissible that the marginal benefit may be negligible overall.

But just suppose there is an increased benefit overall. Can a tiny, un-measurable benefit form the basis of an undeclared scapegoating and demonisation campaign, an exclusion campaign from most public buildings, 'tormenting' people (Macron), mandatory vaccination (Schallenberg/Nehammer).

(Not accusing you of any of these things Gregor)

All of these things would be wrong and injustifiable in any case imo, but now the vaccine hype machine has gone haywire they have also become farcical.

Also why are people treating it like a partisan issue? Like they personally have to over-hype pharmaceutical products they had no hand in manufacturing otherwise bad people ('anti-vaxxers') will score political points?

Two of my kids (8 year old twins) got it the week before Christmas - positive antigen and PCR tests each. Myself, my wife and my eldest daughters (all double vaxxed, but not boosted yet) had to isolate with them. They're 8 years old, and it was Christmas, so we couldn't isolate FROM them. So we were locked in a 4 bed house with two infected for 10 days and nights. We took some precautions, but they were sitting at the same dinner table as us each day, watching the same TV, using the same bathrooms, breathing the same air. To be honest, we assumed we'd get it, so we thought why make life difficult trying not to, and not get it over with. But we didn't. No symptoms whatsoever. Fully clear antigen and PCR tests for the three of us.

Obviously this is purely anecdotal and carries no scientific weight whatsoever. Who knows whether it was down to vaccination, them being small kids or pure luck. But I just wanted to share it as part of the bigger picture.

Good intelligent counter argument, thanks.

Whatever about whether Omicron spreads just as easily in the vaccinated as the unvaccinated, isn't it fair to say that (wealthy, Western) countries are undoubtedly in a better place because of the vaccination programme? And that maybe the comparative weakness of Omicron is partly because the virus as a whole is getting weaker as we are all vaccinated? Whether Djokovic himself gets ill or not from covid is immaterial. We all got vaccinated in no small part to protect others. It is hard to argue he is not selfish in this respect. Or maybe just really thick- a strong possibility, based on other comments he has made.

Is the issue at the moment that the Victorian government granted an exemption based on the grounds that he had had covid in the previous 6 months, and the federal government has overruled them? Especially with the backlash generated by Djokovic's stupid tweet.

I think the issue is more around it being seen as one rule for the plebs, and one rule for rich people, not vaccination status per se.

Also I'm sure Djokovic Sr never gave a second thought to asylum seekers kept in the awful conditions his son now finds himself in, except they're there for years on end.

To be fair to him, Djokovic seems like a very smart and caring guy in lots of ways- he speaks 5 languages and has done lots of admirable charity work for disadvantaged children, through his foundation. He's clearly achieved much more with his life than any of us on here ever will!

So I don't get why he has this blind spot around vaccines, and has come out with some other incredibly stupid remarks. He's hardly unique with his vaccine stance as someone from a Balkans region though. Only something like 46% of Serbia is fully vaccinated.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out on Monday. Even if he gets to play, somehow, this surely will have a major psychological impact on his playing that would be difficult to overcome??