Djokovic applied for two things - an Australian visa and an exemption to play in the Open despite not being vaccinated. He said, months ago, that if he didn’t receive both he would not be coming to play.
The Feds granted him a visa, and Tennis Australia with Victorian Health granted him an exemption. However Tennis Australia had twice been informed that “people who have previously had COVID-19 and not received a vaccine dose are not considered fully vaccinated” and “States and territories may not accept medical exemptions for the purposes of quarantine-free entry.” This obviously wasn’t communicated to Djokovic. And equally obviously these were the grounds that he relied on for an exemption.
So, Djokovic was unaware that his visa was useless without a vaccination. I assume that he believed that the exemption that he received meant that he was allowed into the country, the difficulty of playing matches while still overseas obvious even to him. Who would automatically conclude that the mob running the event would be going through a process that provided absolutely useless exemptions to players. Well, someone who doesn’t know Australian bureaucracy I guess.
Rodgers’ excuse for the mRNA vaccines was the presence of PEG to which he claims allergies. For J&J, it was the enhanced clotting risk. So, he wasn’t claiming allergies to all of them. But in any event, it’s an iffy claim - the clotting risk is enhanced but not to the level it shouldn’t be taken if the mRNA vaccines can’t be safely taken.
He was basically making stuff up and hoping something stuck.
Blood clots are a big deal for my wife. She almost died from one. She has “Factor Five” which is a genetic vulnerability to them. She’s relatively young but has had to take blood thinners at times that you normally associate with the elderly.
Covid can cause blood clots which is why people who are prone to them are high risk. If you have a particular risk factor to them, that’s even more of a reason to get vaccinated. My wife got vaccinated long before I did, because she was eligible earlier due to being high risk.
If there is legitimately no reasonable medical exemption to a Covid vaccine, then Australia should not have a process to grant one.
Having a process that is absurdly confusing and requires multiple levels of the state in conflict with each other and, oops, you filled out the wrong form so we’re going to deny you is awful. Arbitrary bureaucratic nonsense at borders does not make anyone safer.
Government red tape is at its worst when dealing with non-citizens who would like to visit. This is a terrible thing that genuinely makes everyone worse off, and we should not celebrate it when it happens to fuck over someone we don’t like.
The impression I get, watching at a distance, is that the various levels of the Australian government did not realize the public criticism they would get for granting an exemption, and are now scrambling to find a way to revoke it. Notably, however, he is still in the country, awaiting some kind of hearing on Monday.
There’s always legitimate potential exemptions, particularly for those who are immunocompromised.
Unfortunately, a lot of asshats take advantage of that process for illegitimate purposes, especially for vaccines. This was a factor in states like Mississippi and California severely restricting vaccine exemptions for schoolchildren in recent years. It’s unfortunate that our society has gone so far off the deep end that rejecting COVID vaccines has become a political issue.
We don’t know Djokovic’s medical history but there’s strong circumstantial evidence that there’s no good reason he should have avoided getting one by now.
To be fair to Tennis Australia, that “quarantine-free” stipulation makes this statement unnecessarily confusing. TA may well have said to Djokovic that he might have to quarantine - he left himself (some, probably not enough) time to do it in. If the feds wanted to be actually clear, they should have said “States and territories may not accept medical exemptions for the purpose of ANY entry”. But I suspect that may not be a true statement.
It’s true that the bureaucracy is hella unwieldy (anyone who lives in a State-border community could probably give us an earful). But he really did need permission for three things -
*entering the country at all
*entering Victoria, given that he was in the country
*entering the tournament.
AIUI, the Vic Health exemption does have an actual point - if he was already in the country (eg, flown to Sydney) then he’d need it to cross the Vic/NSW border. So I don’t really blame them for issuing it. But the feds shouldn’t have issued him a visa at all without a big caveat in bold letters THIS ONE ONLY WORKS IF YOU’RE HONEST TO GOD VACCINATED.
As far as the Victorian government is concerned, this is definitely not true … Victoria’s among the leaders of the “clamp down on Covid” side of politics. But it’s true that there’s a lot of political capital to be made from booting him out of the country, and whoever can take credit for it will certainly not be shy about that.
Random fun fact, btw … I’m right now looking out my office window at the hotel where Djokovic is being kept - it’s about 100m down the street. Yesterday there was a certain amount of activity about as Djokovic supporters (about a dozen or so) mingled with some smart refugee activists taking the time to point out that in that very same hotel are refugees we’ve locked up for eight fucking years and maybe it’s time we stopped doing that? All very civilised and respectful on both sides though.
No activity right now, but there are three policemen wandering about so if anything gets interesting later on I’ll let you all know
So apparently there were 20-odd ‘medical exemptions’ granted by the Vic Govt and Tennis Australia for players in the Aus Open, with Djokovic’s being just one of them. WTF??
There were 26 applications for vaccination exemptions in connection with the Australian Open. Only “a handful” (which I presume means 5 or less) were granted, one of them being Djokovic.
Reportedly, the federal government is now reviewing the visa status of two or three of the other people who were granted exemptions.
For any world-class athlete, your body is your life and your livelihood, and you have to maintain it in absolutely pristine performance condition. Athletes are therefore maniacal to the point of total irrationality about refusing to compromise their existing physiological state. We’ve seen this in many sports, not just tennis. I’m not defending the behavior, because I don’t think it’s defensible, but that’s the mindset.
And Djokovic is King Asshat of Asshat Mountain, so anything that makes his life harder is something I will enthusiastically support.
Interesting. I’d also speculate that many practice so much that they don’t have time to learn about facts in the real world, and are more prone to ignorant “theories.”
Well, lots of people don’t like Djokovic, and lots of people didn’t like Jesus, so there’s that. I think Jesus was more of a serve-and-volley player than Djokovic, though.
This is true. But the proper way to vet those can’t possibly be to make the person attempting to get one go through an incomprehensible maze of red tape.
Ok. Agree to disagree, I guess.
Have you ever dealt with nonsense red tape to get a visa? It’s infuriating.
