I don't think his statement puts him in the best light. He also admitted that he publicly took an interview when Djokovic knew that he was positive for COVID without giving a heads up to the interviewer. Although it was brief, he also removed his mask. I'm a fan of Djokovic, but that demonstrates either he is reckless or has a poor understanding of how dangerous COVID can be to individuals who aren't elite athletes like himself.
I wonder how his supporters deal with the fact that, if his test wasn't falsified, then Djokovic's plan for getting into Australia was apparently to catch COVID almost exactly when he claims he did.
I.e., at some point Tennis Australia told Djokovic's team that he would/might get an exemption if he'd had COVID recently. In early December Djokovic hadn't had COVID recently and didn't qualify for any kind of exemption. It is very fortunate for him that he then caught COVID, and in time to recover before the event. In early December Djokovic must have been expecting to NOT compete in the Australian Open, right?
My guess is he expected non-medical sponsored visa as a person of special interest to Australia. And as a 9 time winner, he had every right to at least hope for such case. If political circumstances in Australia were different, and/or if he was less vocal, he just might got it.
It's not even just about the opinions of the Australian population. Other tennis players have a right to ask why he can get around the rules that even other top players (Nadal, Federer etc) can't avoid. The ATP itself came out saying that players should all be vaccinated, and the only complaint it raised on behalf of Djokovic was over the circumstances that led to him ending up in immigration detention. But with the new details about his activities that have emerged since then, I'd be surprised if they are very combative on his behalf now, given they represent all the male players, not just him.
It will not be known as the tournament where the best player wins, but as the tournament where the best vaccinated player wins, because the best player was not allowed to participate. It's not a top league tournament anymore, when you don't have all the best player, but only those that are allowed by government criteria.
I'm pretty sure they are many criterias that would prevent a top player from participating.
It's the best player who is not injured, has not taken any drug, is not sick, accepts all the rules of the ATP, including all the anti doping procedures all year long which are pretty invasive, who can get a visa to come to the tournament, etc etc.
Yes, but this one had no good basis. He is in the highest risk group for myocarditis and he already had Covid in June. Omicron is dominant now. Vaccine efficacy against it is low. What is the actual reason to mandate that he must be vaccinated?
Ah ok, so is he was discovered taking performance enhancing drugs you would complain in the same way saying that it’s unacceptable that only the best non-doped player can win.
Your logic is completely flawed.
If there are rules and he breaks then they have ALL the reasons to ban him.
He could have just gotten carreer-ending myocarditis from the vaccination. The risk in his cohort to get it from vaccination is higher than getting it from covid, which he already had. How is not getting the vaccine under these cicumstances comparable to doping? Is not taking the vaccine known to be performance-enhancing?
Hi, I just saw your reply from 55 days ago on a related COVID topic, and I'm honestly stumped that you would think paraphrasing Vincent Racaniello who literally writes the modern textbook on virology is somehow spreading misinformation. I don't know if you've watched his podcasts on YouTube, but he and his colleagues lay out their reasons for disagreeing with the position of other scientists. So check it out and maybe if you still think what I said was wrong then let me know.
Welcome to international travel! Countries are sovereign entities and decide who gets through the borders. For any international gathering, there's going to be people who have a hard time making it through, or are unable.
I was once invited by a company to an US based developer meeting, and couldn't make it because the company didn't realize I needed a visa, and it's absolutely impossible to get one in two weeks barring exceptional circumstances like the death of a family member.
Later when I visited the US it took about a couple months to get the visa in my passport.
Countries are picky about who they allow in, and require a bunch of paperwork to reassure them you're not going to cause trouble and are going to leave when you're done seeing sights.
I think that an international sports event in a country that is too picky has no chance to stay relevant, especially if that means that it filters out some of the best athletes.
Why unfair conditions? It's just Djokovic being stupid.
Vaccination has long been a requirement for admission into countries, and Covid isn't a new event either. The only new things going on here is Djovokic being public about it, and some minor bureaucratic issues, other than that it's very much business as usual.
But in any case I don't have an opinion on the tournament, I don't watch those anyway. It's up to them to figure out whether this is worth cancelling things over.
I asked multiple people in this thread, what the scientific argument is for mandating that Djokovic gets vaccinated before being able to participate, given his specific situation and what we know about vaccine efficacy (especially since Omicron) and side effects (especially in his cohort) to this date. Nobody was able to answer this question sufficiently so far.
If there is no sufficient scientific basis for such a mandate, it is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are not only unfair, but also tyrannical.
There's no need for any scientific argument, really. Australia is a sovereign country that controls under what conditions they allow people to come in, and is perfectly free to ask people to stand on their head for 5 minutes as an entry condition, if they want to. Look into your own country's visa terms, it's by no means trivial to get in somewhere, and it often requires satisfying some requirements that are not at all scientific. Eg:
Of course they can and they do. But the Australian opens are then a tournament where the highlight is the match between the second best and the third best.
A problem for the AO, yes. But for a country as a whole, this is not a problem, and kicking him out is the better outcome. It shows to the citizens that the restrictions they had to abide by apply to everyone, and that you can't get through just by being famous. That's how it should be. If they say you don't get in without a vaccine, then you don't.
Personally, I don't want this guy in my country either.
"...a country that is too picky has no chance to stay relevant, especially if that means that it filters out some of the best athletes."
No Australia didn't filter Djokovic out, he filtered himself out because of his actions (see my earlier post listing seven points). Had he been a little more prudent and less cocky, then there would have been no drama whatsoever.
They are all based on the assumption that the vaccine is effective against transmission and they only make sense if that protection is over a reasonable threshold. Citation for that effectiveness against the dominant strain please.
Exactly. It's still a victory but its value is nil. It's like removing Bayern Munich or PSG from the Champions League and being happy that Benfica or Villareal get to the finals.
If Bayern or PSG cheated or broke the rules somehow, nobody would complain. Nobody cries over Serie A titles while Juventus were in Serie B for the Calciopoli scandal.
Anyone who thinks Djokovic is at fault. I don't support executive power bypassing courts but I think this doesn't diminish the merit of the winner. He was more intelligent.
I have no idea, I'm no doctor. I find it surprising that a doctor would advise him to play at a competitive level nevertheless if he has some cardiac problem but who knows.
Anyway I want to say that as a matter of fact if a court allows him to enter and play he should be allowed. Not interfering with court decisions is much more important than whether or not a player plays tennis, I don't care if it's an important player on an important tournament, because for me it's not important. I think also he should not enter if he is not vaccinated but for me the "why" is much more important than the "what". We always ask politicians "what" are they going to do, not "why" and "how" and so we keep rewarding luck. So the thing is not if politicians did this or that when the pandemic started, the question is if they were motivated by political interest or followed doctors advice. In this case politicians should follow courts decisions.
He doesn't. He want's to avoid them. For males under 40 the risk for getting myocarditis is higher than for getting it from covid. That has been discussed on HN.
That would be ok, if there were an option for him to defend his title somewhere else or at a different time. This way it is like:
"Take this vaccine against a strain that is not spreading anymore, that you also already had, while we cannot really prove efficacy against the current dominant strain and where you have a higher risk of side effects than others, or just give up your title. Your choice."
In the past when your risk of getting the disease was perhaps smaller maybe you could start doing this math. Now that it's clear that everyone will get the disease (multiple times) it's not so easy. Not least because even if you are a "make under 40", you eventually won't be.
Besides there are numerous other side effects from the virus than myocarditis. Focusinig on this particular one and ignoring all the others is pretty strange.
Relevant passage from the article I believe you are refering to shows that the disk is first of all extremely low in all groups, and second it's not very different in the younger group.
In males aged less than 40 years, we estimated an additional 3 (95%CI 1, 5) and 12 (95%CI 1, 13) myocarditis events per million in the 1-28 days following a first dose of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; an additional 14 (95%CI 8, 17), 12 (95%CI 1, 7) and 101 (95%CI 95, 104) myocarditis events following a second dose of ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; and an additional 13 (95%CI 7, 15) myocarditis events following a third dose of BNT162b2 vaccine. This compares with 7 (95%CI 2, 11) additional myocarditis events in the 1-28 days following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. In older males, we estimated 3 (95% CI 2, 4) and 73 (95% 71, 75) additional myocarditis events per million following a third dose of BNT162b2 and a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, respectively.
> the disk is first of all extremely low in all groups
Not by official WHO definitions.
101 in a million is equivalent to 1.01/10,000.
With 1/10,000 it falls into the bracket for the definition of "rare", not "very rare" or "extremely rare". I wish the media would use these official definitions.
Fair enough, I didn't know there was a formal definition of "extremely rare" vs. "rare". But it's "about equally rare" between vax and infection for the healthiest group, and rare for all groups.
This is why I think it's so weird to avoid the vaccine due to that risk. It's not like people taking the vax are spinning a roulette wheel with 1/10000 risk of complication, and if they reject the vaccine they don't need to spin it. If that was the case, then I'd understand it.
The roulette wheel is being spun with every injection. I think this aspect is underrepresented too. Having three jabs means having a 1/n chance three times, with varying n each time. We are not only talking about vaccine mandates, but also booster mandates. The basis for these is even thinner, because especially since Omicron, the benefit/risk ratio is even worse. The risk has not changed, while the benefits just visibly decreased.
"The risk is about the same" is not even a good ratio to begin with, and it also does not match with what has been communicated to the public over and over - that the risks would be astronomically small, compared to the benefits. With the ratio that is currently known, the vaccines would have had a harder time to get approved. I don't think that mass vaccination mandates can be upheld as soon as the public becomes aware of the actual ratios.
> The roulette wheel is being spun with every injection.
Yes - as with any medication. But my point is, it's some times seen as being a roulette wheel with the vaccine but no one mentions the elephant in the room which is that the side effects are at worst much more common, and at best about equal, with infection. Basically if you don't get vaccinated, you are spinning a worse roulette wheel.
> The basis for these is even thinner, because especially since Omicron, the benefit/risk ratio is even worse. The risk has not changed, while the benefits just visibly decreased.
There are three levels of risk here. Individual risk, group risk (protecting people in a more vulnerable group, for example), and societal risk (preventing spread, or limiting the damage to publically funded healthcare by limiting your own risk). Now with omicron, the individual risk for a healthy 30 year old is obviously way down. The societal risk from the disease is very high due to infectivity (staff shortages etc), and the group risk is also rather high as the disease is still pretty bad for the oldest age group, especially without boosters.
But even so: vaccines aren't only about individual risk. And vaccine mandates aren't only acceptable when it's a net positive to the individual! On the contrary, when it's a net positive, they may not even be needed - people have incentive enough to get vaccinated anyway!
Mandating vaccines despite unclear individual benefit (and to be clear its STILL very much a solid benefit even for healthy recovered young people, but for the sake of argument) is no easy ethical problem. The answer to that has been different in different countries, or even within countries (e.g. some countries have had varying degrees of mandates for adult vaccine but not even approved it for healthy young chilren because the individual risk is too low).
> There are three levels of risk here. Individual risk, group risk (protecting people in a more vulnerable group, for example), and societal risk (preventing spread, or limiting the damage to publically funded healthcare by limiting your own risk). Now with omicron, the individual risk for a healthy 30 year old is obviously way down. The societal risk from the disease is very high due to infectivity (staff shortages etc), and the group risk is also rather high as the disease is still pretty bad for the oldest age group, especially without boosters.
So it seems like a good idea for vulnerable people to get boostered. People can protect themselves from severe disease with the vaccination. The evidence that others are protected through a vaccination is pretty much non-existent. A reduction of societal risk is not a strong argument in this case, because the absolute reduction of risk by the vaccine is very small. Below 3%. You need to vaccinate about 100 people in order to prevent one more case, based on data from before last April. I bet it is worse now with Omicron:
> The evidence that others are protected through a vaccination is pretty much non-existent
No the evidence that it protects against severe disease is pretty strong. But there is no need to even go into that discussion.
The evidence that hospitals will be less stressed if more people are vaccinated, so that my risk of (say) getting care delayed for a heart attack or broken bone, is important.
> in order to prevent one more case
We aren't preventing nearly any cases now with Omicron. The protection is just too low. But the protection against severe disease and death is good. Everyone will get omicron (or a later even more infectious variant) eventually. The question is: how many of them will be severe? How flat will the peak be of severe cases?
Vaccinations at this point are about societal risk and severe disease. It's not about individual risk or preventing infection.
What are you saying? That it makes sense for anyone in any age group to avoid the vaccine because the risk of myocarditis is so much higher from the vaccine than from the disease? I think that's not very good math
Because that's one of the easiest arguments to dispel. No one should be avoiding the vaccine for that reason. Not even those who had the disease once or twice already.
So he took the risk of myocarditis from Covid-19, over the risk of myocarditis from vaccine once already. That was a poor choice.
He still faces the same risk in the future. He still has the same choice.
It doesn't change because you are a healthy young person. The risk of this complication is higher from the disease than the vaccine in every group, (the male under 40 doesn't really make a big difference - there you have about a breakeven risk)
And so does the severity of the disease, look at omicron. The benefits of the vaccine over a natural infection get weaker by the day, especially because vaccine efficacy is not great anymore. Particularly too weak for justifying mandates, in my opinion.
I am a fierce anti conspiracy person, but this covid situation is having me thinking.
They say natural resistance is better or equal than from the vaccine, everyone apart from anti vaxxers like Djokovic has had a shot or two or three, there's no herd immunity or herd protection
Can someone explain the math to me?
Also people said the regular flu does not exist anymore, give or take, because everyone is wearing masks. Nothing could be further from the truth, full family had flu twice now, me three times(never had that before in my.life, once a year max was normal) and I see the regular flu wave still existing. I haven't had covid that I know of, did tests and am vaccinated.
> They say natural resistance is better or equal than from the vaccine
Who are "they" and what exactly are "they" saying? I think there is a consensus that even if you had the disease, it's wise choice to get vaccinated. Protection from vaccination and recovery is better than protection from only one of them, as far as I understand it.
> Can someone explain the math to me?
What math?
> Also people said the regular flu does not exist anymore
Seasonal flu will of course continue to be a thing. But restrictions obviously meant that last years flu season was kept low in many places around the world. This however means that there could be a worse wave coming this year (and it has happened too in many places - we are in the flu season in the wintery part of the world now). In places with good mask adherence, no big public events and so on, obviously ALL respiratory diseases will have a harder time spreading. But these restrictions are - hopefully - temporary, The flu will be fine.
Can't speak for the whole world, but in Canada my experience is that they're not testing for the flu anymore. Only COVID. In years past if you went to the doctor during flu season they'd do a throat swab for flu. Now it's only for COVID.
I know lots of people who were sick but only tested for COVID. One of my friends was out of work for a month with a bacterial infection they missed for 2+ weeks because they only tested for COVID....
I never heard about testing for flu in the past either, except when admitted to hospital with severe disease. There is "monitoring" i.e. some random statistical testing only as far as I know.
> What are you saying? That it makes sense for anyone in any age group to avoid the vaccine because the risk of myocarditis is so much higher from the vaccine than from the disease?
No, what I am saying is that mandating them is a stupid idea. Everyone should be free to do a personal benefit/risk assessment before undergoing any medical procedure. Politicians are no medical doctors and they should have no power to prescribe me a medical treatment. If you mix science with politics, you get politics.
I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
> No, what I am saying is that mandating them is a stupid idea. Everyone should be free to do a personal benefit/risk assessment before undergoing any medical procedure.
And I absolutely agree. Apart from specific situations (e.g healthcare workers) no one should be required to get the vaccine.
But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
> I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
I don’t think it’s pointless. Protection from vaccine helps even in the recovered, healthy and young. But whether he should get it or not isn’t really relevant, what’s relevant is that Australia required it and they can’t exempt him due to past infection (apparently).
Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
> But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
I don't think that makes sense. If you cannot see your family again without vaccination, that is a clear mandate to me. If it is not based on clear scientific evidence that shows that there was no better option, then the mandate is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are tyrannical.
If Djokovic only has the choice between getting vaccinated or to give up his title, and if that mandated choice was not justified on a scientific basis, then that mandate was arbitrary and hence tyrannical.
> Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
I think what we are experiencing right now, goes way beyond criticism. Instead of demonizing people with a certain belief (and treating rational critics as collateral), people should try much harder to demonstrate the benefits of the vaccine in an intellectually honest way. And they should be brutally honest regarding side effects. This is almost not happening, as far as I can see.
> If you cannot see your family again without vaccination, that is a clear mandate to me.
That makes it a bit of a gray area. "Mandated" as in "you have to take it" is one thing (which few states would hopefully ever try) or "Mandated to do X" is a different thing. Then how much overreach is involved really depends on what X is. Working in hospital? Very reasonable. Attending university? Well, that was always a thing. Crossing borders - this was also always a thing.
> If it is not based on clear scientific evidence that shows that there was no better option, then the mandate is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are tyrannical.
One can argue that almost all restrictions during the pandemic had to be based on very shaky science because there simply isn't time to first await the science and then make the decision. And there are surely a lot of restrictions that are much worse to have, than vaccine mandate for immigration. Shutting down schools or banning gatherings, for example.
> then that mandate was arbitrary and hence tyrannical.
Yeah I mean I don't necessarily agree with all the restrictions around the world and got knows Australia has the most shitty immigration politics on the planet - even outside the pandemic. But what I do think is that they should have the right to have whatever restrictions they want (even tyrannical ones) and there isn't much to do about it.
> One can argue that almost all restrictions during the pandemic had to be based on very shaky science because there simply isn't time to first await the science and then make the decision. And there are surely a lot of restrictions that are much worse to have, than vaccine mandate for immigration. Shutting down schools or banning gatherings, for example.
That's my point. People are basing a witch-hunt on unscientific thinking in 2021 on arguments that are not based on solid science. It does not look good and I think that historians will talk a lot about that.
That's oversimplifying it. It's not that decisions are "unscientific" because the science isn't rock solid. Politicians and authorities have the unenviable job of having to make decisions that some times have to precede science. Acting out of caution is a thing.
Besides, it's not as if you ask scientists their response would always be "well our science won't say very much until a year from now, so of course we recommend the status quo until we know more!"
Scientific consensus and consensus among scientists can be two different things (i.e., scientists may well agree or even recommend politicians and authorities to do X, well in advance of science being clear).
I agree, but I meant something else and I probably was not clear with my wording:
I think that there is a witch-hunt against people who are considered to think unscientifically, but the hunters do not have a solid scientific basis for their battle calls themselves. I find that ironic and tragic at the same time.
People in this thread and elsewhere attacked Djokovic for avoiding the vaccine, but nobody was able to provide evidence that would explain why Djokovic needs to be vaccinated, given his condition and history. It boils down to "the rules are the rules" and "same rules for everyone". Read that with Hanna Ahrendt's voice. Pure ideology and decoupling from actual reasoning and common sense. We are supposed to base medicine on science, not on ideology, aren't we?
The difference between saying "Well now there is omicron and I'm young and healthy and have just had covid so I should do some back-of-the-napkin-math" versus "I don't believe in the idea of vaccinating populations as soon as the individual risk outweighs the population risk" (i.e. antivax) is pretty large.
Novak is now in the former category, but he was in the latter - which is why I don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt any more.
> No, what I am saying is that mandating them is a stupid idea. Everyone should be free to do a personal benefit/risk assessment before undergoing any medical procedure.
And I absolutely agree. Apart from specific situations (e.g healthcare workers) no one should be required to get the vaccine.
But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
Remember that vaccines were always mandated for travel, going to university etc.
> I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
I don’t think it’s pointless. Protection from vaccine helps even in the recovered, healthy and young. But whether he should get it or not isn’t really relevant, what’s relevant is that Australia required it and they can’t exempt him due to past infection (apparently).
Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
Why wouldn't he be? He could have just gotten vaccinated. And then, he could have not lied to them about his travel.
I mean, seriously, most folks that lie to immigration/border security get deported and aren't allowed back in. They are used as political pawns, too, but simply are a number instead of a person. I don't know why this man is supposed to be treated differently.
He could have just gotten carreer-ending myocarditis from the vaccination. The risk in his cohort to get it from vaccination is higher than getting it from covid, which he already had. How is that mandate justified?
The risk of getting a myocarditis from COVID itself is higher for him, if we compare the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine. Only for Moderna for people below 40 the risk was higher for myocarditis, and even that comparison doesn't include all the other risks from a COVID infection.
He also runs the risk of being stabbed on the court during a match by a deranged fan of his opponent like Monica Seles was, or taking an errant serve directly in the groin then getting knocked backwards and striking his head on the hardcourt surface like Dick Wertheim did. So what?
The vaccine risk is mostly for Moderna, and I'm not sure it is higher than getting it from covid. Moderna is not the only vaccine out there. There are slews of other effects of Covid that would definitely end his career.
I have little patience for folks that refuse to get vaccinated. You are more likely to catch and therefore spread covid (possibly killing others) and much more likely to add to the stress on the healthcare system when you get covid. If you do decide not to vaccinate after knowing this and understanding that the risks from a vaccine are less than the risks from the virus, I fully expect you to stay home and minimize your effect on others. This is partially so that folks that cannot be vaccinated don't have to suffer because you won't do your part.
Of course, staying home - the responsible thing to do if you aren't going to get vaccinated - would end his career anyway. On the other hand, he is probably monied enough for it to not have dire consequences. Unfortunately, many of the folks he inspires are not in that position.
> There are slews of other effects of Covid that would definitely end his career.
He already had covid that did not end his career.
> I have little patience for folks that refuse to get vaccinated. You are more likely to catch and therefore spread covid (possibly killing others) and much more likely to add to the stress on the healthcare system when you get covid. If you do decide not to vaccinate after knowing this and understanding that the risks from a vaccine are less than the risks from the virus, I fully expect you to stay home and minimize your effect on others. This is partially so that folks that cannot be vaccinated don't have to suffer because you won't do your part.
When the vaccine efficacy against transmission is as low as it is, this makes little sense to me. Covid vaccines seem mostly good for protecting yourself individually from severe disease and death. For everything else they don't seem to do much. Not enough to mandate them and for guilt-tripping the hesitant. Folks that cannot be vaccinated will catch omicron regardless of the vaccination status of the rest of the population.
Its kind of a victory that if I would participate and broke hands or legs of every reasonable player, I would win (a bit extreme but you get the point). Meaningless victory on its own, but trophy, bragging rights and sponsors contracts will follow nevertheless.
If a champion did steroids and were disqualified, it would be the same. A victory is a victory.
Its not like he is some hapless victim. He knew the rules, he had enough time to get vaccinated but is choosing (and relishing) his anti vaccine posture.
The political cost of letting Djokovic stay was too high for Morrison
Australians have been barred from visiting a dying parent in hospital, blocked from seeing a new grandchild and forbidden from having a wedding. Should they accept that a tennis star gets the leeway they were denied?
Angering those Australians would have been a huge danger for Morrison when he is only a few months away from an election.
But this is not game, set and match. The entire saga has put Australia’s pandemic dysfunction up in lights. It was a national embarrassment and may continue through the courts.
Covid is rampant at this point. An aggressive testing path and allowing him to play would absolutely be in the public's best interest.
It's clowns on both sides here but the risk of letting him in is definitely not high enough to balance the public benefit of him being allowed to play. Once he plays the special public benefit ends and so should his visa.
> Angering those Australians would have been a huge danger for Morrison when he is only a few months away from an election.
This has been the entire strategy for the government's handling of the pandemic - national interests be damned, as long as it favours the party being re-elected.
I don't think that national interests really mattered anytime in any country. That is just a tool to keep power. Maybe it's important for some politician, but focusing on power grab is way more beneficial at the top.
He actually flew back to Sydney to visit his kids during the middle of a lockdown when people couldn't visit dying relatives, because it was fathers day!
There's no need to be so pessimistic. Plenty of people go into politics with good intentions, and some even stay that way after some time there. Some want to be remembered, some genuinely want to fix things. Some just want power.
Skepticism is healthy, full on pessimism "everything is just a power grab" is extremely unhealthy.
>Skepticism is healthy, full on pessimism "everything is just a power grab" is extremely unhealthy
I agree but lets extend this same treatment not just to Westerners but to Eastern people too, otherwise it is just hypocrisy. I say this because the top comment on a previous post about Djokovic claims that his PCR test is genuine not because he was really positive with Covid, but because his family is influential with the Serbian government. This sort of prejudice and discrimination is plain disgusting
In this situation they cannot do that for reasons that to acquiesce or do nothing would be seen by the Australian public, many of whom have been already shabbily treated by COVID restrictions, as favoritism towards Djokovic. I'd be political suicide (see point 7 in my earlier post).
> The political cost of letting Djokovic stay was too high for Morrison
> Australians have been barred from visiting a dying parent in hospital, blocked from seeing a new grandchild and forbidden from having a wedding. Should they accept that a tennis star gets the leeway they were denied?
This is bizarre logic. "I got screwed, so someone else should get screwed too!"
He got the exemption. It was challenged in court. He won that case.
Now a minister's "personal discretion" (why is this even a thing?) timed perfectly so that even if Novak wins the court case, it would be too late for him to participate in the Australian Open.
I want to address the continuing misinformation
about my activities and attendance at events in
December in the lead up to my positive PCR
COVID test result.
This is misinformation which needs to be
corrected, particularly in the interest of
alleviating broader concern in the community
about my presence in Australia, and to address
matters which are very hurtful and concerning
to my family.
I want to emphasise that I have tried very hard
to ensure the safety of everyone and my
compliance with testing obligations.
I attended a basketball game in Belgrade on 14
December after which it was reported that a
number of people tested positive with COVID 19.
Despite having no COVID symptoms, I took a
rapid antigen test on 16 December which was
negative, and out of an abundance of caution,
also took an official and approved PCR test on
that same day.
The next day I attended a tennis event in
Belgrade to present awards to children and took
a rapid antigen test before going to the event,
and it was negative.
I was asymptomatic and felt good, and I had not
received the notification of a positive PCR test
result until after that event.
The next day, on 18 December I was at my
tennis centre in Belgrade to fulfil a
long-standing commitment for a L'Equipe interview
and photoshoot. I cancelled all other events
except for the L'Equipe interview.
I felt obliged to go ahead and conduct the
L'Equipe interview as I didn't want to let the
journalist down, but did ensure I socially
distanced and wore a mask except when my
photograph was being taken.
While I went home after the interview to isolate
for the required period, on reflection, this was an
error of judgement and I accept that I should
have rescheduled this commitment.
On the issue of my travel declaration, this was
submitted by my support team on my behalf -
as I told immigration officials on my arrival - and
my agent sincerely apologises for the
administrative mistake in ticking the incorrect
box about my previous travel before coming to
Australia. This was a human error and certainly
not deliberate. We are living in challenging times
in a global pandemic and sometimes these
mistakes can occur. Today, my team has
provided additional information to the Australian
Government to clarify this matter.
While I felt it was important to address and
clarify misinformation I will not be making any
further comment out of utmost respect for the
Australian Government and their authorities and
the current process.
It is always an honour and a privilege to play in
the Australian Open. The Australian Open is
much-loved by players, fans and the community,
not just in Victoria and in Australia, but around
the globe, and I just want to have the
opportunity to compete against the best players
in the world and perform before one of the best
crowds in the world."
Djokovic won the original challenge on procedural grounds that the process was incorrect, not that his exemption/documentation was valid. He was never exculpated. And let's not forget that Djokovic screwed this up for himself.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Australians - and I speak as one, now thankfully living elsewhere - but "I got screwed, so someone else should get screwed too!" is a big part of the national psyche, along with "How dare someone get something that I'm not getting!".
Sorry, but no. Expecting consistency in the application of law is fundamental to democracy. It's not Australian to think that celebrities and the rich receiving a different set of laws and treatment is unfair.
...which Djokovic still received, by the way. There are people in his detention centre that have been waiting for 10 years to receive half the time of the courts that Djokovic has received in a week. If Australians were as you described, then Djokovic would be held for 3 years in his current facility then sent to Nauru for a further five years of off-shore processing.
> This is bizarre logic. "I got screwed, so someone else should get screwed too!"
Not at all.
The government sets a bunch of strict rules with no exceptions and tells people it's very important that they obey the rules.
It's entirely reasonable for people to take that at face value - if these rules are important, they should apply to the rich and famous just like they do to everyone else.
No, it’s not bizarre at all.
If he really was positive in December and attended several events while knowing that he was positive without taking any precautions it’s a criminal behaviour and they have all the rights to ban him on these grounds.
If he wasn’t positive then it means that he forged his test certificate, that is equally bad.
I don’t see any issue in banning someone that has been proven to be an health danger for the general population.
in the first case he's on the hook in Serbia, not in Australia
in the second case, these documents resolve to an official Serbian covid certificate web page and it's the country of Serbia responsibility to explain to other countries in the world how that was possible to happen and to find out who did it
now, the fact that Novak visited Spain and his agency "forgot" to mention it in the PLF that's a leverage that could be used
> This is bizarre logic. "I got screwed, so someone else should get screwed too!"
Or, I had to follow the law, so everyone else should too. I'm getting upset if the law is only for the simple people like me, but not for big sports stars and other hotshots.
In slovenia, more people have died from smoking related illnesses than covid (even in the last two years), but somehow "corona lives matter", peoples personal choices to go out, get ill, and risk the 0.5% chance of death don't matter, governments take more and more power, because "every life matters", but on the other hand, you can still buy cigarettes everywhere.
If every life matters, then ban cigarettes, tax the shit out of sugary sodas and junk food, if you're willing to sacrifice basic human rights, also force people to exercise, and more lives will be saved than from corona. If all those lives don't matter, but corona lives do, someone is doing something very very wrong.
It’s not true.
In all the world covid caused way more deaths than smoke related diseases.
If in Slovenia it’s not the case then they are massively undercounting covid deaths.
And the covid mortality is 1%, not 0.5%. Stop spreading dangerous misinformation.
> Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio.
Let's be honest here... covid is really bad for old and already ill people. For young and currently healthy, the impacts of lockdowns will be worse than covid, especially for younger children (imagine just going to first grade, unable to rad and write yet, and you're put infront of a laptop with Zoom running, no real-life contact with friends, parents having to quit their jobs to take care of you, and all that to "save grandma", even with vaccines already available).
Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio.
I don't get it. You're arguing against government interventions because of relatively low fatality numbers. Yet, the fact that these numbers are not higher is a direct outcome of the world-wide vaccination campaigns. Don't you think you got it backwards?
I'm saying that we violated many basic human rights because of a disease that killed 5 mio people, citing those deaths as reasons to violate all the basic righs, while we're unwilling to violate a relatively minor right (to smoke), to save even more lives.
If you're saying we need a cufrew, because covid killed X people, but are not willing to ban the sale of cigarettes, even though they kill 3.2*X people, you're doing something wrong.
Covid kills X people because of the restrictions, otherwise it would kill N*X people, where N would be a lot higher number than 3.2 because of the secondary problems like hospitals overflowing.
An often ignored fact is that many of these restrictions and the fear many governments have stoked (e.g. fear of going to the doctor, fear of going out, interruptions in work) have caused many deaths. We won't know what the net cost is until many years from now.
Well we'd all like to think that but if you plot cumulative world deaths on a graph there's no inflection point in 2021. The graph just keeps going up and to the right at exactly the same speed as it always did:
It's really hard to explain this. I admit to being baffled. If vaccines are saving lives then there should have been a clear bend downwards in the trend line of the graph but if any such bend exists at all you have to squint to see it. If anything there looks like a slight acceleration in the first months of 2021 (but it's small enough I can't say for sure by eyeballing it).
Lots of people don't understand the numbers around total COVID deaths, by the way. In the past week alone I've seen internet comments saying that over 20 million have died of COVID, that vaccines have saved "millions of lives" when COVID overall since the start has only claimed (or rather, been temporally associated with) millions of lives, and VE lasted only months due to Omicron and when it rolled out. So it's impossible for vaccines to have saved millions of lives.
But this is understandable when you consider what people tell opinion polls. Lots of people, including people who think of themselves as well informed and educated, mis-estimate the dangers of COVID by orders of magnitude :(
What I see in this graph is a more or less linear growth instead of an exponential one. That's good news.
But a more tangible insight into why you're wrong and why vaccines do work is to look at statistics for hospitalization in intensive care: these days, the vast majority of ICU cases of COVID are unvaccinated patients. Given that most people are vaccinated, it should be the other way around if there was no difference between vaccinated or unvaccinated. This is a much stronger argument than speculating what a growth graph should or should not look like with or without vaccines.
Why would deaths increase exponentially over a period of years? That would not be expected and was not occurring even before vaccines.
The point I'm making here is that the data is contradictory, which means there is a need to investigate. Trials didn't show any impact on hospitalization or death (because it's so rare, they were too small to get significance). That means the data on them is confounded. For example, in the UK the data shows that pregnancy makes you more likely to be admitted to ICU with COVID but less likely to die. A biological effect? No, of course not. Rather, hospital staff have a lot of discretion on who they send to ICU or not, and they prefer to spend resources on women who are pregnant.
The expected curve without intervention would have an S-shape: initially, you see exponential growth which will flatten out later on when you reach a point of saturation.
In many countries, the intensive care units have not been in the situation where they had to triage, so the selection effects you report have not been necessary there. And even if, no hospital would make the decision on who to assign to an ICU based on their vaccination status, but based on the medical needs. The fact that we see dramatically less vaccinated people in ICUs is most plausibly explained by the effectiveness of the vaccines.
Logistic growth (S shaped) is observed in any specific epidemic regardless of intervention. But what we're looking at here is the sum of all COVID epidemics together.
"no hospital would make the decision on who to assign to an ICU based on their vaccination status, but based on the medical needs"
Your beliefs about hospitals and doctors are romanticized and I already gave you evidence of this. Albeit I didn't cite it, so let me do that now with this analysis of UK ICNARC data:
Pregnant women get admitted more and survive more because they weren't being admitted based on true medical need but rather the subjective feelings of staff that [currently/very recently] pregnant women should get higher levels of care due to having a baby.
This also affects other decisions. Doctors aren't always rational well informed calculating machines:
"We see a similar admissions bias when we examine the hospitalization fatality rates between the fully vaccinated and unvaccinated under 50s with PHE hospitalization data for 218,784 confirmed Delta infections – which show that whilst the 1.7% hospitalization rate of the unvaccinated is almost 2X that of the vaccinated (0.9%), the HFR in the vaccinated is 3 times higher (7.4%) than the unvaccinated (2.4%) and the case fatality rates is also lower in the unvaccinated."
Why does this happen, well, the population has been terrorized for years into believing things that are wildly untrue. The average Australian believes an unvaccinated person has a 33% chance of dying if they catch COVID. They think it's as deadly as smallpox or the plague. 40% of American Democrat voters believe half of unvaccinated people have been hospitalized with COVID! Half!
It'd be great if all the people who believed this nonsense were somehow excluded from the health system but of course they aren't. Quite the opposite: those who understand the true numbers and severity rates are much less likely to want to get vaccinated than those who think it's literally the plague and they're all being fired.
The thing is that tobacco deaths are usually from several years of use. I don't think most of the dead people who died from tobacco have begin smoking this last two years meanwhile covid killing is quite faster.
So we should only pay attention to whatever illness causes the most deaths and ignore the rest?
You're free to get ill if you choose (from smoking, covid, whatever) but it's really hard to believe people don't understand you don't have the right to endanger others, be it with tobacco smoke or covid.
That's also why we have speed limits. If you want to endanger yourself driving 250Km/h that's fine. But you can't, because you'd endanger others.
I mean... you probably shouldn't ignore the thing that kills the most people, to deal with something that kills less people than that. And yes, we basically do the calculation (deaths vs convenience) all the time.. look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits.. a few deaths is ok, because everyone can get to work faster, but a lot of deaths is not ok.
Especially now, with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering (except others, who also chose not to vaccinate)? Thinking the vaccinated won't get in contact with omicron from other vaccinated people who got infected is stupid, but we still don't let unvaccinated people go to the bar, while I can go there, even infected (and with omicron, i could be infected right now, but noone tests us, the vaccinated ones).
> I mean... you probably shouldn't ignore the thing that kills the most people, to deal with something that kills less people than that
Smoking isn't ignored ... I don't think any illness is ignored in favor of any others. Doctors have been insisting people do not postpone medical procedures and checkups because they're worried about covid in hospitals (which has been happening, and causing more deaths).
One of the main reasons to get vaccinated against covid is specifically so hospitals don't get overwhelmed to the point where patients have to turned away, regardless of what they're suffering from.
> look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits
I doubt that speed limits have anything to do with "time lost". The difference in covering 30Km at 150Km/h vs 120Km/h is 3 min, negligible. Wake up earlier :)
Faster driving doesn't cause more accidents, but it does cause greater injury (complicated subject with lots of research, no time to dig all this up).
> with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering
You're also endangering vaccinated people. The risk of serious illness is greatly reduced but you're not guaranteed not to die. A vaccine is like a seat belt (works super well but doesn't make you invincible).
And it's not just 1 or 0. People die from covid and survivors can have long lasting afflictions from it. I think the statistic is for every person that dies, there's 5 that will be "marked" for life by covid. Not "long covid" or whatever, but life long problems with reduced lung capacity, problems with kidneys, heart etc - things they will suffer from in varying degrees for years to come, burdening the healthcare and social welfare system and the economy in general (global cost is already in the trillions of dollars).
And it's still not ok to endanger those who aren't vaccinated because they can still end up in hospital, using up valuable resources. So if you want to have your covid parties that's fine if you sign a contract saying you'll receive no medical help whatsoever should you get infected. Anything else is morally wrong.
It's extremely tiring having to explain all this basic, obvious stuff to people. I'm sure if you thought it through you could figure it out for yourself.
> Smoking isn't ignored ... I don't think any illness is ignored in favor of any others. Doctors have been insisting people do not postpone medical procedures and checkups because they're worried about covid in hospitals (which has been happening, and causing more deaths).
Doctors have been saying that, but then rescheduling procedures. Some have even been stopped for some time. Here in slovenia, they even caught doctors, giving their timecards to a security guard to check them in/out out of the government hospital (so they get covid benefits) while they worked in private practice, because their government-hospital procedures (whole programme) was stopped.
> I doubt that speed limits have anything to do with "time lost". The difference in covering 30Km at 150Km/h vs 120Km/h is 3 min, negligible. Wake up earlier :)
But if we lowered the speed limit to 10km/h, there'd be almost zero deaths. And yes, we have speed limits lowering the speed from 130km/h to 110km/h in many places, because it loweres the chance of accidents there, while an accident at that both of those speeds are pretty bad anyways.
> You're also endangering vaccinated people. The risk of serious illness is greatly reduced but you're not guaranteed not to die. A vaccine is like a seat belt (works super well but doesn't make you invincible).
But vaccinated people also get ill and spread covid, and with omicron it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone, vaccinated or not, will get in contact with covid. The vaccine is basically helping only the vaccinated person, and has pretty much no effect on the spread itself (which is pretty much logical at r0=10 or whatever it is for omicron).
> And it's not just 1 or 0. People die from covid and survivors can have long lasting afflictions from it. I think the statistic is for every person that dies, there's 5 that will be "marked" for life by covid. Not "long covid" or whatever, but life long problems with reduced lung capacity, problems with kidneys, heart etc - things they will suffer from in varying degrees for years to come, burdening the healthcare and social welfare system and the economy in general (global cost is already in the trillions of dollars).
Again... we'll all get it, and you either trust your immune system, and take the risk for yourself, or you trust the vaccine+immune system, and take a lower risk, or you well.. stay at home, because vaccines won't prevent the spread of a virus so contageous as the omicron variant.
> And it's still not ok to endanger those who aren't vaccinated because they can still end up in hospital, using up valuable resources. So if you want to have your covid parties that's fine if you sign a contract saying you'll receive no medical help whatsoever should you get infected. Anything else is morally wrong.
Should we expand this to smokers and obese people, and extreme sportists? I mean.. getting covid is a one time "mistake", getting morbidly obese is years and years of self abuse, same with cigarettes, those take many years to destroy your lungs.
> It's extremely tiring having to explain all this basic, obvious stuff to people. I'm sure if you thought it through you could figure it out for yourself.
It's also exremly tiring to take away peoples basic human rights in the name of a disease that (with vaccines) kills less people than the flu (and who cares if someone doesn't get vaccinated, it's their problem).
> But vaccinated people also get ill and spread covid, and with omicron it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone, vaccinated or not, will get in contact with covid
Well yes, vaccines don't stop the spread but it will reduce it (definitely with Delta, maybe less so with Omicron). And then you have other problems like mutations happening more among non vaccinated.
And even with omicron, a vaccine will prevent serious illness.
Even if it just makes a 1% difference, among the almost 8 billion people in the world that's still a huge number. So why not get vaccinated?
It seems to me people are either scared for irrational reasons or just want to be different and think they know it better than the medical establishment.
> Should we expand this to smokers and obese people
Yes, I definitely think you could make a case for that. If people could reduce their craving for McDonalds by receiving a yearly injection and they refuse then yeah, you'd be in the same situation. But things are more complicated, being related to addiction, socio economic status etc ...
> It's also exremly tiring to take away peoples basic human rights in the name of a disease that (with vaccines) kills less people than the flu (and who cares if someone doesn't get vaccinated, it's their problem).
Again, nobody is forced to be vaccinated and it's not just their problem if they don't. You may be refused entry to bars & restaurants but that's not a basic human right, afaik.
> vaccines don't stop the spread but it will reduce it (definitely with Delta, maybe less so with Omicron).
Not with omicron, atleast not really.
> And even with omicron, a vaccine will prevent serious illness.
So, it's like smoking, the vaccinated get lesser chance of serious illness, and the unvaccinated have themselves to blame.
> Yes, I definitely think you could make a case for that. If people could reduce their craving for McDonalds by receiving a yearly injection and they refuse then yeah, you'd be in the same situation. But things are more complicated, being related to addiction, socio economic status etc ...
I mean.. they could reduse mcdonalds by just not eating at mcdonalds.
> Again, nobody is forced to be vaccinated and it's not just their problem if they don't. You may be refused entry to bars & restaurants but that's not a basic human right, afaik.
But curfews (restriction of movement) is a basic human right, that was taken away from us. And again, if vaccines only help the vaccinated, why not let the unvaccinated ones into bars (or mcdonalds)?
The limitations are there, so that hospitals don't get flooded with people. Without the limitations the healthcare system would collapse. If that were to happen, doctors would have to decide whether to help you because you had an accident or to treat somebody else with covid or somebody else with some other emergency.
Unhealthy diets affect only the people who follow them, not their peers. Smoking is different because passive smoking does affect others - that's why there have been government interventions (higher taxation, public campaigns) to reduce smoking in many countries in the last decades.
Your argument is besides the point anyway: just because there are other factors in life that can make you sick, that does not mean that we should not fight COVID.
But if lives (number of lives) matter, and we're unwilling to ban the sale of cigarettes to save lives (which is, lets be honest, not a very impactful thing on normal life of normal people, especially if you do it the new zeland way, by a cutoff year), we basically let all those people die, and we don't care.
Considering we have vaccines available for some time now, and considering we've dealth with contageus diseases before covid, getting unvaccinated is basically a lifestyle choice, and non-believers can still stay at home and not do the stuff we've been restricting to people who actually want to do that.
> But if lives (number of lives) matter, and we're unwilling to ban the sale of cigarettes to save lives (which is, lets be honest, not a very impactful thing on normal life of normal people, especially if you do it the new zeland way, by a cutoff year), we basically let all those people die, and we don't care.
I don't know if you can compare smoking to covid, smoking related diseases take years and more likely decades to be deadly.
But in saying that, one way to look at this is via economics. When you are born, you have a potential life expectancy and a potential to earn society money (taxes). Smokers quite often die younger overall and not reaching their value to society, however this is general with many other diseases. Obviously reducing preventable forms of deaths such as those from smoking are to the benefit of society. Whenever you hear that smoking costs the "country" $X billions a year, that is not only the direct costs but also the indirect costs.
I believe in Australia the direct healthcare costs of treating smoking related illness was pegged at some number around 110 million a year, which is substantially different to the promoted cost of billions.
The difference with Covid is that it is an anomaly, perfectly healthy individuals have an increase chance of dying, as well as those who do have other health factors. This number maybe small but it has a large impact on the economy on society in general. Not only is a persons economic value reduced by the direct costs to society are increased.
An example of this, might be, you build a hospital knowing that X amount of smokers will die a year as well as other illnesses. You can calculate this, and work out what type of hospital you need to build. But what you cannot do very easily is calculate an additional 5 million people a year dying over an immediate time. It also takes considerable time to build hospitals, and years to train doctors, as such it is difficult to ramp up quickly to deal with anomalies. Then you must also consider the amount of productivity which is lost when a person is sick, this is also a factor which is calculated in regards to society, and then the publics spending, fear etc.
You can also look at the cost increases in the supply chain, which will affect the economy for years to come. Smokers for example are unlikely to influence the price of wood, but covid has.
So while we should take a pro-active stance against smoking (and when I was smoking I used to say the same), the pandemic is a real-time disaster which cannot be dealt with over 20 years like smoking. People will continue to die from smoking for decades even if you banned it today, but people will die today and potentially from related issues for decades from covid. The effects of covid are immediate, substantial and impactful to society not only right now but likely for some time.
Given the multiple 'X lives matter' references I think this response is probably more loaded than the question could ever have been.
The thing with COVID is that it's a contagious and deadly disease. The thing with smoking, fizzy drinks and junk food is that they're not contagious and deadly diseases, they're lifestyle choices.
I'm not an american, and I don't really care about your internal issues. Our phrase is "vsako zivljenje steje", which is literally translated to "every life counts", but "matters" makes more sense in this context.
I don’t consider leaving 10,000s of your own citizens stranded abroad for up to 18 months a good metric by any means. That’s suspending citizenship, and will have done irreparable damage to rights.
They of course also prevented people from leaving
This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there
"This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there"
The truly disgraceful aspect of all this is that Australia had a proper quarantine system in place and it abandoned it. When I was a kid, everyone knew of Australia's quarantine system and its past history as it was so public. Anyone who'd traveled on Sydney Harbour back then would have seen Sydney's quarantine station (I used to pass it every time I went to the beach): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station
The fact is Australia was unprepared for COVID because of government funding cutbacks and other political BS. The country has no one else to blame except itself.
BTW, this was the ideal site of a quarantine station, it was easily accessible (near all incoming shipping, etc.) and yet it was properly isolated geographically from the rest of Sydney (see aerial photo in wiki link), thus people who were quarantined there would not have been able to infect others as they have done in the idiotic 'hotel system' that now exists.
> Australians have been barred from visiting a dying parent in hospital, blocked from seeing a new grandchild and forbidden from having a wedding. Should they accept that a tennis star gets the leeway they were denied?
No, they should not have accepted being barred perhaps. When you are oppressed just insisting no other one is treated justfully (the way the court decided in accordance with the law) is not a morally right solution. Also expelling a person who has already got in the country physically and attended a courts makes no sense from the epidemiological point of view - he has already brought the virus in if he had it.
And by the way attending a wedding or a family meeting where people stand close, often in a small room, is quite different from just visiting a country or playing tennis (which doesn't require you to stand close to anybody, let alone in a room).
But what if most accepted those limitations, and while personally a disaster, found it on the other hand right to follow common sense and obey rules applying to everyone for the greater cause of society?
Rules applying to everyone the same is one of the basic foundations of a just society...
> Also expelling a person who has already got in the country physically and attended a courts makes no sense from the epidemiological point of view - he has already brought the virus
No matter what you argue beyond, the epidemiological aspect is now not really the point here anymore. He faked stuff for entry one or the other way (I think it is even more likely he wasn't positive at all, but that the second test was just created so he counts as recovered, which was the requirement to get in if not vaccinated..) - so its good to see consequences on that.
> obey rules applying to everyone for the greater cause of society?
Sounds like communism. No cause can be considered greater than freedom.
> No matter what you argue beyond, the epidemiological aspect is now not really the point here anymore. He faked stuff
He should be investigated for faking then and expelled/imprisoned/fined by a court if evidence proves him guilty.
> second test was just created so he counts as recovered, which was the requirement to get in if not vaccinated
Just test him antibodies/T-cells + PCR and you know if a person used to be sick and recovered. No necessity for speculation here. Presence of immunity (which one only get through overcoming the sickness or a vaccine) is an objective thing. Is it not?
I would also suggest introducing a law sentencing people who falsely claim they are immune or expose others to a risk of being infected any other way to serve a sentence aiding in a hospital taking care of infected people.
> Sounds like communism. No cause can be considered greater than freedom.
Are you a 10 year old American from the Cold War? What you're saying is so comprehensively stupid I'm not entirely certain you're a real human.
No, that's not what communism is. If you want to know what it really is, go read "Das Kapital" and the "Communist Manifesto", you might learn a thing or two.
As for freedom... it's subjective. Absolute freedom is obviously incompatible with living in a society with other humans. And as we've seen time and again, most people value many things over freedom. Just look at Singapore and Rwanda, people there are happy with the prosperity and stability even if they're really not free on a lot of levels.
I see, but it's hard not to see a pandemic as a legitimate emergency and "higher causes"-invoking situation. It's not just a leader inventing a paper foreign subversive enemy out to get us, it's actually a thing which isn't hard to see and comprehend for oneself. I don't think any country's experience under communism is in any way applicable to the current situation.
There can be legitimate higher causes and situations when such are painfully obvious like overcoming pandemics. Nevertheless politicians (let alone masses incompetent in relevant subjects) can never be trusted as actually pursuing such as their primary aim. Appealing to such to justify anything always is a huge red flag (pun intended).
Politicians apparently are driven by the game theory and will do/say anything they believe will help them maximize their own power and safety (elections already mentioned) rather than sustainable wellbeing of the people.
Masses are driven by even more chthonic energies like unconscious xenophobia and value the chance to unite by any attribute to attack anybody they can (especially those enjoying a benefit they don't or trying to achieve a benefit they enjoy) above everything and will use any excuse they are given.
Simply saying politicians have already made a too many of suspiciously inefficient (and logically obviously futile even before proven such) decisions to trust them competent and benevolent and the mob will believe and shout any nonsense you tell them as long as this justifies them carrying torches and pitchforks.
Imagine president Trump, seeing himself loosing the elections and actually facing a real prison sentence risk, would have said nuking China is going to end the pandemics and we need to do so to make the whole world great again. I would bet the number of people supporting him would be way far from zero, all over the world.
Yeahyeah, freedom over all, and everything natural is also good, right ? :D
Please also reflect on the rhetorics you bring up here :D This is black and white painting, there are a lot of levels between..
There's also the issue of the immigration department seemingly not properly scrutinizing the application, as well as Djokovic lying on the application forms.
But most likely this is all an intentionally concocted distraction from government's failings in the current outbreak.
So how did he win his first court challenge? Why aren't those institutions being scrutinized? Where's the proof he faked his documents and why isn't that alone cause for Australia's institutions to not have issued a visa?
Why did it take a last-minute act from a minister to revoke his visa?
Some of the proof that he faked his visa application is claiming he is vaccinated when he is not, and claiming he had not travelled in the week before boarding the plane when he had documented a trip to Spain while COVID-positive. The Spanish government is now investigating whether Novak Djokovic travelled to Spain illegally, so there’s more legal shenanigans waiting for him when he eventually gets home.
The reason none of this resulted in his visa being refused in the first place is that the Australian tennis folks are buddy-buddy with the Prime Minister’s folks, and the unofficial ministerial guidelines are that if there’s an event associated with government cronies then all stops are pulled.
"event associated with government cronies then all stops are pulled."
No doubt very true for the first round. On the second when things go belly-up, as here, they'll scatter like wildebeest being chased by a lion. The second time usually brings unwelcome exposure and much else.
No, this lot have learned that there are zero consequences for being openly lazy and corrupt. They broadcast their intent to pork barrel and people vote for them because of that.
Meta-thought: I have started to pay attention to just how often courts strike down executive decisions because they are unlawful, and strike down new laws because they are unconstitutional or in conflict with international agreements. People tend to blame activist judges, but most of the time the judges are just trying to interpret the laws as they are written.
There seems to be an interesting dynamic at work where societies ossify through accretion of laws. As more international agreements are signed and laws are put on the books, the web of constraints that new policies must adhere to grows more complicated, and the ability by the public to get a new executive decision or a new law stricken through the court system grows greater. When a great reset happens (a revolution) you tend to see a nimble government immediately after, but also often accompanied with widespread civil rights violations, and as the laws and deals and civil rights start accreting the pace of change slows down.
Looking at my own country for example (Belgium). Back in the 60's the government could just decide to build nuclear power plants, without consulting the public at all, because there was very little in the form of environmental legislation or international agreements to bind them. Nowadays we can't legally decide to keep the plants open past 2025, because the work necessary to keep them open can't start without changing the law, and changing the law cannot legally be done without an EU-wide consultation and environmental impact study process. Any attempts to do these things anyway would quickly get blocked by the courts.
I find this increasing level of legal ossification endlessly fascinating in a somewhat terrifying sort of way. It makes me wonder whether democracy inevitably leads to incapable frozen government that needs a non-democratic great reset to wipe away the accreted laws and unlock the government's ability to get things done.
Non-democracies don't exactly have a great track record of legal nimbleness and enlightened decision making either.
The root cause here is ideology, which can occur in both democracies and dictatorships. The two are orthogonal - democracies can both regulate and deregulate, as can dictatorships.
Politics aside, the entry requirements for Australia explicitly require full vaccination with a WHO approved vaccine or a valid medical exemption. Prior infection is explicitly not sufficient for an exemption.
Djokovic did not meet the entry requirements, he knew he did not meet the entry rquirents, but he boarded the plane anyway.
The earlier visa cancellation was overturned on procedural grounds only. This ministerial intervention is a bit heavy handed, but only produces the same outcome that would normally apply to anyone in Djokovic's situation.
He had followed all the rules apparently. He had been granted an exception reviewed by two independent panels as required by Australian authorities. Decision backed by the Victorian Dep. of Health. The process is blind so supposedly the authorities didn’t know it was Djokovic behind the application. He boarded the plane with the papers in order:
My point is that he had followed the stablished process to request an exemption and it was granted. He didn’t get special treatment because the application process is blind.
It was an exemption to State Covid-19 rules, not an exemption to enter the country. Him and his team are purposefully muddying the waters with this exemption in an attempt to bully the country into letting him in, even though he's violated their laws and is not following their regulations.
Correct thing to do at this point is really to exclude Australian Open from future glam slam. Just drop entire Australia from it. I get that they have the right to deny anyone in but they making this entire scene due PURELY as political brownie points. Sports should stay neutral. They (entiee Australia) should be punished for dragging sports into this. Better yet deny entire Australia from any world tennis events for 3 years. Now, imagine, every country using their political clout to score their brownie points. The Aussie is really angry at their leaders incompetent handling of pandemic...Djokovic is just a trigger point of their accumulated disatisfaction.
Right again, Australian politicians have fucked up their response to COVID on multiple occasions but so have other many countries—name one that hasn’t! And I include Serbia in that lot, it having only 50% of its citizens vaccinated; currently, it has one of the worst vaccination records in all Europe.
Leaving Australia aside for the moment, there are principles at stake here that are beyond Djokovic's case. Firstly, Djokovic brought these troubles upon himself:
1. He was fully aware of Australia’s tight COVID vaccination requirements and visa requirements long before he arrived in Australia—as his visit was a point of discussion in the world’s press weeks beforehand, yet he chose not to be vaccinated well ahead of the time of his visit. The question is why.
2. The fact that he had COVID previously is a lame excuse for thinking that he could disobey or ignore Australia’s immigration rules (no one really believes that, as he and his team would have known them to an absolute tee). It is very clear that he arrogantly and blatantly violated immigration requirements and it's widely accepted among many that he really doesn't have a valid excuse. His excuse of making a mistake simply doesn't stand up.
3. He lied about his travel status prior to traveling to Australia. To blatantly lie on any county's immigration form and one is playing with fire, especially so when the lie is easily found out (as here). Even idiots know that this is the quickest way of being refused entry to a country. Why Djokovic chose to lie and risk everything is open to question, however my opinion is that it was sheer arrogance and the fact that he is so used to getting his own way that he thought he could wing it or bullshit his way into the country.
4. Irrespective of Serbia’s position upon vaccination, Djokovic is a person of substantial means and he could have easily had himself vaccinated well ahead of time yet he deliberately chose not to. Moreover, if he is an anti-vaxxer or conscientious objector then he should have told the whole world ages ago but he chose not to. The same goes for any medical exemptions he may have had.
5. As a person on the world stage, he would have known that being unvaccinated would bring strong controversy for the very reason that he was setting a very bad example—a bad example that if followed by many—would lead to increased deaths from the pandemic. There is no doubt that among his huge followers and fan base there would be some, perhaps even many, who would follow his example and not be as lucky with COVID infection as he was. Therefore, many, many others view his stance as being selfish, self-centered and ill considerate of the lives of others. There is also the fact that Djokovic has never bothered or taken the time to explain his position. To many, this implies that he has something to hide. Moreover, it is fanciful to believe that both he and his team would have been unaware of this and the potential damage to his reputation because of his stance. Frankly, it's hard to understand why he has been so silent on the matter, perhaps he thought that the controversy would bring even more attention to himself.
6. Australia's bad treatment of Djokovic upon entry and the fact that those involved in detaining him did not afford him procedural fairness has essentially nothing to with the revocation of his visa by the Minister; they are separate issues except for the notoriety that they've brought.
7. Djokovic and his team must have been fully aware of the heightened tensions in Australia over COVID, as they've been world news for months. It is even more relevant that his destination was Melbourne, which has been the world's most locked-down city for all of the time that COVID has been active. It just isn't possible to believe that he was unaware of the political implications of this, which are that Melbournians (and many other Australians) ...
It's interesting that down-voters never seem to have the fortitude to explain themselves. That they have down-voted I take as a compliment, as it means that I have succeeded in getting my point across.
Explanation: pretty sure almost nobody read that wall of text, just downvoted and moved on. How long did it take you to write that? Downvoting takes one second and can be done while rolling ones eyes.
Sorry, we live in different worlds - correction, universes.
FYI, I expected flack from disagreeing diehards so I watched the voting with interest. The split in voting being almost even with the earliest ones being upvotes. I know diehards won't agree or believe what I am saying but at least I know that many others do so and that they have actually read the post despite whatever you may think.
Moreover, you've only criticized, what you have failed to do is provide a contrary opinion or debate the issues exactly as I have noted above. Nor it seems have you actually read the many other posts that agree with my opinion. QED!
But not all lives. The whole population does not need to get vaccinated. Not everyone's life is under threat. Not even close.
Omicron spreads regardless, as is clearly observable. Australia has very high vaccination rate, but the virus is everywhere. Yet, they're still worried about unvaccinated sentiment?
It's important for vulnerable and elderly people to get vaccinated because their lives are the ones that can be saved.
Novak's life is not under threat from the virus. He chose not to be vaccinated for himself. Only a fool would get vaccinated for reasons of "perception".
The WHO chief warned countries recently that "you can't boost your way out of the pandemic". The AstraZenic scientist said recently the focus for vaccination should shift to elderly and vulnerable, as it's not feasible to vaccinate the whole world every few months.
"Hey man, even though you don't need it, can you please get vaccinated to encourage others to get the jab?".... Novak said no. And now the government believes the opposite is true - that Novak will influence perception in a direction that differs to the government's policy. See, the Australian government operates on what looks good or bad. Actual substance and practicality is down the list.
Now he's labelled an anti-vaxxer icon, a trouble-maker, and then booted out of the country. All he wanted to do was play some tennis. He's an ambassador for sport, fitness, and has done some great work over the years. To see him treated like this is a disgrace.
Everything else you said is irrelevant. End of the day, Novak was treated like crap because a politician wanted to look "tough on borders". Even though Omicron is everywhere down here, spreading among the vaccinated, there's an irrational and popular response that the 5% of unvaccinated people are somehow driving the pandemic.
"The whole population does not need to get vaccinated. Not everyone's life is under threat. Not even close."
That's a sweeping statement, so where's your evidence - as most of the world disagrees with you - so too does the science.
Presumably, you also disagree with the health experts at the WHO? When WHO experts say that "you can't boost your way out of the pandemic" they are NOT saying "you don't need to get vaccinated." They are quite separate issues altogether.
"Novak's life is not under threat from the virus. He chose not to be vaccinated for himself. Only a fool would get vaccinated for reasons of "perception."
What gives you special insight to say that if he got vaccinated then it would be only for a 'perceived' advantage? I cannot see how you would know this - even Djokovic's Dr wouldn't know that without extensive tests. If such tests were done then he has never offered them as evidence or for public examination.
Whether your assertion is correct or not is immaterial. The real issue is that Djokovic is a leading world figure in sport so he should have lead by example but he failed to do so (for many decades, as long as we've had mass media or even longer, it's been customary and even expected of athelets to set a good example to their followers).
...And the example he should have set would have been to get vaccinated whether he needed to do so or not - as that's what celebrities do! After all, the very vast majority of the world's population accepts vaccination as a normal medical procedure - one from which everyone benefits.
As a celebrity, Djokovic failed to live up to the time-honored conventions expected of him. The fact that he deliberately bucked the system and disobeyed convention has to be one of the worst PR exercises in the history of sport for many decades and he's now paying a very heavy penalty for doing so. It's damn shame his advisors hadn't been more politically astute otherwise it's likely that it wouldn't have ended up so badly for him.
(Really I don't particularly care if Djokovic gets vaccinated or not, I'm simlpy just stating what has actually happened to him.)
"Everything else you said is irrelevant"
I'm only an unknown HN poster so what I say hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. The fact is that much bigger players with real influence think very similarly to me and to millions of others - and in the end that's all that really matterd. They have real teeth with real biting power which I don't. What's more they've shown that they are capable of exercising that power and that they've actually done so.
I've a sneaking suspicion that Djokovic was gambling that they wouldn't given his celebrity status, unfortunately for him it's a gamble he's lost.
Blaming me for what has happened won't change anything.
> That's a sweeping statement, so where's your evidence - as most of the world disagrees with you - so too does the science.
The sweeping statement is yours: that "everyone" needs the vaccine. You're trying to shift the burden of sweeping statements to the person who disagrees with your original sweeping assertion.
Nowhere does "science say" that everyone needs the vaccine. You're confusing policy decisions which turn into "rules are rules", which turn into "what the science says".
Are you forgetting that last September, the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization recommended against vaccinating children? If that wasn't "science" what was it? This is merely one example of science-based objection to the "need" to vaccinate everything that crawls or walks.
> "their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The committee underlined that the vast majority of children had mild or no symptoms. It also pointed out the very low risk of heart inflammation with mRNA vaccines, noting that the long-term effects of this were unknown."
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-committee-healthy-kids-ag...
Sounds like science and reason formed their opinion. But they were overruled by the higher-up policy makers and politicians.
> "And the example he should have set would have been to get vaccinated whether he needed to do so or not - as that's what celebrities do!"
Wow. "That's what celebrities do". It amazes me how easily people slip into a fabricated signalling world, where mandating "solidarity vaccination" and towing party lines is normal behaviour, even expected and mandated because "keeping people safe"!
Novak had Covid, recovered, and does not want the vaccine for himself as his symptoms were obviously mild, which is the norm for his health profile. That's his business.
If you aren't defending the right of anyone to make their own choice on that basis, it's sad. Omicron spreads regardless. The Australian government acknowledged he was not an actual risk, but they were worried about "anti-vax" sentiment from his presence in the country. The sad irony is Novak wanted to keep his vaccination status private. He would have been happy not to discuss it at all, but the media did not allow it, and a tennis villain was forged in the outrage fires.
When a clothes code is required in a club and you don't wear they don't let you enter , Djokovic knew the rules but lied and tried to go over them. But as he is famous you want us to let him in. I think that all the people that want to kiss Djokovic ass are free to do it but not everybody wants.
Dress code is nothing like a vaccine requirement. Two completely different things.
The government admitted the reason his visa was cancelled was because they're worried about public perception. In a country with already 95% fully vaxxed, they're worried about "anti-vaxxers" drawing inspiration from tennis players! It doesn't add up unless you allow for an embarrassingly irrational government.
His visa was cancelled because they found inconsistencies (lies). He outright lied filling the papers, any other person would have been kicked out without a doubt. He later blamed his assistants for it. In the same case you would be in jail but as is a famous person he gets an special treatment. He brought it on himself. He thought he could get away with it but it looks like it wasn't the right moment. The funny thing is all the people defending him like he's a freedom fighter when he's just a spoiled brat. and now let's see France and USA.
He wasn't given an exemption at all though? He was denied entry and then appealed. Are you thinking of the exemption he was given by the tennis tournament, to play? It would be understandable if that one doesn't work to pass the border.
The state of Victoria also granted him an exemption. I think it's funny that there can be miscommunication between the state and federal governments just like here in the U.S.
Medical panels established by Tennis Australia and the Victoria government granted Djokovic exemption from vaccination to play at the Australian Open on that basis. Djokovic’s lawyers argued that he had every reason to believe the same standard applied at the border.
The Serbian arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday evening local time, but faced trouble at the border, with Acting Sports Minister Jaala Pulford confirming that the state government was not supporting his visa application to compete in the Australian Open.
She tweeted: “The Federal Government has asked if we will support Novak Djokovic’s visa application to enter Australia.
“We will not be providing Novak Djokovic with individual visa application support to participate in the 2022 Australian Open Grand Slam.
“We’ve always been clear on two points: visa approvals are a matter for the Federal Government, and medical exemptions are a matter for doctors.”
This is a particularly mind-boggling piece of grandstanding, given that the Victoria government had literally approved an exemption for him before. To make my position clear, I'm not at all a fan of what Djokovic is trying to pull and I think the guy should go and get vaccinated already, but this is a hot mess of the Australian governments trying to attempt some kind of face-saving measure.
I'm not sure of the extent of the Victorian government's involvement in this debacle, but it is clear they had expressly gave him their assurance (multiple sources mention both Tennis Australia and the Victorian government gave him their approval, even if the visa was ultimately wrong) and were aware of the circumstances (would be surprising if they weren't attentive to the world's #1 tennis player coming to one of the world's most prestigious tennis tournaments).
I think from his side it's a weak argument to follow but maybe it makes sense in a common law context - whatever instance has given him a go-ahead, he's going to use that and say he had some kind of assurance. It's just not from the right department or level at all, but he can try. He needs a pseudo good faith argument for "I thought I could go", and that's what he's trying to do - that's his foot in the door, then the courts decide.
Not exactly true. Despite not being vaccinated, he was granted an exemption for having proven a recent COVID infection in December. The state government of Victoria and Tennis Austrailia, the organization behind the tournament, granted him the exemption. However, his team did not apply for one from the federal government and the federal government had not granted him one before arriving.
Edit: Just found out from another reply to one of my comments that he likely also falsified his PCR report :\",
Even disregarding that the exemption was issued by the tennis association to play in the tournament, not for entering the country… it was predicated on him being able to provide a valid medical reason, _and_ not lying on his entry documents. Neither of which he managed to do.
Judge Kelly noted that Djokovic had provided officials at Melbourne’s airport with a medical exemption given him by Tennis Australia, which is organising the tournament, and two medical panels.
“The point I’m somewhat agitated about is what more could this man have done?” Kelly asked Djokovic’s lawyer, Nick Wood.
Wood agreed with the judge that Djokovic could not have done more.
All this posturing about "rules are rules" seems to be an after-the-fact finger-pointing exercise and trying to get someone to own a decision that should not have been made in the first place.
Nope. That was a private comment made by the judge (who is obviously lacking in impartiality, since he made that comment very early on, before the two sides presented their cases). The decision to quash the original cancellation was due to agreement between Djokovic’s and the government’s legal teams, and the judge made no ruling of his own. See linked Twitter thread in the sibling comment.
I do not understand the "what more could this man have done?" line.
Trying very hard to meet the rules for entering a country, but not actually being able to meet them, does not normally give people the right to enter that country.
I think the sticking point here was that he was given approval by the Victorian government which failed to communicate with the federal government. Arguably you can frame it as his fault that he did not get an assurance from the federal government, but a reasonable person would not expect the state government to have failed to secure the required assurances from the federal government.
> No agreement, and no decision, was made on whether the ABF officer could have cancelled Djokovic’s visa under s 116 in a watertight way. All that was found was that the process he followed was deficient enough that the original cancellation couldn’t stand.
I had a suspicion that the Tennis Australia and Victoria State Government did not want to take on the publicity battle and kicked the ball down to the Federal government. The person issuing the Visa at the Fed level either lapsed in reviewing or also decided to kick the ball down the road, which was to the Border Force. The Border Force had no choice but to act on it but messed up on the procedure. It's all bureaucratic or am I way off in thinking?
From what I heard in the news here in France, he should be fine for playing in France where so far sportsmen don't have to be vaccined, and it is not required either for a Visa.
I entered France from Canada a month ago. They didn't check any documents other than my passport (pretty sure they didn't check it either, just flipped to an empty page and stamped it). Vaccination wasn't required. Negative PCR test wasn't required. The only requirement was a declaration that I didn't knowingly have COVID or any symptoms (which they never checked).
That varies depending on where you're coming from and where have you been recently (and it changes based on how the situation evolves per country). I'm triple vaccinated and i still need a negative PCR to return to France from abroad.
It's entirely possible a negative PCR will be required for him.
Edit: i checked, and Serbia is in the "orange" zone for France, for which a negative PCR is required regardless of vaccination status:
Thanks for the clarification. At the very least, the requirement for Djokovic to quarantine might mess with the timing. He might not be able to train right after arriving.
Present UK regs you can get out on day 5 if you do 'test to release.' Before that you are supposed to isolate at home. Though if he rented a home with a tennis court...
If he submits visa documents that are incomplete or incorrect, yes. He may also face issues where he violated quarantines after he knew he was positive. Maybe not the interview on the 17th but anything after.
I don't care if he is vaccinated or not, that is his choice but I have a huge problem with the elites thinking the rules don't apply to them.
There are several high profile bankers here in Switzerland one of which was specifically praised to change the toxic culture at Credit Suisse. Yet he violated quarantine multiple times like the rules don't apply to him because it's inconvenient. How is it not inconvenient for someone making barely nothing and can't work from home.
This whole pandemic has shown people that the elites play by other rules. It is time to end this.
Saying "public interest" without a referendum or any representation from the public, is such an abuse of power. Go settle your revenge fantasies in your personal time.
You elect a person with all his baggage. You can't selectively (dis)agree with single topics outside a referrendum. That or having another official stand up and wave his finger.
In the end, asking for and monitoring public opinion is an important democratic reality check.
It would be interesting to see if he ultimately accepts 'Novax' Djokovic as a rigidly defined part of his identity. The more this drags on publicly, the less face-saving opportunities for him to accept vaccination.
As someone that speaks Serbian, him and his family offer an endless source of entertainment. Like for example his father comparing the situation to Jesus' crucifixion, or Novak's regular pilgrimage to Bosnian "pyramid" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_pyramid_claims) for its magical healing power.
I'm a Serbian who used to be a fan of Djokovic in spite of the fact that I'm not big into tennis, but after losing a family member to Covid seeing him deciding to die on the anti-vax hill broke my heart and I don't want anything to do with him.
By your logic... I know personaly two people dead two weeks after vax and one paralyzed on half body week after vax. Schould I consider Djokovic as hero?
Heart-failure (healthy, 69y man, two weeks after second dose), myocarditis (79y woman, month after 1st dose, I'dont know what was her health condition exactly), half body paralysis (55y, man, week after fisrt dose).
The half paralysis sounds like Guillain Barre syndrome which can happen after the flu vaccine, after the COVID vaccine or after gastroenteritis.
It can be temporary or permanent or kill you.
i
I know also 2 kids with terrible health condition after hexavaccine. And also friend of my parents that get dermatomyositis after hepatitis vaccine (back in 80's). His name was Julius Varga from Czechoslovakia (you can google more info, there is documentary about him with his mother: https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/1185258379-cesty-viry/31...
I’m Serbian as well and I haven’t heard him say any anti-vaxx statement. It’s more of a result of witch-hunt than him actually being anti-vaxx.
Another thing is, why he needs a vaccine? He had Covid, giving him long lasting immunity. Vaccines stop the spread at the same level or even less than Covid immunity, so what’s the point? Just politics, there’s absolutely no reason for someone like him to risk myocarditis, he is immune enough.
What makes this different than a vaccinated person contracting the virus and having mild/no symptoms?
You took a vaccine that has not been updated since it was created to target the Alpha variant. He caught a previous variant, and both of you are not protected from contracting omicron. However, both of you are at far lower risk of severe illness due to the previous exposure your immune systems have to the virus. The only difference is the payload. He was exposed to an entire virus, and therefore his antibodies/t-cells are less targeted and broader. You were exposed only to the spike protein which coats the virus, and therefore have a highly targeted immune response that is less broad. So what?
The results are what matter. This is just religious posturing. You want everyone to take the same sacrament as you, regardless of outcomes.
There are multiple studies with massive cohorts (the Israeli study has 2.5 MILLION people in it) that show that this virus is TYPICAL in the sense that when someone catches it, then clears it, the immune system is behind this. Previously infected people were proven in this study to have superior immunity to delta than fully vaccinated people, and the margins were not small.
But sure, ignore that and focus on your sample size of 1 to confirm your priors.
Looks like people are so overcompensating antivaxxers that logic went out the window. Everyone is so polarized that I’m losing faith in returning to normal life. And honestly, both sides are appearing to be equally bad, equally engulfed in their own black and white world.
Most people are pretty calm about it. It's just there's very noisy fringe elements who are dramatically overrepresented online.
It blows my mind how many otherwise smart people think that online comments are remotely representative of the real world. How many times have you seen a prominent online personality see racist/misogynistic comments from a handful of trolls and then claim that "racists are everywhere!"
It's the same with this.
Frankly, the biggest source of derangement is fear that is utterly detached from reality. Gallup's polling has revealed that 40% of self-identified Democrats think that 50% of people who catch COVID require hospitalization. The rest were slightly less wrong, but still far, far higher than the reality. The actual number is between 1-5%. It's the mirror image of immediately after 9/11, when self-identified Republicans dramatically overestimated the terrorism threat.
Djokovic had Covid in June (that's still accepted, right?). He is in the highest risk group for myocarditis from the vaccination. Omicron is dominant. Vaccine efficacy against Omicron is low. What is the scientific basis for mandating that he must be vaccinated in order to participate?
If it's true the that he lied on the form and was going around doing press stuff while positive with COVID then they're seeming pretty reasonable. You or I would get the book thrown at us in this situation.
> No, the truth is that nobody would care about you or me doing this stuff.
Rules that are applied hit and miss is not the same as no rules. If the arrest rate for burglaries is 20%, does that mean that burglaries should be not a crime? Of course not.
The truth is that nobody would care about you or me being arrested for doing this stuff, or less, and languishing in border detention for months or years.
Don't you hate it when you're an evil big-brother dictator giving a frenzied political rally, with your menacing visage projected onto a gigantic monochromatic screen towering above the audience, in a dystopian, industrial setting in blue and grayish tones, with a line of people of ambiguous gender marching in unison through a long tunnel monitored by a string of television screens, and a full-color nameless running female competitive track and field athlete wearing an athletic "uniform" with red athletic shorts, running shoes, a white tank top with a cubist picture of Apple's Macintosh computer, a white sweat band on her left wrist, and a red one on her right, runs in carrying a large brass-headed sledgehammer, striding past rows of marching minions evoking the opening scenes of Metropolis, while you continue to speak inspiringly to your raptured audience about the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives, as your four police officers, presumably agents of the Thought Police, wearing black uniforms, protected by riot gear, helmets with visors covering their faces, and armed with large night sticks, chase her towards the large screen with the glaring image of your Big Brother-like facade as you give your speech, and then close to the screen, she hurls her hammer towards it, right at the moment you announce, “we shall prevail!”, gob-smacking you right in the nose, and in a flurry of light and smoke, the screen with your face is destroyed, leaving the audience in shock?
They are afraid that Australian people who made the effort of being locked down and getting vaccinated would be unhappy that some Tennis star would not be required to do the same effort. That's perfectly understandable IMO.
What are those unhappy people going to do? Write a few angry comments in twitter and get their accounts banned? The true reason must be something else.
As mentioned elsewhere we have an impending federal election. This is almost certainly point scoring given how the vast, vast majority of people hate Djokovic and his actions right now.
What is Australia officially afraid of? That the person driving over the speed limit might crash? When all Australians are covered by compulsory third party insurance?
One the one hand: Australia is the wrong country entirely to try this shtick on. The "fair play" ethos is strong, the "tall poppy syndrome" (1) is evidence of Australian reflexively reacting angrily to the "don't you know who I am?" routine, to someone asking for the rules for normal people to be set aside for the rich and famous.
He might have gotten away with it, but once it was in the papers and the public eye was on him, game over.
Australia also takes border biosecurity _very_ seriously, even before the pandemic. Remember Johnny Depp and his dogs having to leave when they were smuggled in via private jet. (2) Remember the TV show (3)
I feel little sympathy for Mr Djokovic trying to bend the rules in favour (for reasons that appear frivolous: it would be trivial for him to actually just get vaccinated) and being found out. What was he thinking?
On the other hand: it does seem like various branches of the Australian government are infighting and contradicting each other. If Mr Djokovic was not good to arrive, could they not have got their act together, and told him so clearly, before he set off? It's a media-legal circus now.
> it does seem like various branches of the Australian government are infighting and contradicting each other. If Mr Djokovic was not good to arrive, could they not have got their act together, and told him so clearly, before he set off?
It’s not an appearance, scotty from marketing wanted the states to bear the brunt of the issue, so Djokovic was “good to arrive” in Australia, which didn’t mean he was good to arrive in Vic, or that everything was ship-shape with him playing.
> it would be trivial for him to actually just get vaccinated
That's not even required. He could have quarantine for 14 days too, but I imagine that would have been way too inconvenient for him. There didn't seem to be any reason why he couldn't of come earlier.
I think Amber Heard smuggled the dogs and not Johnny Depp. My understanding was that he was already in the country filming a movie. I think she is even being investigated about to again in Australia?
“Judges are not stupid and are fully aware of what a Friday, 5:55pm, exercise of a Minister's power means ... The Government's delay - given everything about Djokovic's case was known or knowable this time last week - will hurt its case for urgent removal & help Djokovic's claim.”
The idea that a diplomatic passport can save this guy is kind of delusional. In the event that being issued one while in Australia would actually change his status, the Australian government can expel foreign diplomats at will. It's not like Serbia has some strategic importance to them.
Djokovic was never eligible to enter Australia. He lied about having a medical excuse to not be vaccinated. He used 'exemptions' from organisations other than the immigration authorities to muddy the waters. He was trying to blag it all along and got caught.
He got lucky with a border guard making a mistake which ultimately allowed him entry, but doing anything but cancelling his visa would have been contrary to normal treatment under the law.
Now he'll get an automatic 3 year ban, if not more due to the other laws he broke when he entered Australia.
The Australian authorities broke the law and mistreated him throughout the process. The court made its decision. I see the Minister using his power this way as systemic corruption that undermines the rule of law. As an Australian, I am not surprised by this; the legal system has been slowly eroded into a dystopian nightmare over the last 20 years and this is just another small step.
One 'unvaxxed' entry with natural immunity is nothing as a risk to public health compared to the systemic consequences of this.
For comparison, consider convicting a murderer over illegally obtained evidence. In a properly functioning liberal democracy the murderer should go free if the police act improperly, to protect the overall system.
The Victorian government doesn't have the power to, they have no immigration powers, and the relevant Federal minister had actually written to Tennis Australia twice advising them that there was no basis for him to enter based on previously having caught covid.
You've been wrong about Omicron the entire time. You were proclaiming doom weeks ago, and crapping all over many of us pointing at the South African data. We were proven correct, you were proven wrong. No sense of humility about this on your part. Just because some of us deal with fear better than others doesn't make us fools and you empathetic by comparison.
"Many" is not remotely specific. It's hand-waving. "Many" people who drive cars die in car accidents. It's hand-wavy and vague, and is often an indication of cognitive dissonance to argue this way. The confidence with which these assertions are being made is unearned and unjustified.
As an Australian I am ashamed of our government's actions. Purely political theater to appease their domestic base. But it has backfired royally on them. I hope the polls reflect this.
To give some other perspective, here's the text from Djokovic's statement on his Instagram page:
> STATEMENT BY NOVAK DJOKOVIC 12 January 2022
I want to address the continuing misinformation about my activities and attendance at events in December in the lead up to my positive PCR COVID test result.
This is misinformation which needs to be corrected, particularly in the interest of alleviating broader concern in the community about my presence in Australia, and to address matters which are very hurtful and concerning to my family.
I want to emphasise that I have tried very hard to ensure the safety of everyone and my compliance with testing obligations.
I attended a basketball game in Belgrade on 14 December after which it was reported that a number of people tested positive with COVID 19. Despite having no COVID symptoms, I took a rapid antigen test on 16 December which was negative, and out of an abundance of caution, also took an official and approved PCR test on that same day.
The next day I attended a tennis event in Belgrade to present awards to children and took a rapid antigen test before going to the event, and it was negative.
I was asymptomatic and felt good, and I had not received the notification of a positive PCR test result until after that event.
The next day, on 18 December I was at my tennis centre in Belgrade to fulfil a long-standing commitment for a L’Equipe interview and photoshoot. I cancelled all other events except for the L’Equipe interview.
I felt obliged to go ahead and conduct the L’Equipe interview as I didn’t want to let the journalist down, but did ensure I socially distanced and wore a mask except when my photograph was being taken.
While I went home after the interview to isolate for the required period, on reflection, this was an error of judgement and I accept that I should have rescheduled this commitment.
On the issue of my travel declaration, this was submitted by my support team on my behalf as I told immigration officials on my arrival - and my agent sincerely apologises for the administrative mistake in ticking the incorrect box about my previous travel before coming to Australia. This was a human error and certainly not deliberate. We are living in challenging times in a global pandemic and sometimes these mistakes can occur. Today, my team has provided additional information to the Australian Government to clarify this matter.
While I felt it was important to address and clarify misinformation I will not be making any further comment out of utmost respect for the Australian Government and their authorities and the current process.
It is always an honour and a privilege to play in the Australian Open. The Australian Open is much-loved by players, fans and the community, not just in Victoria and in Australia, but around the globe, and I just want to have the opportunity to compete against the best players in the world and perform before one of the best crowds in the world.[1]
He should explain what he was thinking in early December, before he tested positive for COVID. Presumably he was not actually expecting to play in the Australian Open then, having no grounds for any kind of exemption? Did he actually say that at any time to anyone?
What does this have to do with vaccine mandates? Vaccines do NOT prevent you from getting it or spreading the disease.
Weird how these heavily vaccinated countries are still getting slammed by covid. And what do you really think it must be those stubborn unvaccinated people?
We as society would be better off if we pretended it was just like the common cold, and guess what, you might get sick and die, but most likely you’ll have some cold symptoms.
If someone has a positive covid test but no symptoms, I’d rather have them over to my house than the person with a negative covid test and mild cold symptoms.
> Vaccines do NOT prevent you from getting it or spreading the disease.
Do not think of this is binary "protect or does not" that is never the case. There are no absolutes. it's not ones and zeros, it's probabilities.
Vaccines _greatly reduce_ the chance of you getting it or spreading it, or being hospitalised with it. That is undeniable, do not obfuscate it with technically-true but actually-misleading statements.
This distraction has worked marvellously. No time to cover the lack of food and tests in the supermarkets or any strategy other than sacrificing the weak for the sake of 'the economy'.
Regarding immigration rules - it seems that if you're an au pair for the right family, incorrect entry forms can be fixed with a direct call to the minister.
We’re going to have a brave new world soon, where the cities will build walls and not let anyone in and will live in their little prison apartments, getting everything shipped to them, and those outside will just be living their lives, hanging out with friends, having babies, and then they will die.
You literally asked "Is omnicron worse than a common cold?" That is the question I responded to.
Now you're shifting to a different point, which is that you think that restrictions are too severe. That a perfectly valid argument to make, but I'm not going to engage with it here.
I take issue with people deliberately peddling misinformation about COVID severity, because they think it helps their argument around the response. It is intellectually dishonest, and has caused actual harm.
Yes, omicron is much worse than a common cold or the flu. Completely unvaccinated persons are still in quite a danger for life through it.
The virus is known not only to cause death, but to cause organ damages even with lighter case and having likely long term effects.
The whole affair isn't because he is likely a major risk to the population of Australia - that can be easily ruled out by a test, but about failing to comply with the regulations of entry, especially if there was fraud involved with his documentation.
And no one understands why he didn't get vaccinated in time. Not only would that be of personal health benefit, it would make working in his profession much easier.
This said - that there are some risks, one must remember that these risks exists for flu as well. There is definitely risks of long term organ damage, death, or long term symptoms from flu. So when someone asks "is this worse than the flu?", one shouldn't immediate think the question is "is this something that isn't dangerous and everyone recovers without long term damage from?".
Flu can be nasty. So can several other respiratory diseases like RS. If covid fatality rate is cut to 1/10 (which optimistic reports are indicating) then one can absolutely start comparing it to the flu. But the thing is: the flu simply doesn't infect such a large part of a population at once. It's not a threat to the function of society. That's what we should be afraid of now.
If this was a flu pandemic with a virus that had this infectivity, I think the situation and response around the world would be exactly the same.
The jury is still out there, but it is possible that omicron turns out to be in about the same league as some of the more dangerous flu strains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic says the Asian flu and the Hong Kong flu epidemics killed 100,000 in the USA, at times where the population of the USA was below 200 million)
We bring up how deadly covid is, and how vaccinations help reduce symptoms, but no one is pointing out the most insane thing of the blatant discrimination against unvaccinated people to be denied entry to a place without proof of vaccination, even though, vaccinated people are still spreading the disease.
I’m sorry but supporting this crap is insanity. You literally are taking a group of people and making them the dirty untouchables, saying “show me your papers” like the discriminative parties of the past. The weird thing is those who told blacks to get to the back of the bus or called the police on their neighbor for hiding a Jew in their basement also were as convinced as all these people who defend vaccine mandates.
Damn right it is, and they ought to be discriminated against for the safety of others—and that includes me!
I don't want any unvaccinated person near me because I am more likely to die as a consequence and I expect the Government to keep them away from me at all costs—for it is the constitutional duty of government to protect me as a citizen from threat and danger.
Clearly, you do not realize that this is how our governance works (or is supposed to work). (It seems that you never did civics or history at school).
To enlighten you, democratic government works on the principle of a covenant that exists between the citizenry and government, which boils down to this: 'Citizens, do the right thing and obey the laws and in return we, the government, will protect you from harm and danger'.
Government protects its citizens against external enemies with an army, it protects them against internal threats with a police force, and when an unseen pandemic virus threatens, it then takes many other measures to protect us citizens including introduction of special rules, quarantining and isolating those with disease etc.
It has always been thus for centuries across many counties. How many instances and examples would you like? Do an internet search. Just because these facts are new to you and that you have never previously experienced a pandemic in your lifetime then it doesn't mean that such action by governments is not normal practice. Well, I can assure that it fucking-well is normal practice and that you need to get used to the fact or alternatively withdraw from society altogether.
If you still do not follow then let me give you an in-your-face example that you will understand: if someone decides to walk down the main street of a city brandishing and firing an AK47 at random then citizens expect the police to arrest and demobilize him immediately (if he's unlucky then he'll likely be shot dead in the process).
Well, the situation with a person loose in society who is carrying a lethal virus that can kill those who catch it only differs by fact that the person may not know that they are carrying said virus—hence general rules for everyone apply—isolation, masks, etc., etc. Now if that person is knowingly carrying the virus and then deliberately defies authority then he/she is no different to the person who is carrying the AK47 and he/she needs to be arrested and isolated immediately for the very reason that he/she is a danger to everybody that he/she comes in contact with! QED!
You many think this is insanity but very thankfully, most people and most governments around the world disagree with your view. We're also very thankful for that fact that those who hold views such as yours are in the minority.
For your information, those who are vaccinated are far less likely to spread the virus in anywhere near the same quantities. It is not a perfect situation but it's a damned side better scenario for an uninfected person to come in contact with a vaccinated person with the virus than one who has the virus and is not vaccinated. Whatever you may think, there is absolutely no argument against this. That's why everyone is still subject to virus hygiene rules. And in case if you've forgotten, hygiene rules have existed across society long before the arrival of COVID; these new rules are only an extension thereof.
Perhaps you would like to explain why you think the way you do.
"You sir would’ve thought the Germans right to get rid of those dirty Jews, and you would’ve justified it much the same way you justify yourself now"
I have never had reason to flag anyone before but that statement has to be a quintessential example for why one would do so, in fact I don't think I've ever seen another statement on HN that would justify it more than this.
No, I won't flag this message because I want your post to remain there for others to see how absolutely low you have stooped. You are not only being offensive in the extreme but you are accusing me of views that I have never expressed on HN or anywhere else for that matter.
There is no way that you could ever possibly know what my views on that matter are; therefore, you are being provocative in the extreme. Nevertheless, I am still not going to bite. All I will add is that I do not hold those views and I never have. They are the antithesis of everything that I stand for.
I have stated facts about our governance (and I once studied the subject). If you want to shoot the messenger instead of accepting the facts then that is your prerogative. However, be warned, it will get you nowhere and is likely to bring you a negative reputation that you may later come to regret.
I’m not necessarily meaning you personally but you in the sense of those who think this way
> “Damn right it is, and they ought to be discriminated against for the safety of others—and that includes me!
I don't want any unvaccinated person near me because I am more likely to die as a consequence and I expect the Government to keep them away from me at all costs—for it is the constitutional duty of government to protect me as a citizen from threat and danger.”
I know governments don’t make decisions based on what is good, they make them on safety and what will keep them in office.
But now imagine I said statistically black men are more likely to be incarcerated, but the story was therefore I should keep those damn criminals away from me.
I will maybe take back my last harsh statement if you answer me this. You know someone at your work who is unvaccinated yet seems perfectly healthy, and yet he pretends he is vaccinated because his company requires it. Do you report him?
"But now imagine I said statistically black men are more likely to be incarcerated, but the story was therefore I should keep those damn criminals away from me."
1. I would correct the accuracy of your statement: it is an unmitigated disgrace that per capita black men are still more likely to be incarcerated than are whites. (And this is in fact the case.)
It's now 157 years since the Civil War - a war in which more Americans were killed than in all other wars combined - which was fought to end slavery, yet black men are still not really 'free' when they are still discriminated in this way. Institutional racism and many other factors are at work here, and it is the failings of American white society as well as biased and unfair policing and justice systems that allow this inequity to still happen.
2. Your analogy is flawed for this reason: viruses will attack and possibility kill me for no other reason than I exist and that I am sufficiently nearby for them to do so. On the other hand black men don't do that (I feel quite safe in their company and have always done so - I could never say that about lethal viruses).
3. Whether you take back your statement not is immaterial, I'll answer your question anyway.
I can truthfully say that I do not know anyone, friends, work colleagues, etc. with whom I associate and who is not fully vaccinated (they've all been vaccinated and there's been no drama about it).
However, if I were in the hypothetical situation that you've outlined then I would tell that person to immediately get vaccinated stating that he/she is endangering my health along with everyone else that we commonly associate with. I would then state and reiterate for emphasis that if he/she did not do so forthwith then I would report him/her. (I do not believe in being a tittle-tattle unless the person is acting in an extreme or life threatening way and even then I'd always warn him/her first.)
> I don't want any unvaccinated person near me because I am more likely to die as a consequence and I expect the Government to keep them away from me at all costs—for it is the constitutional duty of government to protect me as a citizen from threat and danger.
The vaccines are not reasonably effective against transmission, especially for the current dominant strain, but also the previous ones. Vaccinated people are still infecting people that were not able to be vaccinated and other vaccinated people as well - that's actually happening at the Australian Open right now. The absolute risk reduction of the vaccines is below 3%. [0]
The guilt-tripping is not based on facts or science, but on fear, the flawed idea that you could eliminate risk from life, as well as lack of respect for other people's freedoms.
> It has always been thus for centuries across many counties. How many instances and examples would you like? Do an internet search. Just because these facts are new to you and that you have never previously experienced a pandemic in your lifetime then it doesn't mean that such action by governments is not normal practice. Well, I can assure that it fucking-well is normal practice and that you need to get used to the fact or alternatively withdraw from society altogether.
Witch-hunts used to be common too, but that does not mean that we should bring them back.
"The vaccines are not reasonably effective against transmission, especially for the current dominant strain, but also the previous ones. Vaccinated people are still infecting people..."
Perhaps so, but those who are vaccinated shed less viral load, ipso facto it's less likely that another person would be infected. Same goes for masks: viral load is attenuated when someone with COVID breathes out, if an uninfected person nearby also has a mask then there's further viral load attenuation when he/she breathes in. Morever the attenuation is not just additive but rather it's multiplicative - and that's the big deal, it's why everyone should wear masks. It's the reason why they're often mandated for everyone.
Even if vaccines are minimally effective in stopping the spread of the virus, if you then factor in masks then up goes the attenuation again (check the figures from recent research, there are quite a few papers around by now - and they'll all be saying essentially the same thing).
If vaccinated people are infecting others then one needs to ask why. First, I'd suggest that almost none of the general public are wearing the effective N95/P2 masks (they are certified and type approved by regulation). Instead, most are wearing surgical masks which are nigh on useless for COVID, especially so when huge numbers of people wear them down around their chin - their mouths may be covered but the masks are essentially useless when their noses are exposed (one has to wonder what's wrong with these idiots, either they've room-temperature IQs or a death wish).
Remember, surgical masks have no airtight seal as do N95/P2s, their original purpose was to catch spit and droplets that fall onto patients when a surgeon is talking and they work for that purpose.
Frankly, the fact that governments have failed to give proper instruction/training to their citizens about proper mask usage and hygiene (by TV ads etc.) has been an unmitigated fucking disaster. If proper, effective masking had been employed then likely 30% of the 5.4 million who've already died to date would still be alive now. (I accept that early on there was a mask shortage, this was a significant problem but there are any number of proper certified masks now available.)
Why do I care that others aren't wearing their masks properly? For the same reasons I mentioned earlier, which is when they fail to wear them in the correct and effective way then they also degrade my protection to unacceptable levels.
"The absolute risk reduction of the vaccines is below 3%. [0] The guilt-tripping is not based on facts or science, but on fear, the flawed idea that you could eliminate risk from life, as well as lack of respect for other people's freedoms."
Well, I'd suggest you're wrong with that 3% - damn lies and statistics taken out of context. Look at these realworld figures. Yes, there is breakthrough with vaccines but it's a no-brainer to be both fully vaccinated with booster and for those around you to be of the same status. With proper mask protection as well then one has a much better chance of either not catching the virus or only getting mild symptoms.
Why are people like you so damn negative about this and so deliberately intent in disrupting society when it's in such a state of stress? Why are so many of you so intent in trying to undermine and sabotage the rest of us when we&...
> Well, I'd suggest you're wrong with that 3% - damn lies and statistics taken out of context. Look at these realworld figures. Yes, there is breakthrough with vaccines but it's a no-brainer to be both fully vaccinated with booster and for those around you to be of the same status. With proper mask protection as well one has a much better chance of either not catching the virus or only getting mild symptoms.
That was a paper from the Lancet.. Have you seen the hospitalization rate by vaccination status from Denmark? That's real world data for you. Similar pictures from Scotland. Vaccine mandates are dead, because there is no scientific basis for them.
If you cannot tolerate the remaining risk, then your best option is to stay at home. You cannot ask society to remove every ever so small risk from life for you. Besides of the fact that all the vaccines will not do that for you. You need to do your own part. Did you get your vitamin D level checked? How is your BMI, could you lose some weight maybe? Do you need to take insulin? If so, please get your levels checked. Did you get enough fresh air today?
My post was already too long. If I had then tried to quantify what I said by examining instances of the effect of COVID and various of vaccines on the virus over range of different counties then it would have been too long to post. My response, therefore, is just a summary of what I have observed. I’d add that I’m a professional person—although not a medico—so I’m used to reading scientific papers and journals and I reckon since the advent of COVID I’ve almost doubled my reading. I must have read papers on almost every aspect of the disease and that includes some that are of a highly technical nature which have challenged my comprehension thereof. Simply, I’ve been covering COVID in considerable detail and I believe I'm reasonably well informed.
“That was a paper from the Lancet.”
When I said ”damn lies and statistics taken out of context.” I meant it. In fact, here The Lancet article is almost the quintessential example of what I was talking about: someone cites a very reputable source to prove a point and then expects everyone to take its findings as gospel, or alternatively readers are bamboozled with science and then don't question any further—that being the deliberate intention. I've known The Lancet for years and have read articles from it in the past, and I'm well aware that it's an authoritative source of information. Moreover, I have no doubt that when the journal published the article the information therein was both authoritative and up to date—the trouble is that it was published on April 20, 2021—some nine months ago!
The information the article contains is now nigh on useless—it's nothing other than ancient history, thus it can no longer be relied upon as an accurate and authoritative source of information because the COVID situation has so vastly changed from the time of its publication. For starters, we've developed better methods of treating the disease, we’ve had time to evaluate booster shots and probably the most important factor of all, which is that we’ve seen the subsequent emergence of the most contagious strains—Delta and Omicron—and they have altered everything.
I’m far from the smartest person around but I’m certainly smart enough not to be conned this easily. When presented with a link like that or when reading scientific papers the first thing I check is the paper's submission date, I then check its publication date. Frankly, trying to trick both other HN readers and me in such an underhanded way I reckon is a pretty low act—and it's unbecoming of the usually high standard of HN posts.
However, what such behavior demonstrates is that in this highly polarized climate over COVID, people have very few qualms about twisting and distorting the truth: as the saying goes ‘if the facts don't agree with one's own worldview then alter them to suit’. Unfortunately, it's this widespread propensity to cheat and be deliberately loose with the facts that’s been one of the most significant and substantial reasons for why our response to the COVID pandemic has been—and still is—in so much of a schemozzle.
Re: hospitalization rate by vaccination status in Denmark, I have now read various docs and I’ve nothing further to add other than Denmark’s response to COVID, like almost every other country or different location across the globe, has had a very different response to the disease when compared to many other places. And that’s happened for any number of reasons, as its time of first lockdown, vaccinations rates, etc., etc., will be very different to other locations.
With respect to tolerating the risk, yes I do spend more time at home than previously. This makes sense for two reasons, the first is that it just makes sense to do so if it’s at all possible, and because of COVID I am able to do just that. The second reason is that I have yet to receive my booster (third) shot, so it’s prudent to be more careful than normal. Where I am I’...
My earlier post was already too long. If I had then tried to quantify what I said by examining instances of the effect of COVID and various of vaccines on the virus over range of different counties then it would have been too long to post. My response, therefore, is just a summary of what I have observed. I’d add that I’m a professional—although not a medico—so I’m used to reading scientific papers and journals and I reckon since the advent of COVID I’ve almost doubled my reading. I've read papers on almost every aspect of the disease and that includes some that are of a highly technical nature which have challenged my comprehension thereof. Simply, I’ve been covering COVID in considerable detail and I believe I'm reasonably well informed.
“That was a paper from the Lancet.”
When I said ”damn lies and statistics taken out of context.” I meant it. In fact, The Lancet article is almost the quintessential example of what I was talking about: someone cites a very reputable source to prove a point and then expects everyone to take its findings as gospel, or readers are bamboozled with the science and then don't question any further—these outcomes being the original objective. I've known The Lancet for years and have read articles from it in the past, and I'm well aware that it's an authoritative source of information. Moreover, I have no doubt that when The Lancet published the article the information therein was both authoritative and up to date—the trouble is that it was published on April 20, 2021—some nine months ago! (Here, your objective may not have been to deliberately mislead but one sees so many instances of this tactic that it's hard not to believe that most of them are nothing other then a deliberate ploy to deceive.)
The information the article contains is now nigh on useless—it's nothing other than ancient history, thus it can no longer be relied upon for fact and authoritative information, as the COVID situation has changed vastly from the time of its publication. For starters, we've developed better methods of treating the disease, we’ve had time to evaluate booster shots—and probably the most important factor of all, which is that we’ve seen the subsequent emergence of COVID's most contagious strains to date—Delta and Omicron—and they have altered everything.
I’m far from the smartest person around but I’m certainly smart enough not to be conned or mislead this easily whether deliberately or otherwise. When presented with a link like that or when reading scientific papers the first thing I check is the paper's submission date, I then check the publication date.
However, what this demonstrates is that in this highly polarized climate over COVID, people have very few qualms about twisting or distorting the truth—or exaggerating for the point of emphasis: as the saying goes ‘if the facts don't agree with one's own worldview then alter them to suit’. Unfortunately, it's this widespread propensity to not to bother checking the accuracy of source material, or to cheat and be loose with the facts that’s been one of the most significant and substantial reasons for why our response to the COVID pandemic has been—and still is—in so much of a schemozzle.
Re: hospitalization rate by vaccination status in Denmark, I have now read various docs and I’ve nothing further to add other than Denmark’s response to COVID, like almost every other country or different location across the globe, has had a very different response to the disease when compared to many other places. And that’s happened for any number of reasons: the time of its first lockdown, vaccinations rates, etc., etc. are likely to be very different to anywhere else.
With respect to tolerating the risk, yes I do spend more time at home than previously. This makes sense for two reasons, the first is that it just makes sense to do so if it’s at all possible, and because of COVI...
> Why are people like you so damn negative about this and so deliberately intent in disrupting society when it's in such a state of stress? Why are so many of you so intent in trying to undermine and sabotage the rest of us when we're doing our darndest to try and protect ourselves from this cursed disease? You are forcing us to fight on two fronts and it's damn inconsiderate and selfish of you to do so.
> You may not care about your own lives but reasonable people are normally considerate of others.
Nothing but baseless accusations. I am not fighting against society, but against the tyranny of a mandate that makes no sense and can cause harm.
> Why are people like you so damn negative about this and so deliberately intent in disrupting society when it's in such a state of stress? Why are so many of you so intent in trying to undermine and sabotage the rest of us when we're doing our darndest to try and protect ourselves from this cursed disease?
It is pretty simple, actually.
When facing a critical situation one need to (A) do as much as possible to rectify it, and (B) don't do anything that counter- or non-productive in the context. In other words, all resources must be thrown into useful action and none into useless. People are generally not bad judges of what is entirely counterproductive. No-one is wearing the seatbelts while riding the bicycle, or wearing condom outside of specific situation, "just in case" they may not have time to put it on. To "us" - I think I may identify with your "people like you" - the stuff from (B) is a sign that situation is not that critical, if we still can afford being frivolous. Remember, trust, goodwill and compliance are resources just like everything else.
So, in case of this cursed disease we had the following measures implemented, among many:
- 9-5 curfew in VIC, AU, summarily for 5 or 6 months out of the last 20. I'm sensing that you may be familiar with that.
- Mandatory face coverings even when solo walking in the middle of nowhere. According to Premier, "we cannot afford to discuss the alternative, too esoteric"
- 5km limit of movement. So one couldn't go for a beach walk with kids, but junkies could go to the city's "injection room" because it is "essential medical care".
All the above was imposed with total confidence ("You cannot argue with super-computer!" - literal quote from the Premier), backed by riot police with rubber bullets. And then fought tooth and nail in the court to not reveal the "health advice" behind it, because, apparently, it is "not in the public interest".
In the absence of the explanation about how the above contribute to disease protection it is not clear for "us" why it is on "us" to keep patience and be "considerate", but not on the "authorities" to do their job and think about outcome of their actions. I cannot imagine a malady that can be meaningfully alleviated with curfew or solo mask wearing. I cannot reason about lives saved by my family not going for a remote bushwalk. I can imagine that such things may be useful for intimidation and humiliation - not a good way to foster trust, isn't it? I, personally, would be more receptive to authorities' calls if they listened and, maybe, did not do things which are openly hostile and otherwise useless. You know, if they are "reasonable" and "considerate"!
I'm not disagreeing one iota, Australia could hardly have made a worse job of COVID than if it had deliberately tried with Victoria, NSW and the Prime Minister being the prime culprits. Reckon there's little point in regurgitating the crap all over again as we both know exactly what's happened/happening. Nevertheless, read the section of my reply to Ls15 (below) about my hapless efforts to get vaccinated (it'll be all too familiar).
I'm damn fed up with being constantly lectured at to get my booster shot and the message being made worse—rubbed in like salt in a wound—when in the next breath I'm then told that the State's vaccination centre had 50,000 spare places or whatever the number was which were not taken up—only to find that I'm still ineligible because of the ridiculous four-month rule.
Any other time a four-months interval is probably OK but not with Omicron on the loose. And having only AZ shots with Omicron about is essentially equivalent to being unvaccinated. (No doubt you've likely seen the HN story where Israel has said that with Omicron four shots doesn't seem to fully to the job.)
Stupid bastards, some of them (the decision-makers) couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag on the deck of a sinking ship. That said, many of those who are trying to pick up bits are not only working overly hard to do so, but also their situation means that they are often overly exposed to the virus. The people I really feel sorry are the overworked medical workers. I'm damn glad that I'm not in that profession.
"...summarily for 5 or 6 months out of the last 20. I'm sensing that you may be familiar with that."
Right, I do, the only effective outcome of your incarceration seems to be that you'll get into the Guinness Book of Records. Not much of a compensation is it?
Your sense is correct, I'm from the Emerald City, but it's been anything but emerald over the past year or two.
Wow, I find myself agreeing with every bit in your post. How these people managed in one breath to piss off their supporters and opponents alike is astonishing. Squandering their obligation to support people, at the same time insisting on performative dances... Do they think they gain votes this way? Sad thing that they very well may be.
> I'm from the Emerald City, but it's been anything but emerald over the past year or two.
Just like Melbourne is not "the most livable" anymore. We are from the sewer fields on the opposite side of this "blessed" city. Emerald was once an enviable place to be, now the whole Lucky Country seems to be gone to sewers. If 15 years ago we knew what we know now about Au, we'd never set foot here. We had won GC lottery a few years ago but decided to let the application lapse - biggest regret of my life now, we could just fly off to New Hampshire :)
Maybe we can find way to an armistice, a compromise of sorts. I appreciate your responses in this thread very much. I feel sorry for your troubles with booster. I've heard just today that interval has been shortened to 3 months and they are open to shortening even more. I support your way of life, of tackling this problem and have no right to dictate or judge. I cannot support mandates under any circumstances, though. I also do not understand the desire to be boosted often, given that it has been demonstrated only marginally useful past certain point, but that's me. I believe the govt (mis)places too much faith and moral emphasis on bureaucratic rules. They are scared to admit their mistakes so much that they are trying to pitch people against each other.
I can relay the personal anecdote. Something cold-like had swiped through our family here in December, with some rather unusual (for common cold) aspects pointing that it may have been Omicron. A non-event overall, but maybe it wasn't covid. Most of our extended family is in Eastern Europe. As Eastern as Europe goes, given that Russia is arguably considered Asia. My elderly in-laws and in-law siblings had Alpha. Some have been hospitalized. My parents had Delta couple of months ago. Although they usually freak out over every sniffle, this episode was surprisingly "meh" in comparison. Many, many other relatives and acquaintances had Alpha or Delta, of varying age and comorbidities, some had it easier and some harder, but ultimately all have dodged the bullet and recovered. So this is one thing that largely informs my perception.
Interestingly, their president was often cited for "downplaying" and lack of lockdowns. I do hate the guy, he is criminal in every aspect, but (probably) because he does not need to worry about political points or votes (he can fudge as much of votes as he wishes), the overall response has been much more balanced, without unnecessary terrorizing, fearmongering or mandates. President largely distanced himself from the issue, the health agencies were left to do their job and as a result testing, tracing and isolation was pretty swift, early treatment protocols enabled and vaccines amply available to everyone who wanted. Also, "sauna and vodka" may not be a sound medical advice, but won't hurt either :). So, the situation on the ground is quite different from how it was portrayed. By contrast, in AU (and almost everywhere) politicians hijacked the response and busted it completely. They also managed to kill all joy of living. PM has made a complete mockery of a leader, not a single word or action from him had any weight. Premiers have revealed their absolutely worst side as Neo-feudals chasing popularity with peasants. In this situation my ability to reason is completely frozen, risk perception is distorted and the saddest of all, I don't see how this crisis is going to be resolved for better. All pointers are down :(
And maybe to bring my response here into "on-topic". Djokovic may have made an admin mistake on a form, but ultimately he was sent off not ...
> Zeugen war laut Polizei aufgefallen, dass vor der Arztpraxis immer wieder Autos mit Kennzeichen aus dem gesamten süddeutschen Raum geparkt haben sollen.
> Die Polizei klingelte in den frühen Morgenstunden: Die Beamten durchsuchten in Bayern, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen und Nordrhein-Westfalen Wohnungen von mehr als 100 Menschen, die sich falsche Impfbescheinigungen besorgt haben sollen. Die Ermittler stellten bei der Aktion unter anderem Impfausweise und Smartphones sicher.
> Zudem wurde bei den Verdächtigen Blut entnommen, wie ein Sprecher der Polizei erklärte. Über einen Antikörper-Test will man nachweisen, dass sie nicht geimpft sind.
Rough summary in English: Bavarian police caught a doctor who handed out fake vaccine certs. The neighbours called the police, because they noticed unusual license plates on parking cars. The police raided 100 patients' homes and took blood samples from them.
Yup. EU recognizes past infections, not sure why places like Canada and Australia refuse to. It's pretty clear it's not about science at this point.
For example, in Canada some provinces have created exemptions for people who have COVID to be able to work, while firing those who are unvaccinated... Science has been completely tossed by the wayside because of politics and our vengeful population.
Those people are required to and have taken vaccine in order to attend. 95% of Australians have at this point. There are check-ins and density limits and other mandates to limit the spread, and it is still spreading at a rate faster than testing can keep up.
Post infection immunity does not of itself prevent taking vaccine, and having both is the most protective, though their individual effectiveness is comparable [0]. Acknowledging post-infection immunity in place of vaccine-mediated immunity doesn’t make sense as a policy for the country: it doesn’t materially affect many people, it decrease the number of susceptible people at all, and the vaccines are free to all and easily available to most.
In the case of the tennis player, if the recent tests are correctly recorded, and there is significant reason to doubt that they are[1], this is the second time he has been infected with COVID [2].
None of this is to say that the Australian federal government hasn’t embarrassed itself at every opportunity with this fiasco. The visa was issued apparently in contradiction to its own rules, the player was allowed to travel anyway and treated badly, overnight staff at the airport had to decide to overrule a departmental error and trigger this circus, breaching procedural fairness in the process - and then instead of making a prompt decision, the minister waited until the Friday night TV news had started to announce the decision to cancel, in what appears to be an effort to manage the message. Atrocious. Inept. Governing by press release to distract from their failings.
People are allowed to be wrong. If you want to do something about that, the thing to do (on this site) is to respectfully provide correct information.
I don't know what you mean by "confronted", but usually people have in mind something like the online callout/shaming culture. We don't want that there. Snark, name-calling, flaming, putdowns, and so on, are against the HN guidelines. They're also not in your interest, because (a) they don't persuade, and (b) they discredit your view in the eyes of neutral observers.
That's not what the comment said. It was making a point about Australian public opinion.
Your comment was a noticeable step into tedious, predictable flamewar. Please keep that kind of thing off HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
My comment was also making the same point about the rest of the world opinion on Australian govs rules, that are affecting the player. And was clearly better backed, below, than the original comment
But imagine next time there is a covid post, someone comments:
"Many Americans think Fauci is a grade-A dickhead. It is politically unpalatable for him to be allowed to stay"
Even if there was a point there, it could clearly have been expressed in an acceptable way. And probably will in the future again
Certainly it would have been fine to reply with contrary evidence. That would have been an entirely different comment than the one you did post, which broke the site guidelines. It's not like this was a borderline call.
I agree with you that the GP should have used a different phrase there, but this sort of thing is a matter of degree, and what you posted was several degrees further into flamewar. Please don't do that, even when another post includes a provocation. That's in the guidelines too, btw:
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
344 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] threadI don't think his statement puts him in the best light. He also admitted that he publicly took an interview when Djokovic knew that he was positive for COVID without giving a heads up to the interviewer. Although it was brief, he also removed his mask. I'm a fan of Djokovic, but that demonstrates either he is reckless or has a poor understanding of how dangerous COVID can be to individuals who aren't elite athletes like himself.
I.e., at some point Tennis Australia told Djokovic's team that he would/might get an exemption if he'd had COVID recently. In early December Djokovic hadn't had COVID recently and didn't qualify for any kind of exemption. It is very fortunate for him that he then caught COVID, and in time to recover before the event. In early December Djokovic must have been expecting to NOT compete in the Australian Open, right?
It's not even just about the opinions of the Australian population. Other tennis players have a right to ask why he can get around the rules that even other top players (Nadal, Federer etc) can't avoid. The ATP itself came out saying that players should all be vaccinated, and the only complaint it raised on behalf of Djokovic was over the circumstances that led to him ending up in immigration detention. But with the new details about his activities that have emerged since then, I'd be surprised if they are very combative on his behalf now, given they represent all the male players, not just him.
It's the best player who is not injured, has not taken any drug, is not sick, accepts all the rules of the ATP, including all the anti doping procedures all year long which are pretty invasive, who can get a visa to come to the tournament, etc etc.
I was once invited by a company to an US based developer meeting, and couldn't make it because the company didn't realize I needed a visa, and it's absolutely impossible to get one in two weeks barring exceptional circumstances like the death of a family member.
Later when I visited the US it took about a couple months to get the visa in my passport.
Countries are picky about who they allow in, and require a bunch of paperwork to reassure them you're not going to cause trouble and are going to leave when you're done seeing sights.
While I don't know much about Australia, I'm pretty sure a tennis tournament is not their biggest priority right now.
Vaccination has long been a requirement for admission into countries, and Covid isn't a new event either. The only new things going on here is Djovokic being public about it, and some minor bureaucratic issues, other than that it's very much business as usual.
But in any case I don't have an opinion on the tournament, I don't watch those anyway. It's up to them to figure out whether this is worth cancelling things over.
If there is no sufficient scientific basis for such a mandate, it is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are not only unfair, but also tyrannical.
https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/PDF-other/DS-160-...
Interesting questions start on page 33.
A problem for the AO, yes. But for a country as a whole, this is not a problem, and kicking him out is the better outcome. It shows to the citizens that the restrictions they had to abide by apply to everyone, and that you can't get through just by being famous. That's how it should be. If they say you don't get in without a vaccine, then you don't.
Personally, I don't want this guy in my country either.
No Australia didn't filter Djokovic out, he filtered himself out because of his actions (see my earlier post listing seven points). Had he been a little more prudent and less cocky, then there would have been no drama whatsoever.
They are all based on the assumption that the vaccine is effective against transmission and they only make sense if that protection is over a reasonable threshold. Citation for that effectiveness against the dominant strain please.
Anyway I want to say that as a matter of fact if a court allows him to enter and play he should be allowed. Not interfering with court decisions is much more important than whether or not a player plays tennis, I don't care if it's an important player on an important tournament, because for me it's not important. I think also he should not enter if he is not vaccinated but for me the "why" is much more important than the "what". We always ask politicians "what" are they going to do, not "why" and "how" and so we keep rewarding luck. So the thing is not if politicians did this or that when the pandemic started, the question is if they were motivated by political interest or followed doctors advice. In this case politicians should follow courts decisions.
He doesn't. He want's to avoid them. For males under 40 the risk for getting myocarditis is higher than for getting it from covid. That has been discussed on HN.
"Take this vaccine against a strain that is not spreading anymore, that you also already had, while we cannot really prove efficacy against the current dominant strain and where you have a higher risk of side effects than others, or just give up your title. Your choice."
They are blackmailing him.
Besides there are numerous other side effects from the virus than myocarditis. Focusinig on this particular one and ignoring all the others is pretty strange.
Relevant passage from the article I believe you are refering to shows that the disk is first of all extremely low in all groups, and second it's not very different in the younger group.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...
In males aged less than 40 years, we estimated an additional 3 (95%CI 1, 5) and 12 (95%CI 1, 13) myocarditis events per million in the 1-28 days following a first dose of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; an additional 14 (95%CI 8, 17), 12 (95%CI 1, 7) and 101 (95%CI 95, 104) myocarditis events following a second dose of ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; and an additional 13 (95%CI 7, 15) myocarditis events following a third dose of BNT162b2 vaccine. This compares with 7 (95%CI 2, 11) additional myocarditis events in the 1-28 days following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. In older males, we estimated 3 (95% CI 2, 4) and 73 (95% 71, 75) additional myocarditis events per million following a third dose of BNT162b2 and a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, respectively.
Not by official WHO definitions.
101 in a million is equivalent to 1.01/10,000. With 1/10,000 it falls into the bracket for the definition of "rare", not "very rare" or "extremely rare". I wish the media would use these official definitions.
https://www.who.int/medicines/areas/quality_safety/safety_ef...
This is why I think it's so weird to avoid the vaccine due to that risk. It's not like people taking the vax are spinning a roulette wheel with 1/10000 risk of complication, and if they reject the vaccine they don't need to spin it. If that was the case, then I'd understand it.
"The risk is about the same" is not even a good ratio to begin with, and it also does not match with what has been communicated to the public over and over - that the risks would be astronomically small, compared to the benefits. With the ratio that is currently known, the vaccines would have had a harder time to get approved. I don't think that mass vaccination mandates can be upheld as soon as the public becomes aware of the actual ratios.
Yes - as with any medication. But my point is, it's some times seen as being a roulette wheel with the vaccine but no one mentions the elephant in the room which is that the side effects are at worst much more common, and at best about equal, with infection. Basically if you don't get vaccinated, you are spinning a worse roulette wheel.
> The basis for these is even thinner, because especially since Omicron, the benefit/risk ratio is even worse. The risk has not changed, while the benefits just visibly decreased.
There are three levels of risk here. Individual risk, group risk (protecting people in a more vulnerable group, for example), and societal risk (preventing spread, or limiting the damage to publically funded healthcare by limiting your own risk). Now with omicron, the individual risk for a healthy 30 year old is obviously way down. The societal risk from the disease is very high due to infectivity (staff shortages etc), and the group risk is also rather high as the disease is still pretty bad for the oldest age group, especially without boosters.
But even so: vaccines aren't only about individual risk. And vaccine mandates aren't only acceptable when it's a net positive to the individual! On the contrary, when it's a net positive, they may not even be needed - people have incentive enough to get vaccinated anyway!
Mandating vaccines despite unclear individual benefit (and to be clear its STILL very much a solid benefit even for healthy recovered young people, but for the sake of argument) is no easy ethical problem. The answer to that has been different in different countries, or even within countries (e.g. some countries have had varying degrees of mandates for adult vaccine but not even approved it for healthy young chilren because the individual risk is too low).
So it seems like a good idea for vulnerable people to get boostered. People can protect themselves from severe disease with the vaccination. The evidence that others are protected through a vaccination is pretty much non-existent. A reduction of societal risk is not a strong argument in this case, because the absolute reduction of risk by the vaccine is very small. Below 3%. You need to vaccinate about 100 people in order to prevent one more case, based on data from before last April. I bet it is worse now with Omicron:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
No the evidence that it protects against severe disease is pretty strong. But there is no need to even go into that discussion.
The evidence that hospitals will be less stressed if more people are vaccinated, so that my risk of (say) getting care delayed for a heart attack or broken bone, is important.
> in order to prevent one more case
We aren't preventing nearly any cases now with Omicron. The protection is just too low. But the protection against severe disease and death is good. Everyone will get omicron (or a later even more infectious variant) eventually. The question is: how many of them will be severe? How flat will the peak be of severe cases?
Vaccinations at this point are about societal risk and severe disease. It's not about individual risk or preventing infection.
Because that's one of the easiest arguments to dispel. No one should be avoiding the vaccine for that reason. Not even those who had the disease once or twice already.
He still faces the same risk in the future. He still has the same choice. It doesn't change because you are a healthy young person. The risk of this complication is higher from the disease than the vaccine in every group, (the male under 40 doesn't really make a big difference - there you have about a breakeven risk)
He surely has some immunity now, no?
They say natural resistance is better or equal than from the vaccine, everyone apart from anti vaxxers like Djokovic has had a shot or two or three, there's no herd immunity or herd protection
Can someone explain the math to me?
Also people said the regular flu does not exist anymore, give or take, because everyone is wearing masks. Nothing could be further from the truth, full family had flu twice now, me three times(never had that before in my.life, once a year max was normal) and I see the regular flu wave still existing. I haven't had covid that I know of, did tests and am vaccinated.
Who are "they" and what exactly are "they" saying? I think there is a consensus that even if you had the disease, it's wise choice to get vaccinated. Protection from vaccination and recovery is better than protection from only one of them, as far as I understand it.
> Can someone explain the math to me?
What math?
> Also people said the regular flu does not exist anymore
Seasonal flu will of course continue to be a thing. But restrictions obviously meant that last years flu season was kept low in many places around the world. This however means that there could be a worse wave coming this year (and it has happened too in many places - we are in the flu season in the wintery part of the world now). In places with good mask adherence, no big public events and so on, obviously ALL respiratory diseases will have a harder time spreading. But these restrictions are - hopefully - temporary, The flu will be fine.
I know lots of people who were sick but only tested for COVID. One of my friends was out of work for a month with a bacterial infection they missed for 2+ weeks because they only tested for COVID....
No, what I am saying is that mandating them is a stupid idea. Everyone should be free to do a personal benefit/risk assessment before undergoing any medical procedure. Politicians are no medical doctors and they should have no power to prescribe me a medical treatment. If you mix science with politics, you get politics.
I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
And I absolutely agree. Apart from specific situations (e.g healthcare workers) no one should be required to get the vaccine.
But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
> I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
I don’t think it’s pointless. Protection from vaccine helps even in the recovered, healthy and young. But whether he should get it or not isn’t really relevant, what’s relevant is that Australia required it and they can’t exempt him due to past infection (apparently).
Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
I don't think that makes sense. If you cannot see your family again without vaccination, that is a clear mandate to me. If it is not based on clear scientific evidence that shows that there was no better option, then the mandate is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are tyrannical.
If Djokovic only has the choice between getting vaccinated or to give up his title, and if that mandated choice was not justified on a scientific basis, then that mandate was arbitrary and hence tyrannical.
> Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
I think what we are experiencing right now, goes way beyond criticism. Instead of demonizing people with a certain belief (and treating rational critics as collateral), people should try much harder to demonstrate the benefits of the vaccine in an intellectually honest way. And they should be brutally honest regarding side effects. This is almost not happening, as far as I can see.
That makes it a bit of a gray area. "Mandated" as in "you have to take it" is one thing (which few states would hopefully ever try) or "Mandated to do X" is a different thing. Then how much overreach is involved really depends on what X is. Working in hospital? Very reasonable. Attending university? Well, that was always a thing. Crossing borders - this was also always a thing.
> If it is not based on clear scientific evidence that shows that there was no better option, then the mandate is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are tyrannical.
One can argue that almost all restrictions during the pandemic had to be based on very shaky science because there simply isn't time to first await the science and then make the decision. And there are surely a lot of restrictions that are much worse to have, than vaccine mandate for immigration. Shutting down schools or banning gatherings, for example.
> then that mandate was arbitrary and hence tyrannical.
Yeah I mean I don't necessarily agree with all the restrictions around the world and got knows Australia has the most shitty immigration politics on the planet - even outside the pandemic. But what I do think is that they should have the right to have whatever restrictions they want (even tyrannical ones) and there isn't much to do about it.
That's my point. People are basing a witch-hunt on unscientific thinking in 2021 on arguments that are not based on solid science. It does not look good and I think that historians will talk a lot about that.
Besides, it's not as if you ask scientists their response would always be "well our science won't say very much until a year from now, so of course we recommend the status quo until we know more!"
Scientific consensus and consensus among scientists can be two different things (i.e., scientists may well agree or even recommend politicians and authorities to do X, well in advance of science being clear).
I think that there is a witch-hunt against people who are considered to think unscientifically, but the hunters do not have a solid scientific basis for their battle calls themselves. I find that ironic and tragic at the same time.
People in this thread and elsewhere attacked Djokovic for avoiding the vaccine, but nobody was able to provide evidence that would explain why Djokovic needs to be vaccinated, given his condition and history. It boils down to "the rules are the rules" and "same rules for everyone". Read that with Hanna Ahrendt's voice. Pure ideology and decoupling from actual reasoning and common sense. We are supposed to base medicine on science, not on ideology, aren't we?
Novak is now in the former category, but he was in the latter - which is why I don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt any more.
And I absolutely agree. Apart from specific situations (e.g healthcare workers) no one should be required to get the vaccine.
But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
Remember that vaccines were always mandated for travel, going to university etc.
> I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
I don’t think it’s pointless. Protection from vaccine helps even in the recovered, healthy and young. But whether he should get it or not isn’t really relevant, what’s relevant is that Australia required it and they can’t exempt him due to past infection (apparently).
Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
I mean, seriously, most folks that lie to immigration/border security get deported and aren't allowed back in. They are used as political pawns, too, but simply are a number instead of a person. I don't know why this man is supposed to be treated differently.
He could have just gotten carreer-ending myocarditis from the vaccination. The risk in his cohort to get it from vaccination is higher than getting it from covid, which he already had. How is that mandate justified?
Tennis is a dangerous sport. Get used to it.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tennis-star-moni...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Wertheim
I have little patience for folks that refuse to get vaccinated. You are more likely to catch and therefore spread covid (possibly killing others) and much more likely to add to the stress on the healthcare system when you get covid. If you do decide not to vaccinate after knowing this and understanding that the risks from a vaccine are less than the risks from the virus, I fully expect you to stay home and minimize your effect on others. This is partially so that folks that cannot be vaccinated don't have to suffer because you won't do your part.
Of course, staying home - the responsible thing to do if you aren't going to get vaccinated - would end his career anyway. On the other hand, he is probably monied enough for it to not have dire consequences. Unfortunately, many of the folks he inspires are not in that position.
He already had covid that did not end his career.
> I have little patience for folks that refuse to get vaccinated. You are more likely to catch and therefore spread covid (possibly killing others) and much more likely to add to the stress on the healthcare system when you get covid. If you do decide not to vaccinate after knowing this and understanding that the risks from a vaccine are less than the risks from the virus, I fully expect you to stay home and minimize your effect on others. This is partially so that folks that cannot be vaccinated don't have to suffer because you won't do your part.
When the vaccine efficacy against transmission is as low as it is, this makes little sense to me. Covid vaccines seem mostly good for protecting yourself individually from severe disease and death. For everything else they don't seem to do much. Not enough to mandate them and for guilt-tripping the hesitant. Folks that cannot be vaccinated will catch omicron regardless of the vaccination status of the rest of the population.
Its not like he is some hapless victim. He knew the rules, he had enough time to get vaccinated but is choosing (and relishing) his anti vaccine posture.
https://archive.ph/Ohx6d
The political cost of letting Djokovic stay was too high for Morrison
Australians have been barred from visiting a dying parent in hospital, blocked from seeing a new grandchild and forbidden from having a wedding. Should they accept that a tennis star gets the leeway they were denied?
Angering those Australians would have been a huge danger for Morrison when he is only a few months away from an election.
But this is not game, set and match. The entire saga has put Australia’s pandemic dysfunction up in lights. It was a national embarrassment and may continue through the courts.
Covid is rampant at this point. An aggressive testing path and allowing him to play would absolutely be in the public's best interest.
It's clowns on both sides here but the risk of letting him in is definitely not high enough to balance the public benefit of him being allowed to play. Once he plays the special public benefit ends and so should his visa.
That’s the match (to use a pun)
This has been the entire strategy for the government's handling of the pandemic - national interests be damned, as long as it favours the party being re-elected.
Skepticism is healthy, full on pessimism "everything is just a power grab" is extremely unhealthy.
Politics is a highly competitive game. Those who do not optimize for maximizing their power and carrier advances are operating at a disadvantage.
I agree but lets extend this same treatment not just to Westerners but to Eastern people too, otherwise it is just hypocrisy. I say this because the top comment on a previous post about Djokovic claims that his PCR test is genuine not because he was really positive with Covid, but because his family is influential with the Serbian government. This sort of prejudice and discrimination is plain disgusting
This is bizarre logic. "I got screwed, so someone else should get screwed too!"
He got the exemption. It was challenged in court. He won that case.
Now a minister's "personal discretion" (why is this even a thing?) timed perfectly so that even if Novak wins the court case, it would be too late for him to participate in the Australian Open.
https://scontent-bru2-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/fr/e1...
https://scontent-bru2-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/fr/e1...
https://scontent-bru2-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/fr/e1...
https://scontent-bru2-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/fr/e1...
https://scontent-bru2-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/fr/e1...
12 January 2022
I want to address the continuing misinformation about my activities and attendance at events in December in the lead up to my positive PCR COVID test result.
This is misinformation which needs to be corrected, particularly in the interest of alleviating broader concern in the community about my presence in Australia, and to address matters which are very hurtful and concerning to my family.
I want to emphasise that I have tried very hard to ensure the safety of everyone and my compliance with testing obligations.
I attended a basketball game in Belgrade on 14 December after which it was reported that a number of people tested positive with COVID 19. Despite having no COVID symptoms, I took a rapid antigen test on 16 December which was negative, and out of an abundance of caution, also took an official and approved PCR test on that same day.
The next day I attended a tennis event in Belgrade to present awards to children and took a rapid antigen test before going to the event, and it was negative.
I was asymptomatic and felt good, and I had not received the notification of a positive PCR test result until after that event.
The next day, on 18 December I was at my tennis centre in Belgrade to fulfil a long-standing commitment for a L'Equipe interview and photoshoot. I cancelled all other events except for the L'Equipe interview.
I felt obliged to go ahead and conduct the L'Equipe interview as I didn't want to let the journalist down, but did ensure I socially distanced and wore a mask except when my photograph was being taken.
While I went home after the interview to isolate for the required period, on reflection, this was an error of judgement and I accept that I should have rescheduled this commitment.
On the issue of my travel declaration, this was submitted by my support team on my behalf - as I told immigration officials on my arrival - and my agent sincerely apologises for the administrative mistake in ticking the incorrect box about my previous travel before coming to Australia. This was a human error and certainly not deliberate. We are living in challenging times in a global pandemic and sometimes these mistakes can occur. Today, my team has provided additional information to the Australian Government to clarify this matter.
While I felt it was important to address and clarify misinformation I will not be making any further comment out of utmost respect for the Australian Government and their authorities and the current process.
It is always an honour and a privilege to play in the Australian Open. The Australian Open is much-loved by players, fans and the community, not just in Victoria and in Australia, but around the globe, and I just want to have the opportunity to compete against the best players in the world and perform before one of the best crowds in the world."
[source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYnO7cDqbdj/]
...which Djokovic still received, by the way. There are people in his detention centre that have been waiting for 10 years to receive half the time of the courts that Djokovic has received in a week. If Australians were as you described, then Djokovic would be held for 3 years in his current facility then sent to Nauru for a further five years of off-shore processing.
I think there are plenty of evidence for the government to cancel him on this one.
That has been the entire logic behind extending covid restrictions to apply beyond vulnerable groups.
Not at all.
The government sets a bunch of strict rules with no exceptions and tells people it's very important that they obey the rules.
It's entirely reasonable for people to take that at face value - if these rules are important, they should apply to the rich and famous just like they do to everyone else.
in the second case, these documents resolve to an official Serbian covid certificate web page and it's the country of Serbia responsibility to explain to other countries in the world how that was possible to happen and to find out who did it
now, the fact that Novak visited Spain and his agency "forgot" to mention it in the PLF that's a leverage that could be used
Or, I had to follow the law, so everyone else should too. I'm getting upset if the law is only for the simple people like me, but not for big sports stars and other hotshots.
In slovenia, more people have died from smoking related illnesses than covid (even in the last two years), but somehow "corona lives matter", peoples personal choices to go out, get ill, and risk the 0.5% chance of death don't matter, governments take more and more power, because "every life matters", but on the other hand, you can still buy cigarettes everywhere.
If every life matters, then ban cigarettes, tax the shit out of sugary sodas and junk food, if you're willing to sacrifice basic human rights, also force people to exercise, and more lives will be saved than from corona. If all those lives don't matter, but corona lives do, someone is doing something very very wrong.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco
> Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio.
edit: even obesity, 2.8mio per year, 5.6mio in two years - https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-fac...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-57888460
The total death count for covid will be known only in the next years and it’s for sure many multiple of the current official numbers.
Usa, 480k smoking deaths yearly - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast... , still more than covid deaths there.
And not to mention counting the iffy counting of covid deaths (any death, even suicide within 28 days is a covid death) and covid hospitalizations ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/exclusive-half-c... ).
Let's be honest here... covid is really bad for old and already ill people. For young and currently healthy, the impacts of lockdowns will be worse than covid, especially for younger children (imagine just going to first grade, unable to rad and write yet, and you're put infront of a laptop with Zoom running, no real-life contact with friends, parents having to quit their jobs to take care of you, and all that to "save grandma", even with vaccines already available).
646k is for the first year: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29503
646k > 480k if I’m not mistaken.
20k of those, are just extra overdoses (100k total). - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...
I don't get it. You're arguing against government interventions because of relatively low fatality numbers. Yet, the fact that these numbers are not higher is a direct outcome of the world-wide vaccination campaigns. Don't you think you got it backwards?
If you're saying we need a cufrew, because covid killed X people, but are not willing to ban the sale of cigarettes, even though they kill 3.2*X people, you're doing something wrong.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
It's really hard to explain this. I admit to being baffled. If vaccines are saving lives then there should have been a clear bend downwards in the trend line of the graph but if any such bend exists at all you have to squint to see it. If anything there looks like a slight acceleration in the first months of 2021 (but it's small enough I can't say for sure by eyeballing it).
Lots of people don't understand the numbers around total COVID deaths, by the way. In the past week alone I've seen internet comments saying that over 20 million have died of COVID, that vaccines have saved "millions of lives" when COVID overall since the start has only claimed (or rather, been temporally associated with) millions of lives, and VE lasted only months due to Omicron and when it rolled out. So it's impossible for vaccines to have saved millions of lives.
But this is understandable when you consider what people tell opinion polls. Lots of people, including people who think of themselves as well informed and educated, mis-estimate the dangers of COVID by orders of magnitude :(
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...
But a more tangible insight into why you're wrong and why vaccines do work is to look at statistics for hospitalization in intensive care: these days, the vast majority of ICU cases of COVID are unvaccinated patients. Given that most people are vaccinated, it should be the other way around if there was no difference between vaccinated or unvaccinated. This is a much stronger argument than speculating what a growth graph should or should not look like with or without vaccines.
The point I'm making here is that the data is contradictory, which means there is a need to investigate. Trials didn't show any impact on hospitalization or death (because it's so rare, they were too small to get significance). That means the data on them is confounded. For example, in the UK the data shows that pregnancy makes you more likely to be admitted to ICU with COVID but less likely to die. A biological effect? No, of course not. Rather, hospital staff have a lot of discretion on who they send to ICU or not, and they prefer to spend resources on women who are pregnant.
In many countries, the intensive care units have not been in the situation where they had to triage, so the selection effects you report have not been necessary there. And even if, no hospital would make the decision on who to assign to an ICU based on their vaccination status, but based on the medical needs. The fact that we see dramatically less vaccinated people in ICUs is most plausibly explained by the effectiveness of the vaccines.
"no hospital would make the decision on who to assign to an ICU based on their vaccination status, but based on the medical needs"
Your beliefs about hospitals and doctors are romanticized and I already gave you evidence of this. Albeit I didn't cite it, so let me do that now with this analysis of UK ICNARC data:
https://communityoperatingsystem.wordpress.com/2021/12/09/uk...
Pregnant women get admitted more and survive more because they weren't being admitted based on true medical need but rather the subjective feelings of staff that [currently/very recently] pregnant women should get higher levels of care due to having a baby.
This also affects other decisions. Doctors aren't always rational well informed calculating machines:
"We see a similar admissions bias when we examine the hospitalization fatality rates between the fully vaccinated and unvaccinated under 50s with PHE hospitalization data for 218,784 confirmed Delta infections – which show that whilst the 1.7% hospitalization rate of the unvaccinated is almost 2X that of the vaccinated (0.9%), the HFR in the vaccinated is 3 times higher (7.4%) than the unvaccinated (2.4%) and the case fatality rates is also lower in the unvaccinated."
Why does this happen, well, the population has been terrorized for years into believing things that are wildly untrue. The average Australian believes an unvaccinated person has a 33% chance of dying if they catch COVID. They think it's as deadly as smallpox or the plague. 40% of American Democrat voters believe half of unvaccinated people have been hospitalized with COVID! Half!
It'd be great if all the people who believed this nonsense were somehow excluded from the health system but of course they aren't. Quite the opposite: those who understand the true numbers and severity rates are much less likely to want to get vaccinated than those who think it's literally the plague and they're all being fired.
You're free to get ill if you choose (from smoking, covid, whatever) but it's really hard to believe people don't understand you don't have the right to endanger others, be it with tobacco smoke or covid.
That's also why we have speed limits. If you want to endanger yourself driving 250Km/h that's fine. But you can't, because you'd endanger others.
TL;DR: your freedom ends where mine begins.
Especially now, with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering (except others, who also chose not to vaccinate)? Thinking the vaccinated won't get in contact with omicron from other vaccinated people who got infected is stupid, but we still don't let unvaccinated people go to the bar, while I can go there, even infected (and with omicron, i could be infected right now, but noone tests us, the vaccinated ones).
Smoking isn't ignored ... I don't think any illness is ignored in favor of any others. Doctors have been insisting people do not postpone medical procedures and checkups because they're worried about covid in hospitals (which has been happening, and causing more deaths).
One of the main reasons to get vaccinated against covid is specifically so hospitals don't get overwhelmed to the point where patients have to turned away, regardless of what they're suffering from.
> look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits
I doubt that speed limits have anything to do with "time lost". The difference in covering 30Km at 150Km/h vs 120Km/h is 3 min, negligible. Wake up earlier :)
Faster driving doesn't cause more accidents, but it does cause greater injury (complicated subject with lots of research, no time to dig all this up).
> with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering
You're also endangering vaccinated people. The risk of serious illness is greatly reduced but you're not guaranteed not to die. A vaccine is like a seat belt (works super well but doesn't make you invincible).
And it's not just 1 or 0. People die from covid and survivors can have long lasting afflictions from it. I think the statistic is for every person that dies, there's 5 that will be "marked" for life by covid. Not "long covid" or whatever, but life long problems with reduced lung capacity, problems with kidneys, heart etc - things they will suffer from in varying degrees for years to come, burdening the healthcare and social welfare system and the economy in general (global cost is already in the trillions of dollars).
And it's still not ok to endanger those who aren't vaccinated because they can still end up in hospital, using up valuable resources. So if you want to have your covid parties that's fine if you sign a contract saying you'll receive no medical help whatsoever should you get infected. Anything else is morally wrong.
It's extremely tiring having to explain all this basic, obvious stuff to people. I'm sure if you thought it through you could figure it out for yourself.
Doctors have been saying that, but then rescheduling procedures. Some have even been stopped for some time. Here in slovenia, they even caught doctors, giving their timecards to a security guard to check them in/out out of the government hospital (so they get covid benefits) while they worked in private practice, because their government-hospital procedures (whole programme) was stopped.
> I doubt that speed limits have anything to do with "time lost". The difference in covering 30Km at 150Km/h vs 120Km/h is 3 min, negligible. Wake up earlier :)
But if we lowered the speed limit to 10km/h, there'd be almost zero deaths. And yes, we have speed limits lowering the speed from 130km/h to 110km/h in many places, because it loweres the chance of accidents there, while an accident at that both of those speeds are pretty bad anyways.
> You're also endangering vaccinated people. The risk of serious illness is greatly reduced but you're not guaranteed not to die. A vaccine is like a seat belt (works super well but doesn't make you invincible).
But vaccinated people also get ill and spread covid, and with omicron it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone, vaccinated or not, will get in contact with covid. The vaccine is basically helping only the vaccinated person, and has pretty much no effect on the spread itself (which is pretty much logical at r0=10 or whatever it is for omicron).
> And it's not just 1 or 0. People die from covid and survivors can have long lasting afflictions from it. I think the statistic is for every person that dies, there's 5 that will be "marked" for life by covid. Not "long covid" or whatever, but life long problems with reduced lung capacity, problems with kidneys, heart etc - things they will suffer from in varying degrees for years to come, burdening the healthcare and social welfare system and the economy in general (global cost is already in the trillions of dollars).
Again... we'll all get it, and you either trust your immune system, and take the risk for yourself, or you trust the vaccine+immune system, and take a lower risk, or you well.. stay at home, because vaccines won't prevent the spread of a virus so contageous as the omicron variant.
> And it's still not ok to endanger those who aren't vaccinated because they can still end up in hospital, using up valuable resources. So if you want to have your covid parties that's fine if you sign a contract saying you'll receive no medical help whatsoever should you get infected. Anything else is morally wrong.
Should we expand this to smokers and obese people, and extreme sportists? I mean.. getting covid is a one time "mistake", getting morbidly obese is years and years of self abuse, same with cigarettes, those take many years to destroy your lungs.
> It's extremely tiring having to explain all this basic, obvious stuff to people. I'm sure if you thought it through you could figure it out for yourself.
It's also exremly tiring to take away peoples basic human rights in the name of a disease that (with vaccines) kills less people than the flu (and who cares if someone doesn't get vaccinated, it's their problem).
Well yes, vaccines don't stop the spread but it will reduce it (definitely with Delta, maybe less so with Omicron). And then you have other problems like mutations happening more among non vaccinated.
And even with omicron, a vaccine will prevent serious illness.
Even if it just makes a 1% difference, among the almost 8 billion people in the world that's still a huge number. So why not get vaccinated?
It seems to me people are either scared for irrational reasons or just want to be different and think they know it better than the medical establishment.
> Should we expand this to smokers and obese people
Yes, I definitely think you could make a case for that. If people could reduce their craving for McDonalds by receiving a yearly injection and they refuse then yeah, you'd be in the same situation. But things are more complicated, being related to addiction, socio economic status etc ...
> It's also exremly tiring to take away peoples basic human rights in the name of a disease that (with vaccines) kills less people than the flu (and who cares if someone doesn't get vaccinated, it's their problem).
Again, nobody is forced to be vaccinated and it's not just their problem if they don't. You may be refused entry to bars & restaurants but that's not a basic human right, afaik.
I'm done with this!
Not with omicron, atleast not really.
> And even with omicron, a vaccine will prevent serious illness.
So, it's like smoking, the vaccinated get lesser chance of serious illness, and the unvaccinated have themselves to blame.
> Yes, I definitely think you could make a case for that. If people could reduce their craving for McDonalds by receiving a yearly injection and they refuse then yeah, you'd be in the same situation. But things are more complicated, being related to addiction, socio economic status etc ...
I mean.. they could reduse mcdonalds by just not eating at mcdonalds.
> Again, nobody is forced to be vaccinated and it's not just their problem if they don't. You may be refused entry to bars & restaurants but that's not a basic human right, afaik.
But curfews (restriction of movement) is a basic human right, that was taken away from us. And again, if vaccines only help the vaccinated, why not let the unvaccinated ones into bars (or mcdonalds)?
Your argument is besides the point anyway: just because there are other factors in life that can make you sick, that does not mean that we should not fight COVID.
Considering we have vaccines available for some time now, and considering we've dealth with contageus diseases before covid, getting unvaccinated is basically a lifestyle choice, and non-believers can still stay at home and not do the stuff we've been restricting to people who actually want to do that.
I don't know if you can compare smoking to covid, smoking related diseases take years and more likely decades to be deadly.
But in saying that, one way to look at this is via economics. When you are born, you have a potential life expectancy and a potential to earn society money (taxes). Smokers quite often die younger overall and not reaching their value to society, however this is general with many other diseases. Obviously reducing preventable forms of deaths such as those from smoking are to the benefit of society. Whenever you hear that smoking costs the "country" $X billions a year, that is not only the direct costs but also the indirect costs.
I believe in Australia the direct healthcare costs of treating smoking related illness was pegged at some number around 110 million a year, which is substantially different to the promoted cost of billions.
The difference with Covid is that it is an anomaly, perfectly healthy individuals have an increase chance of dying, as well as those who do have other health factors. This number maybe small but it has a large impact on the economy on society in general. Not only is a persons economic value reduced by the direct costs to society are increased.
An example of this, might be, you build a hospital knowing that X amount of smokers will die a year as well as other illnesses. You can calculate this, and work out what type of hospital you need to build. But what you cannot do very easily is calculate an additional 5 million people a year dying over an immediate time. It also takes considerable time to build hospitals, and years to train doctors, as such it is difficult to ramp up quickly to deal with anomalies. Then you must also consider the amount of productivity which is lost when a person is sick, this is also a factor which is calculated in regards to society, and then the publics spending, fear etc.
You can also look at the cost increases in the supply chain, which will affect the economy for years to come. Smokers for example are unlikely to influence the price of wood, but covid has.
So while we should take a pro-active stance against smoking (and when I was smoking I used to say the same), the pandemic is a real-time disaster which cannot be dealt with over 20 years like smoking. People will continue to die from smoking for decades even if you banned it today, but people will die today and potentially from related issues for decades from covid. The effects of covid are immediate, substantial and impactful to society not only right now but likely for some time.
The thing with COVID is that it's a contagious and deadly disease. The thing with smoking, fizzy drinks and junk food is that they're not contagious and deadly diseases, they're lifestyle choices.
You can't compare them like-for-like.
I don’t consider leaving 10,000s of your own citizens stranded abroad for up to 18 months a good metric by any means. That’s suspending citizenship, and will have done irreparable damage to rights.
They of course also prevented people from leaving
This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there
https://amp.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210406-stranded-a...
The truly disgraceful aspect of all this is that Australia had a proper quarantine system in place and it abandoned it. When I was a kid, everyone knew of Australia's quarantine system and its past history as it was so public. Anyone who'd traveled on Sydney Harbour back then would have seen Sydney's quarantine station (I used to pass it every time I went to the beach): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station
The fact is Australia was unprepared for COVID because of government funding cutbacks and other political BS. The country has no one else to blame except itself.
BTW, this was the ideal site of a quarantine station, it was easily accessible (near all incoming shipping, etc.) and yet it was properly isolated geographically from the rest of Sydney (see aerial photo in wiki link), thus people who were quarantined there would not have been able to infect others as they have done in the idiotic 'hotel system' that now exists.
No, they should not have accepted being barred perhaps. When you are oppressed just insisting no other one is treated justfully (the way the court decided in accordance with the law) is not a morally right solution. Also expelling a person who has already got in the country physically and attended a courts makes no sense from the epidemiological point of view - he has already brought the virus in if he had it.
And by the way attending a wedding or a family meeting where people stand close, often in a small room, is quite different from just visiting a country or playing tennis (which doesn't require you to stand close to anybody, let alone in a room).
But what if most accepted those limitations, and while personally a disaster, found it on the other hand right to follow common sense and obey rules applying to everyone for the greater cause of society? Rules applying to everyone the same is one of the basic foundations of a just society...
> Also expelling a person who has already got in the country physically and attended a courts makes no sense from the epidemiological point of view - he has already brought the virus
No matter what you argue beyond, the epidemiological aspect is now not really the point here anymore. He faked stuff for entry one or the other way (I think it is even more likely he wasn't positive at all, but that the second test was just created so he counts as recovered, which was the requirement to get in if not vaccinated..) - so its good to see consequences on that.
Sounds like communism. No cause can be considered greater than freedom.
> No matter what you argue beyond, the epidemiological aspect is now not really the point here anymore. He faked stuff
He should be investigated for faking then and expelled/imprisoned/fined by a court if evidence proves him guilty.
> second test was just created so he counts as recovered, which was the requirement to get in if not vaccinated
Just test him antibodies/T-cells + PCR and you know if a person used to be sick and recovered. No necessity for speculation here. Presence of immunity (which one only get through overcoming the sickness or a vaccine) is an objective thing. Is it not?
I would also suggest introducing a law sentencing people who falsely claim they are immune or expose others to a risk of being infected any other way to serve a sentence aiding in a hospital taking care of infected people.
Are you a 10 year old American from the Cold War? What you're saying is so comprehensively stupid I'm not entirely certain you're a real human.
No, that's not what communism is. If you want to know what it really is, go read "Das Kapital" and the "Communist Manifesto", you might learn a thing or two.
As for freedom... it's subjective. Absolute freedom is obviously incompatible with living in a society with other humans. And as we've seen time and again, most people value many things over freedom. Just look at Singapore and Rwanda, people there are happy with the prosperity and stability even if they're really not free on a lot of levels.
No, I'm from a former communist country, we developed antibodies to "higher causes" rhetorics.
Politicians apparently are driven by the game theory and will do/say anything they believe will help them maximize their own power and safety (elections already mentioned) rather than sustainable wellbeing of the people.
Masses are driven by even more chthonic energies like unconscious xenophobia and value the chance to unite by any attribute to attack anybody they can (especially those enjoying a benefit they don't or trying to achieve a benefit they enjoy) above everything and will use any excuse they are given.
Simply saying politicians have already made a too many of suspiciously inefficient (and logically obviously futile even before proven such) decisions to trust them competent and benevolent and the mob will believe and shout any nonsense you tell them as long as this justifies them carrying torches and pitchforks.
Imagine president Trump, seeing himself loosing the elections and actually facing a real prison sentence risk, would have said nuking China is going to end the pandemics and we need to do so to make the whole world great again. I would bet the number of people supporting him would be way far from zero, all over the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J67wKhddWu4
War is too important to be left to the politicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
It seems Djokovic went through all the proper channels to get an exemption and visa. Australia's institutions gave him a visa.
The real exemption is that a minister is disregarding Australia's institutions and cancelling his visa because "feelings".
Australia needs to take a hard look at their laws and the way they treat their citizens instead of creating a high profile scapegoat.
But most likely this is all an intentionally concocted distraction from government's failings in the current outbreak.
Why did it take a last-minute act from a minister to revoke his visa?
The reason none of this resulted in his visa being refused in the first place is that the Australian tennis folks are buddy-buddy with the Prime Minister’s folks, and the unofficial ministerial guidelines are that if there’s an event associated with government cronies then all stops are pulled.
No doubt very true for the first round. On the second when things go belly-up, as here, they'll scatter like wildebeest being chased by a lion. The second time usually brings unwelcome exposure and much else.
Meta-thought: I have started to pay attention to just how often courts strike down executive decisions because they are unlawful, and strike down new laws because they are unconstitutional or in conflict with international agreements. People tend to blame activist judges, but most of the time the judges are just trying to interpret the laws as they are written.
There seems to be an interesting dynamic at work where societies ossify through accretion of laws. As more international agreements are signed and laws are put on the books, the web of constraints that new policies must adhere to grows more complicated, and the ability by the public to get a new executive decision or a new law stricken through the court system grows greater. When a great reset happens (a revolution) you tend to see a nimble government immediately after, but also often accompanied with widespread civil rights violations, and as the laws and deals and civil rights start accreting the pace of change slows down.
Looking at my own country for example (Belgium). Back in the 60's the government could just decide to build nuclear power plants, without consulting the public at all, because there was very little in the form of environmental legislation or international agreements to bind them. Nowadays we can't legally decide to keep the plants open past 2025, because the work necessary to keep them open can't start without changing the law, and changing the law cannot legally be done without an EU-wide consultation and environmental impact study process. Any attempts to do these things anyway would quickly get blocked by the courts.
I find this increasing level of legal ossification endlessly fascinating in a somewhat terrifying sort of way. It makes me wonder whether democracy inevitably leads to incapable frozen government that needs a non-democratic great reset to wipe away the accreted laws and unlock the government's ability to get things done.
The root cause here is ideology, which can occur in both democracies and dictatorships. The two are orthogonal - democracies can both regulate and deregulate, as can dictatorships.
Djokovic did not meet the entry requirements, he knew he did not meet the entry rquirents, but he boarded the plane anyway.
The earlier visa cancellation was overturned on procedural grounds only. This ministerial intervention is a bit heavy handed, but only produces the same outcome that would normally apply to anyone in Djokovic's situation.
https://www.tennis365.com/australian-open/tennis-australia-n...
Right, it should but that's not the issue.
Right again, Australian politicians have fucked up their response to COVID on multiple occasions but so have other many countries—name one that hasn’t! And I include Serbia in that lot, it having only 50% of its citizens vaccinated; currently, it has one of the worst vaccination records in all Europe.
Leaving Australia aside for the moment, there are principles at stake here that are beyond Djokovic's case. Firstly, Djokovic brought these troubles upon himself:
1. He was fully aware of Australia’s tight COVID vaccination requirements and visa requirements long before he arrived in Australia—as his visit was a point of discussion in the world’s press weeks beforehand, yet he chose not to be vaccinated well ahead of the time of his visit. The question is why.
2. The fact that he had COVID previously is a lame excuse for thinking that he could disobey or ignore Australia’s immigration rules (no one really believes that, as he and his team would have known them to an absolute tee). It is very clear that he arrogantly and blatantly violated immigration requirements and it's widely accepted among many that he really doesn't have a valid excuse. His excuse of making a mistake simply doesn't stand up.
3. He lied about his travel status prior to traveling to Australia. To blatantly lie on any county's immigration form and one is playing with fire, especially so when the lie is easily found out (as here). Even idiots know that this is the quickest way of being refused entry to a country. Why Djokovic chose to lie and risk everything is open to question, however my opinion is that it was sheer arrogance and the fact that he is so used to getting his own way that he thought he could wing it or bullshit his way into the country.
4. Irrespective of Serbia’s position upon vaccination, Djokovic is a person of substantial means and he could have easily had himself vaccinated well ahead of time yet he deliberately chose not to. Moreover, if he is an anti-vaxxer or conscientious objector then he should have told the whole world ages ago but he chose not to. The same goes for any medical exemptions he may have had.
5. As a person on the world stage, he would have known that being unvaccinated would bring strong controversy for the very reason that he was setting a very bad example—a bad example that if followed by many—would lead to increased deaths from the pandemic. There is no doubt that among his huge followers and fan base there would be some, perhaps even many, who would follow his example and not be as lucky with COVID infection as he was. Therefore, many, many others view his stance as being selfish, self-centered and ill considerate of the lives of others. There is also the fact that Djokovic has never bothered or taken the time to explain his position. To many, this implies that he has something to hide. Moreover, it is fanciful to believe that both he and his team would have been unaware of this and the potential damage to his reputation because of his stance. Frankly, it's hard to understand why he has been so silent on the matter, perhaps he thought that the controversy would bring even more attention to himself.
6. Australia's bad treatment of Djokovic upon entry and the fact that those involved in detaining him did not afford him procedural fairness has essentially nothing to with the revocation of his visa by the Minister; they are separate issues except for the notoriety that they've brought.
7. Djokovic and his team must have been fully aware of the heightened tensions in Australia over COVID, as they've been world news for months. It is even more relevant that his destination was Melbourne, which has been the world's most locked-down city for all of the time that COVID has been active. It just isn't possible to believe that he was unaware of the political implications of this, which are that Melbournians (and many other Australians) ...
FYI, I expected flack from disagreeing diehards so I watched the voting with interest. The split in voting being almost even with the earliest ones being upvotes. I know diehards won't agree or believe what I am saying but at least I know that many others do so and that they have actually read the post despite whatever you may think.
Moreover, you've only criticized, what you have failed to do is provide a contrary opinion or debate the issues exactly as I have noted above. Nor it seems have you actually read the many other posts that agree with my opinion. QED!
But not all lives. The whole population does not need to get vaccinated. Not everyone's life is under threat. Not even close.
Omicron spreads regardless, as is clearly observable. Australia has very high vaccination rate, but the virus is everywhere. Yet, they're still worried about unvaccinated sentiment?
It's important for vulnerable and elderly people to get vaccinated because their lives are the ones that can be saved.
Novak's life is not under threat from the virus. He chose not to be vaccinated for himself. Only a fool would get vaccinated for reasons of "perception".
The WHO chief warned countries recently that "you can't boost your way out of the pandemic". The AstraZenic scientist said recently the focus for vaccination should shift to elderly and vulnerable, as it's not feasible to vaccinate the whole world every few months.
"Hey man, even though you don't need it, can you please get vaccinated to encourage others to get the jab?".... Novak said no. And now the government believes the opposite is true - that Novak will influence perception in a direction that differs to the government's policy. See, the Australian government operates on what looks good or bad. Actual substance and practicality is down the list.
Now he's labelled an anti-vaxxer icon, a trouble-maker, and then booted out of the country. All he wanted to do was play some tennis. He's an ambassador for sport, fitness, and has done some great work over the years. To see him treated like this is a disgrace.
Everything else you said is irrelevant. End of the day, Novak was treated like crap because a politician wanted to look "tough on borders". Even though Omicron is everywhere down here, spreading among the vaccinated, there's an irrational and popular response that the 5% of unvaccinated people are somehow driving the pandemic.
That's a sweeping statement, so where's your evidence - as most of the world disagrees with you - so too does the science.
Presumably, you also disagree with the health experts at the WHO? When WHO experts say that "you can't boost your way out of the pandemic" they are NOT saying "you don't need to get vaccinated." They are quite separate issues altogether.
"Novak's life is not under threat from the virus. He chose not to be vaccinated for himself. Only a fool would get vaccinated for reasons of "perception."
What gives you special insight to say that if he got vaccinated then it would be only for a 'perceived' advantage? I cannot see how you would know this - even Djokovic's Dr wouldn't know that without extensive tests. If such tests were done then he has never offered them as evidence or for public examination.
Whether your assertion is correct or not is immaterial. The real issue is that Djokovic is a leading world figure in sport so he should have lead by example but he failed to do so (for many decades, as long as we've had mass media or even longer, it's been customary and even expected of athelets to set a good example to their followers).
...And the example he should have set would have been to get vaccinated whether he needed to do so or not - as that's what celebrities do! After all, the very vast majority of the world's population accepts vaccination as a normal medical procedure - one from which everyone benefits.
As a celebrity, Djokovic failed to live up to the time-honored conventions expected of him. The fact that he deliberately bucked the system and disobeyed convention has to be one of the worst PR exercises in the history of sport for many decades and he's now paying a very heavy penalty for doing so. It's damn shame his advisors hadn't been more politically astute otherwise it's likely that it wouldn't have ended up so badly for him.
(Really I don't particularly care if Djokovic gets vaccinated or not, I'm simlpy just stating what has actually happened to him.)
"Everything else you said is irrelevant"
I'm only an unknown HN poster so what I say hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. The fact is that much bigger players with real influence think very similarly to me and to millions of others - and in the end that's all that really matterd. They have real teeth with real biting power which I don't. What's more they've shown that they are capable of exercising that power and that they've actually done so.
I've a sneaking suspicion that Djokovic was gambling that they wouldn't given his celebrity status, unfortunately for him it's a gamble he's lost.
Blaming me for what has happened won't change anything.
The sweeping statement is yours: that "everyone" needs the vaccine. You're trying to shift the burden of sweeping statements to the person who disagrees with your original sweeping assertion.
Nowhere does "science say" that everyone needs the vaccine. You're confusing policy decisions which turn into "rules are rules", which turn into "what the science says".
Are you forgetting that last September, the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization recommended against vaccinating children? If that wasn't "science" what was it? This is merely one example of science-based objection to the "need" to vaccinate everything that crawls or walks.
> "their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The committee underlined that the vast majority of children had mild or no symptoms. It also pointed out the very low risk of heart inflammation with mRNA vaccines, noting that the long-term effects of this were unknown." https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-committee-healthy-kids-ag...
Sounds like science and reason formed their opinion. But they were overruled by the higher-up policy makers and politicians.
> "And the example he should have set would have been to get vaccinated whether he needed to do so or not - as that's what celebrities do!"
Wow. "That's what celebrities do". It amazes me how easily people slip into a fabricated signalling world, where mandating "solidarity vaccination" and towing party lines is normal behaviour, even expected and mandated because "keeping people safe"!
Novak had Covid, recovered, and does not want the vaccine for himself as his symptoms were obviously mild, which is the norm for his health profile. That's his business.
If you aren't defending the right of anyone to make their own choice on that basis, it's sad. Omicron spreads regardless. The Australian government acknowledged he was not an actual risk, but they were worried about "anti-vax" sentiment from his presence in the country. The sad irony is Novak wanted to keep his vaccination status private. He would have been happy not to discuss it at all, but the media did not allow it, and a tennis villain was forged in the outrage fires.
The government admitted the reason his visa was cancelled was because they're worried about public perception. In a country with already 95% fully vaxxed, they're worried about "anti-vaxxers" drawing inspiration from tennis players! It doesn't add up unless you allow for an embarrassingly irrational government.
They knew he wasn’t vaccinated from the get go, yet gave him an exemption which they later withdrew after he entered the country.
No way to treat anyone, international tennis star or not.
It seems like states can nominate (in other immigration cases) but it's subject to central rules too https://www.migration.sa.gov.au/nomination-process/about-sta...
Edit: Just found out from another reply to one of my comments that he likely also falsified his PCR report :\",
I don't understand how anyone can defend Australia's arbritary and vengeful border practices.
If the Australian authorities didn't want him in because he is an evil anti-vaxxer then they could have just denied visa from the get go.
Trying very hard to meet the rules for entering a country, but not actually being able to meet them, does not normally give people the right to enter that country.
Note that:
> No agreement, and no decision, was made on whether the ABF officer could have cancelled Djokovic’s visa under s 116 in a watertight way. All that was found was that the process he followed was deficient enough that the original cancellation couldn’t stand.
Presumably, he is not a citizen of any of these countries. So he does not have right of entry.
Even if a visa is granted, authorities can revoke it at any time as highlighted in Australia.
It's entirely possible a negative PCR will be required for him.
Edit: i checked, and Serbia is in the "orange" zone for France, for which a negative PCR is required regardless of vaccination status:
https://rs.ambafrance.org/COVID-19-dernieres-informations-et...
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/conseils-aux-voyageurs/inf...
I don't care if he is vaccinated or not, that is his choice but I have a huge problem with the elites thinking the rules don't apply to them.
There are several high profile bankers here in Switzerland one of which was specifically praised to change the toxic culture at Credit Suisse. Yet he violated quarantine multiple times like the rules don't apply to him because it's inconvenient. How is it not inconvenient for someone making barely nothing and can't work from home.
This whole pandemic has shown people that the elites play by other rules. It is time to end this.
In the end, asking for and monitoring public opinion is an important democratic reality check.
https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1481535321204727809
On top of that taking this to a referendum would have been a waste of money and time.
As far as I understand they are doing that for election purpose, which I imagine means it's somehow a popular decision among Australian voters.
Vaccines do harm.
Another thing is, why he needs a vaccine? He had Covid, giving him long lasting immunity. Vaccines stop the spread at the same level or even less than Covid immunity, so what’s the point? Just politics, there’s absolutely no reason for someone like him to risk myocarditis, he is immune enough.
Did he die? Did he suffer severe symptoms? No.
What makes this different than a vaccinated person contracting the virus and having mild/no symptoms?
You took a vaccine that has not been updated since it was created to target the Alpha variant. He caught a previous variant, and both of you are not protected from contracting omicron. However, both of you are at far lower risk of severe illness due to the previous exposure your immune systems have to the virus. The only difference is the payload. He was exposed to an entire virus, and therefore his antibodies/t-cells are less targeted and broader. You were exposed only to the spike protein which coats the virus, and therefore have a highly targeted immune response that is less broad. So what?
The results are what matter. This is just religious posturing. You want everyone to take the same sacrament as you, regardless of outcomes.
There are multiple studies with massive cohorts (the Israeli study has 2.5 MILLION people in it) that show that this virus is TYPICAL in the sense that when someone catches it, then clears it, the immune system is behind this. Previously infected people were proven in this study to have superior immunity to delta than fully vaccinated people, and the margins were not small.
But sure, ignore that and focus on your sample size of 1 to confirm your priors.
It blows my mind how many otherwise smart people think that online comments are remotely representative of the real world. How many times have you seen a prominent online personality see racist/misogynistic comments from a handful of trolls and then claim that "racists are everywhere!"
It's the same with this.
Frankly, the biggest source of derangement is fear that is utterly detached from reality. Gallup's polling has revealed that 40% of self-identified Democrats think that 50% of people who catch COVID require hospitalization. The rest were slightly less wrong, but still far, far higher than the reality. The actual number is between 1-5%. It's the mirror image of immediately after 9/11, when self-identified Republicans dramatically overestimated the terrorism threat.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/tennis/news-local-survey-shows-n...
Djokovic is facing increased scrutiny because he is famous. Nobody would think twice about what some nobody wrote on their COVID forms.
Rules that are applied hit and miss is not the same as no rules. If the arrest rate for burglaries is 20%, does that mean that burglaries should be not a crime? Of course not.
The truth is that nobody would care about you or me being arrested for doing this stuff, or less, and languishing in border detention for months or years.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/01/time-...
The famous get more scrutiny? Well yes, "more scrutiny" is a working definition of "famous".
Yeaaaaah, I HATE it when that happens to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)
Aired January 22, 1984:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
Aired November 10, 1984:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im1aXFYoedg
...Djokovic's self-inflicted butt-hurt and heart-break must be unbearable.
Very painful. Yeah, very painful.
He might have gotten away with it, but once it was in the papers and the public eye was on him, game over.
Australia also takes border biosecurity _very_ seriously, even before the pandemic. Remember Johnny Depp and his dogs having to leave when they were smuggled in via private jet. (2) Remember the TV show (3)
I feel little sympathy for Mr Djokovic trying to bend the rules in favour (for reasons that appear frivolous: it would be trivial for him to actually just get vaccinated) and being found out. What was he thinking?
On the other hand: it does seem like various branches of the Australian government are infighting and contradicting each other. If Mr Djokovic was not good to arrive, could they not have got their act together, and told him so clearly, before he set off? It's a media-legal circus now.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
2) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-32732313
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security:_Australia%27s...
It’s not an appearance, scotty from marketing wanted the states to bear the brunt of the issue, so Djokovic was “good to arrive” in Australia, which didn’t mean he was good to arrive in Vic, or that everything was ship-shape with him playing.
That's not even required. He could have quarantine for 14 days too, but I imagine that would have been way too inconvenient for him. There didn't seem to be any reason why he couldn't of come earlier.
https://twitter.com/GrayConnolly/status/1481885230479048705
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/diplomati...
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
He got lucky with a border guard making a mistake which ultimately allowed him entry, but doing anything but cancelling his visa would have been contrary to normal treatment under the law.
Now he'll get an automatic 3 year ban, if not more due to the other laws he broke when he entered Australia.
One 'unvaxxed' entry with natural immunity is nothing as a risk to public health compared to the systemic consequences of this.
For comparison, consider convicting a murderer over illegally obtained evidence. In a properly functioning liberal democracy the murderer should go free if the police act improperly, to protect the overall system.
Yes, in many cases substantially worse.
> If vaccinated people are spreading covid, and maybe more so
That's not accurate either.
But not "more so". Not even equal. it is less, and to say otherwise is inaccurate.
"Many" is not remotely specific. It's hand-waving. "Many" people who drive cars die in car accidents. It's hand-wavy and vague, and is often an indication of cognitive dissonance to argue this way. The confidence with which these assertions are being made is unearned and unjustified.
> STATEMENT BY NOVAK DJOKOVIC 12 January 2022
I want to address the continuing misinformation about my activities and attendance at events in December in the lead up to my positive PCR COVID test result.
This is misinformation which needs to be corrected, particularly in the interest of alleviating broader concern in the community about my presence in Australia, and to address matters which are very hurtful and concerning to my family.
I want to emphasise that I have tried very hard to ensure the safety of everyone and my compliance with testing obligations.
I attended a basketball game in Belgrade on 14 December after which it was reported that a number of people tested positive with COVID 19. Despite having no COVID symptoms, I took a rapid antigen test on 16 December which was negative, and out of an abundance of caution, also took an official and approved PCR test on that same day.
The next day I attended a tennis event in Belgrade to present awards to children and took a rapid antigen test before going to the event, and it was negative.
I was asymptomatic and felt good, and I had not received the notification of a positive PCR test result until after that event.
The next day, on 18 December I was at my tennis centre in Belgrade to fulfil a long-standing commitment for a L’Equipe interview and photoshoot. I cancelled all other events except for the L’Equipe interview.
I felt obliged to go ahead and conduct the L’Equipe interview as I didn’t want to let the journalist down, but did ensure I socially distanced and wore a mask except when my photograph was being taken.
While I went home after the interview to isolate for the required period, on reflection, this was an error of judgement and I accept that I should have rescheduled this commitment.
On the issue of my travel declaration, this was submitted by my support team on my behalf as I told immigration officials on my arrival - and my agent sincerely apologises for the administrative mistake in ticking the incorrect box about my previous travel before coming to Australia. This was a human error and certainly not deliberate. We are living in challenging times in a global pandemic and sometimes these mistakes can occur. Today, my team has provided additional information to the Australian Government to clarify this matter.
While I felt it was important to address and clarify misinformation I will not be making any further comment out of utmost respect for the Australian Government and their authorities and the current process.
It is always an honour and a privilege to play in the Australian Open. The Australian Open is much-loved by players, fans and the community, not just in Victoria and in Australia, but around the globe, and I just want to have the opportunity to compete against the best players in the world and perform before one of the best crowds in the world.[1]
[1]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYnO7cDqbdj/
Weird how these heavily vaccinated countries are still getting slammed by covid. And what do you really think it must be those stubborn unvaccinated people?
We as society would be better off if we pretended it was just like the common cold, and guess what, you might get sick and die, but most likely you’ll have some cold symptoms.
If someone has a positive covid test but no symptoms, I’d rather have them over to my house than the person with a negative covid test and mild cold symptoms.
Do not think of this is binary "protect or does not" that is never the case. There are no absolutes. it's not ones and zeros, it's probabilities.
Vaccines _greatly reduce_ the chance of you getting it or spreading it, or being hospitalised with it. That is undeniable, do not obfuscate it with technically-true but actually-misleading statements.
You’re also very unlikely to die from the flu.
We’re going to have a brave new world soon, where the cities will build walls and not let anyone in and will live in their little prison apartments, getting everything shipped to them, and those outside will just be living their lives, hanging out with friends, having babies, and then they will die.
Survival is not the goal. Living is.
Now you're shifting to a different point, which is that you think that restrictions are too severe. That a perfectly valid argument to make, but I'm not going to engage with it here.
I take issue with people deliberately peddling misinformation about COVID severity, because they think it helps their argument around the response. It is intellectually dishonest, and has caused actual harm.
The virus is known not only to cause death, but to cause organ damages even with lighter case and having likely long term effects.
The whole affair isn't because he is likely a major risk to the population of Australia - that can be easily ruled out by a test, but about failing to comply with the regulations of entry, especially if there was fraud involved with his documentation.
And no one understands why he didn't get vaccinated in time. Not only would that be of personal health benefit, it would make working in his profession much easier.
Flu can be nasty. So can several other respiratory diseases like RS. If covid fatality rate is cut to 1/10 (which optimistic reports are indicating) then one can absolutely start comparing it to the flu. But the thing is: the flu simply doesn't infect such a large part of a population at once. It's not a threat to the function of society. That's what we should be afraid of now.
If this was a flu pandemic with a virus that had this infectivity, I think the situation and response around the world would be exactly the same.
The jury is still out there, but it is possible that omicron turns out to be in about the same league as some of the more dangerous flu strains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic says the Asian flu and the Hong Kong flu epidemics killed 100,000 in the USA, at times where the population of the USA was below 200 million)
We bring up how deadly covid is, and how vaccinations help reduce symptoms, but no one is pointing out the most insane thing of the blatant discrimination against unvaccinated people to be denied entry to a place without proof of vaccination, even though, vaccinated people are still spreading the disease.
I’m sorry but supporting this crap is insanity. You literally are taking a group of people and making them the dirty untouchables, saying “show me your papers” like the discriminative parties of the past. The weird thing is those who told blacks to get to the back of the bus or called the police on their neighbor for hiding a Jew in their basement also were as convinced as all these people who defend vaccine mandates.
Damn right it is, and they ought to be discriminated against for the safety of others—and that includes me!
I don't want any unvaccinated person near me because I am more likely to die as a consequence and I expect the Government to keep them away from me at all costs—for it is the constitutional duty of government to protect me as a citizen from threat and danger.
Clearly, you do not realize that this is how our governance works (or is supposed to work). (It seems that you never did civics or history at school).
To enlighten you, democratic government works on the principle of a covenant that exists between the citizenry and government, which boils down to this: 'Citizens, do the right thing and obey the laws and in return we, the government, will protect you from harm and danger'.
Government protects its citizens against external enemies with an army, it protects them against internal threats with a police force, and when an unseen pandemic virus threatens, it then takes many other measures to protect us citizens including introduction of special rules, quarantining and isolating those with disease etc.
It has always been thus for centuries across many counties. How many instances and examples would you like? Do an internet search. Just because these facts are new to you and that you have never previously experienced a pandemic in your lifetime then it doesn't mean that such action by governments is not normal practice. Well, I can assure that it fucking-well is normal practice and that you need to get used to the fact or alternatively withdraw from society altogether.
If you still do not follow then let me give you an in-your-face example that you will understand: if someone decides to walk down the main street of a city brandishing and firing an AK47 at random then citizens expect the police to arrest and demobilize him immediately (if he's unlucky then he'll likely be shot dead in the process).
Well, the situation with a person loose in society who is carrying a lethal virus that can kill those who catch it only differs by fact that the person may not know that they are carrying said virus—hence general rules for everyone apply—isolation, masks, etc., etc. Now if that person is knowingly carrying the virus and then deliberately defies authority then he/she is no different to the person who is carrying the AK47 and he/she needs to be arrested and isolated immediately for the very reason that he/she is a danger to everybody that he/she comes in contact with! QED!
You many think this is insanity but very thankfully, most people and most governments around the world disagree with your view. We're also very thankful for that fact that those who hold views such as yours are in the minority.
For your information, those who are vaccinated are far less likely to spread the virus in anywhere near the same quantities. It is not a perfect situation but it's a damned side better scenario for an uninfected person to come in contact with a vaccinated person with the virus than one who has the virus and is not vaccinated. Whatever you may think, there is absolutely no argument against this. That's why everyone is still subject to virus hygiene rules. And in case if you've forgotten, hygiene rules have existed across society long before the arrival of COVID; these new rules are only an extension thereof.
Perhaps you would like to explain why you think the way you do.
I have never had reason to flag anyone before but that statement has to be a quintessential example for why one would do so, in fact I don't think I've ever seen another statement on HN that would justify it more than this.
No, I won't flag this message because I want your post to remain there for others to see how absolutely low you have stooped. You are not only being offensive in the extreme but you are accusing me of views that I have never expressed on HN or anywhere else for that matter.
There is no way that you could ever possibly know what my views on that matter are; therefore, you are being provocative in the extreme. Nevertheless, I am still not going to bite. All I will add is that I do not hold those views and I never have. They are the antithesis of everything that I stand for.
I have stated facts about our governance (and I once studied the subject). If you want to shoot the messenger instead of accepting the facts then that is your prerogative. However, be warned, it will get you nowhere and is likely to bring you a negative reputation that you may later come to regret.
> “Damn right it is, and they ought to be discriminated against for the safety of others—and that includes me! I don't want any unvaccinated person near me because I am more likely to die as a consequence and I expect the Government to keep them away from me at all costs—for it is the constitutional duty of government to protect me as a citizen from threat and danger.”
I know governments don’t make decisions based on what is good, they make them on safety and what will keep them in office.
But now imagine I said statistically black men are more likely to be incarcerated, but the story was therefore I should keep those damn criminals away from me.
I will maybe take back my last harsh statement if you answer me this. You know someone at your work who is unvaccinated yet seems perfectly healthy, and yet he pretends he is vaccinated because his company requires it. Do you report him?
1. I would correct the accuracy of your statement: it is an unmitigated disgrace that per capita black men are still more likely to be incarcerated than are whites. (And this is in fact the case.)
It's now 157 years since the Civil War - a war in which more Americans were killed than in all other wars combined - which was fought to end slavery, yet black men are still not really 'free' when they are still discriminated in this way. Institutional racism and many other factors are at work here, and it is the failings of American white society as well as biased and unfair policing and justice systems that allow this inequity to still happen.
2. Your analogy is flawed for this reason: viruses will attack and possibility kill me for no other reason than I exist and that I am sufficiently nearby for them to do so. On the other hand black men don't do that (I feel quite safe in their company and have always done so - I could never say that about lethal viruses).
3. Whether you take back your statement not is immaterial, I'll answer your question anyway.
I can truthfully say that I do not know anyone, friends, work colleagues, etc. with whom I associate and who is not fully vaccinated (they've all been vaccinated and there's been no drama about it).
However, if I were in the hypothetical situation that you've outlined then I would tell that person to immediately get vaccinated stating that he/she is endangering my health along with everyone else that we commonly associate with. I would then state and reiterate for emphasis that if he/she did not do so forthwith then I would report him/her. (I do not believe in being a tittle-tattle unless the person is acting in an extreme or life threatening way and even then I'd always warn him/her first.)
The vaccines are not reasonably effective against transmission, especially for the current dominant strain, but also the previous ones. Vaccinated people are still infecting people that were not able to be vaccinated and other vaccinated people as well - that's actually happening at the Australian Open right now. The absolute risk reduction of the vaccines is below 3%. [0] The guilt-tripping is not based on facts or science, but on fear, the flawed idea that you could eliminate risk from life, as well as lack of respect for other people's freedoms.
[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
> It has always been thus for centuries across many counties. How many instances and examples would you like? Do an internet search. Just because these facts are new to you and that you have never previously experienced a pandemic in your lifetime then it doesn't mean that such action by governments is not normal practice. Well, I can assure that it fucking-well is normal practice and that you need to get used to the fact or alternatively withdraw from society altogether.
Witch-hunts used to be common too, but that does not mean that we should bring them back.
Perhaps so, but those who are vaccinated shed less viral load, ipso facto it's less likely that another person would be infected. Same goes for masks: viral load is attenuated when someone with COVID breathes out, if an uninfected person nearby also has a mask then there's further viral load attenuation when he/she breathes in. Morever the attenuation is not just additive but rather it's multiplicative - and that's the big deal, it's why everyone should wear masks. It's the reason why they're often mandated for everyone.
Even if vaccines are minimally effective in stopping the spread of the virus, if you then factor in masks then up goes the attenuation again (check the figures from recent research, there are quite a few papers around by now - and they'll all be saying essentially the same thing).
If vaccinated people are infecting others then one needs to ask why. First, I'd suggest that almost none of the general public are wearing the effective N95/P2 masks (they are certified and type approved by regulation). Instead, most are wearing surgical masks which are nigh on useless for COVID, especially so when huge numbers of people wear them down around their chin - their mouths may be covered but the masks are essentially useless when their noses are exposed (one has to wonder what's wrong with these idiots, either they've room-temperature IQs or a death wish).
Remember, surgical masks have no airtight seal as do N95/P2s, their original purpose was to catch spit and droplets that fall onto patients when a surgeon is talking and they work for that purpose.
Frankly, the fact that governments have failed to give proper instruction/training to their citizens about proper mask usage and hygiene (by TV ads etc.) has been an unmitigated fucking disaster. If proper, effective masking had been employed then likely 30% of the 5.4 million who've already died to date would still be alive now. (I accept that early on there was a mask shortage, this was a significant problem but there are any number of proper certified masks now available.)
Why do I care that others aren't wearing their masks properly? For the same reasons I mentioned earlier, which is when they fail to wear them in the correct and effective way then they also degrade my protection to unacceptable levels.
"The absolute risk reduction of the vaccines is below 3%. [0] The guilt-tripping is not based on facts or science, but on fear, the flawed idea that you could eliminate risk from life, as well as lack of respect for other people's freedoms."
Well, I'd suggest you're wrong with that 3% - damn lies and statistics taken out of context. Look at these realworld figures. Yes, there is breakthrough with vaccines but it's a no-brainer to be both fully vaccinated with booster and for those around you to be of the same status. With proper mask protection as well then one has a much better chance of either not catching the virus or only getting mild symptoms.
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-data
HN's comments link: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29956681
Why are people like you so damn negative about this and so deliberately intent in disrupting society when it's in such a state of stress? Why are so many of you so intent in trying to undermine and sabotage the rest of us when we&...
That was a paper from the Lancet.. Have you seen the hospitalization rate by vaccination status from Denmark? That's real world data for you. Similar pictures from Scotland. Vaccine mandates are dead, because there is no scientific basis for them.
If you cannot tolerate the remaining risk, then your best option is to stay at home. You cannot ask society to remove every ever so small risk from life for you. Besides of the fact that all the vaccines will not do that for you. You need to do your own part. Did you get your vitamin D level checked? How is your BMI, could you lose some weight maybe? Do you need to take insulin? If so, please get your levels checked. Did you get enough fresh air today?
Stay healthy.
“That was a paper from the Lancet.”
When I said ”damn lies and statistics taken out of context.” I meant it. In fact, here The Lancet article is almost the quintessential example of what I was talking about: someone cites a very reputable source to prove a point and then expects everyone to take its findings as gospel, or alternatively readers are bamboozled with science and then don't question any further—that being the deliberate intention. I've known The Lancet for years and have read articles from it in the past, and I'm well aware that it's an authoritative source of information. Moreover, I have no doubt that when the journal published the article the information therein was both authoritative and up to date—the trouble is that it was published on April 20, 2021—some nine months ago!
The information the article contains is now nigh on useless—it's nothing other than ancient history, thus it can no longer be relied upon as an accurate and authoritative source of information because the COVID situation has so vastly changed from the time of its publication. For starters, we've developed better methods of treating the disease, we’ve had time to evaluate booster shots and probably the most important factor of all, which is that we’ve seen the subsequent emergence of the most contagious strains—Delta and Omicron—and they have altered everything.
I’m far from the smartest person around but I’m certainly smart enough not to be conned this easily. When presented with a link like that or when reading scientific papers the first thing I check is the paper's submission date, I then check its publication date. Frankly, trying to trick both other HN readers and me in such an underhanded way I reckon is a pretty low act—and it's unbecoming of the usually high standard of HN posts.
However, what such behavior demonstrates is that in this highly polarized climate over COVID, people have very few qualms about twisting and distorting the truth: as the saying goes ‘if the facts don't agree with one's own worldview then alter them to suit’. Unfortunately, it's this widespread propensity to cheat and be deliberately loose with the facts that’s been one of the most significant and substantial reasons for why our response to the COVID pandemic has been—and still is—in so much of a schemozzle.
Re: hospitalization rate by vaccination status in Denmark, I have now read various docs and I’ve nothing further to add other than Denmark’s response to COVID, like almost every other country or different location across the globe, has had a very different response to the disease when compared to many other places. And that’s happened for any number of reasons, as its time of first lockdown, vaccinations rates, etc., etc., will be very different to other locations.
With respect to tolerating the risk, yes I do spend more time at home than previously. This makes sense for two reasons, the first is that it just makes sense to do so if it’s at all possible, and because of COVID I am able to do just that. The second reason is that I have yet to receive my booster (third) shot, so it’s prudent to be more careful than normal. Where I am I’...
“That was a paper from the Lancet.”
When I said ”damn lies and statistics taken out of context.” I meant it. In fact, The Lancet article is almost the quintessential example of what I was talking about: someone cites a very reputable source to prove a point and then expects everyone to take its findings as gospel, or readers are bamboozled with the science and then don't question any further—these outcomes being the original objective. I've known The Lancet for years and have read articles from it in the past, and I'm well aware that it's an authoritative source of information. Moreover, I have no doubt that when The Lancet published the article the information therein was both authoritative and up to date—the trouble is that it was published on April 20, 2021—some nine months ago! (Here, your objective may not have been to deliberately mislead but one sees so many instances of this tactic that it's hard not to believe that most of them are nothing other then a deliberate ploy to deceive.)
The information the article contains is now nigh on useless—it's nothing other than ancient history, thus it can no longer be relied upon for fact and authoritative information, as the COVID situation has changed vastly from the time of its publication. For starters, we've developed better methods of treating the disease, we’ve had time to evaluate booster shots—and probably the most important factor of all, which is that we’ve seen the subsequent emergence of COVID's most contagious strains to date—Delta and Omicron—and they have altered everything.
I’m far from the smartest person around but I’m certainly smart enough not to be conned or mislead this easily whether deliberately or otherwise. When presented with a link like that or when reading scientific papers the first thing I check is the paper's submission date, I then check the publication date.
However, what this demonstrates is that in this highly polarized climate over COVID, people have very few qualms about twisting or distorting the truth—or exaggerating for the point of emphasis: as the saying goes ‘if the facts don't agree with one's own worldview then alter them to suit’. Unfortunately, it's this widespread propensity to not to bother checking the accuracy of source material, or to cheat and be loose with the facts that’s been one of the most significant and substantial reasons for why our response to the COVID pandemic has been—and still is—in so much of a schemozzle.
Re: hospitalization rate by vaccination status in Denmark, I have now read various docs and I’ve nothing further to add other than Denmark’s response to COVID, like almost every other country or different location across the globe, has had a very different response to the disease when compared to many other places. And that’s happened for any number of reasons: the time of its first lockdown, vaccinations rates, etc., etc. are likely to be very different to anywhere else.
With respect to tolerating the risk, yes I do spend more time at home than previously. This makes sense for two reasons, the first is that it just makes sense to do so if it’s at all possible, and because of COVI...
> You may not care about your own lives but reasonable people are normally considerate of others.
Nothing but baseless accusations. I am not fighting against society, but against the tyranny of a mandate that makes no sense and can cause harm.
It is pretty simple, actually.
When facing a critical situation one need to (A) do as much as possible to rectify it, and (B) don't do anything that counter- or non-productive in the context. In other words, all resources must be thrown into useful action and none into useless. People are generally not bad judges of what is entirely counterproductive. No-one is wearing the seatbelts while riding the bicycle, or wearing condom outside of specific situation, "just in case" they may not have time to put it on. To "us" - I think I may identify with your "people like you" - the stuff from (B) is a sign that situation is not that critical, if we still can afford being frivolous. Remember, trust, goodwill and compliance are resources just like everything else.
So, in case of this cursed disease we had the following measures implemented, among many:
- 9-5 curfew in VIC, AU, summarily for 5 or 6 months out of the last 20. I'm sensing that you may be familiar with that.
- Mandatory face coverings even when solo walking in the middle of nowhere. According to Premier, "we cannot afford to discuss the alternative, too esoteric"
- 5km limit of movement. So one couldn't go for a beach walk with kids, but junkies could go to the city's "injection room" because it is "essential medical care".
All the above was imposed with total confidence ("You cannot argue with super-computer!" - literal quote from the Premier), backed by riot police with rubber bullets. And then fought tooth and nail in the court to not reveal the "health advice" behind it, because, apparently, it is "not in the public interest".
In the absence of the explanation about how the above contribute to disease protection it is not clear for "us" why it is on "us" to keep patience and be "considerate", but not on the "authorities" to do their job and think about outcome of their actions. I cannot imagine a malady that can be meaningfully alleviated with curfew or solo mask wearing. I cannot reason about lives saved by my family not going for a remote bushwalk. I can imagine that such things may be useful for intimidation and humiliation - not a good way to foster trust, isn't it? I, personally, would be more receptive to authorities' calls if they listened and, maybe, did not do things which are openly hostile and otherwise useless. You know, if they are "reasonable" and "considerate"!
I'm damn fed up with being constantly lectured at to get my booster shot and the message being made worse—rubbed in like salt in a wound—when in the next breath I'm then told that the State's vaccination centre had 50,000 spare places or whatever the number was which were not taken up—only to find that I'm still ineligible because of the ridiculous four-month rule.
Any other time a four-months interval is probably OK but not with Omicron on the loose. And having only AZ shots with Omicron about is essentially equivalent to being unvaccinated. (No doubt you've likely seen the HN story where Israel has said that with Omicron four shots doesn't seem to fully to the job.)
Stupid bastards, some of them (the decision-makers) couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag on the deck of a sinking ship. That said, many of those who are trying to pick up bits are not only working overly hard to do so, but also their situation means that they are often overly exposed to the virus. The people I really feel sorry are the overworked medical workers. I'm damn glad that I'm not in that profession.
"...summarily for 5 or 6 months out of the last 20. I'm sensing that you may be familiar with that."
Right, I do, the only effective outcome of your incarceration seems to be that you'll get into the Guinness Book of Records. Not much of a compensation is it?
Your sense is correct, I'm from the Emerald City, but it's been anything but emerald over the past year or two.
> I'm from the Emerald City, but it's been anything but emerald over the past year or two.
Just like Melbourne is not "the most livable" anymore. We are from the sewer fields on the opposite side of this "blessed" city. Emerald was once an enviable place to be, now the whole Lucky Country seems to be gone to sewers. If 15 years ago we knew what we know now about Au, we'd never set foot here. We had won GC lottery a few years ago but decided to let the application lapse - biggest regret of my life now, we could just fly off to New Hampshire :)
Maybe we can find way to an armistice, a compromise of sorts. I appreciate your responses in this thread very much. I feel sorry for your troubles with booster. I've heard just today that interval has been shortened to 3 months and they are open to shortening even more. I support your way of life, of tackling this problem and have no right to dictate or judge. I cannot support mandates under any circumstances, though. I also do not understand the desire to be boosted often, given that it has been demonstrated only marginally useful past certain point, but that's me. I believe the govt (mis)places too much faith and moral emphasis on bureaucratic rules. They are scared to admit their mistakes so much that they are trying to pitch people against each other.
I can relay the personal anecdote. Something cold-like had swiped through our family here in December, with some rather unusual (for common cold) aspects pointing that it may have been Omicron. A non-event overall, but maybe it wasn't covid. Most of our extended family is in Eastern Europe. As Eastern as Europe goes, given that Russia is arguably considered Asia. My elderly in-laws and in-law siblings had Alpha. Some have been hospitalized. My parents had Delta couple of months ago. Although they usually freak out over every sniffle, this episode was surprisingly "meh" in comparison. Many, many other relatives and acquaintances had Alpha or Delta, of varying age and comorbidities, some had it easier and some harder, but ultimately all have dodged the bullet and recovered. So this is one thing that largely informs my perception.
Interestingly, their president was often cited for "downplaying" and lack of lockdowns. I do hate the guy, he is criminal in every aspect, but (probably) because he does not need to worry about political points or votes (he can fudge as much of votes as he wishes), the overall response has been much more balanced, without unnecessary terrorizing, fearmongering or mandates. President largely distanced himself from the issue, the health agencies were left to do their job and as a result testing, tracing and isolation was pretty swift, early treatment protocols enabled and vaccines amply available to everyone who wanted. Also, "sauna and vodka" may not be a sound medical advice, but won't hurt either :). So, the situation on the ground is quite different from how it was portrayed. By contrast, in AU (and almost everywhere) politicians hijacked the response and busted it completely. They also managed to kill all joy of living. PM has made a complete mockery of a leader, not a single word or action from him had any weight. Premiers have revealed their absolutely worst side as Neo-feudals chasing popularity with peasants. In this situation my ability to reason is completely frozen, risk perception is distorted and the saddest of all, I don't see how this crisis is going to be resolved for better. All pointers are down :(
And maybe to bring my response here into "on-topic". Djokovic may have made an admin mistake on a form, but ultimately he was sent off not ...
While I would like to stay away from that comparison, there are structural similarities that cannot be denied:
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/impfausweise-r...
> Zeugen war laut Polizei aufgefallen, dass vor der Arztpraxis immer wieder Autos mit Kennzeichen aus dem gesamten süddeutschen Raum geparkt haben sollen.
> Die Polizei klingelte in den frühen Morgenstunden: Die Beamten durchsuchten in Bayern, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen und Nordrhein-Westfalen Wohnungen von mehr als 100 Menschen, die sich falsche Impfbescheinigungen besorgt haben sollen. Die Ermittler stellten bei der Aktion unter anderem Impfausweise und Smartphones sicher.
> Zudem wurde bei den Verdächtigen Blut entnommen, wie ein Sprecher der Polizei erklärte. Über einen Antikörper-Test will man nachweisen, dass sie nicht geimpft sind.
Rough summary in English: Bavarian police caught a doctor who handed out fake vaccine certs. The neighbours called the police, because they noticed unusual license plates on parking cars. The police raided 100 patients' homes and took blood samples from them.
In comparison they are allowed to have cricket matches with hundreds of thousands of spectators packing
For example, in Canada some provinces have created exemptions for people who have COVID to be able to work, while firing those who are unvaccinated... Science has been completely tossed by the wayside because of politics and our vengeful population.
Post infection immunity does not of itself prevent taking vaccine, and having both is the most protective, though their individual effectiveness is comparable [0]. Acknowledging post-infection immunity in place of vaccine-mediated immunity doesn’t make sense as a policy for the country: it doesn’t materially affect many people, it decrease the number of susceptible people at all, and the vaccines are free to all and easily available to most.
In the case of the tennis player, if the recent tests are correctly recorded, and there is significant reason to doubt that they are[1], this is the second time he has been infected with COVID [2].
None of this is to say that the Australian federal government hasn’t embarrassed itself at every opportunity with this fiasco. The visa was issued apparently in contradiction to its own rules, the player was allowed to travel anyway and treated badly, overnight staff at the airport had to decide to overrule a departmental error and trigger this circus, breaching procedural fairness in the process - and then instead of making a prompt decision, the minister waited until the Friday night TV news had started to announce the decision to cancel, in what appears to be an effort to manage the message. Atrocious. Inept. Governing by press release to distract from their failings.
0: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8475821/
1: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/novak-djokovic-we...
2: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-24/novak-djokovic-charit...
Is Pandemic Australia Still a Liberal Democracy? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
Opinion | Covid Zero Is No Longer Working for Australia https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/opinion/australia-covid-d...
Djokovic's rare victory against Australia's COVID-19 tyranny https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2022/01/12/commentary/w...
Australia once reveled in being the 'lucky country' on Covid-19. Now weary Aussies 'feel like prisoners' https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/24/australia/australia-lockdown-...
‘They’ve taken it way too far’: Australians living abroad fear being trapped if they return home to visit family https://theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/07/theyve-ta...
Australia’s draconian streak means that it is struggling to find the Covid exit lane https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/coronavi...
Australia imposes draconian measures to curb Covid-19, passes surveillance bill giving unprecedented power to cops https://www.opindia.com/2021/09/australia-introduces-draconi...
Frustrated Australians liken travel bans to 'prison state' diktats https://www.ft.com/content/9cbbc348-12c0-4d16-8f3e-0b118c392...
Australian man brutally beats a policewoman as she tries to move him on while enforcing Sydney's draconian lockdown that only allows people to leave home with a 'reasonable excuse' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9984889/Australian-...
The 10 most bizarre coronavirus pandemic rules around the world https://www.traveller.com.au/the-ten-most-bizarre-coronaviru...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't know what you mean by "confronted", but usually people have in mind something like the online callout/shaming culture. We don't want that there. Snark, name-calling, flaming, putdowns, and so on, are against the HN guidelines. They're also not in your interest, because (a) they don't persuade, and (b) they discredit your view in the eyes of neutral observers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29931805.
Your comment was a noticeable step into tedious, predictable flamewar. Please keep that kind of thing off HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/tennis/news-local-survey-shows-n...
My comment was also making the same point about the rest of the world opinion on Australian govs rules, that are affecting the player. And was clearly better backed, below, than the original comment
But imagine next time there is a covid post, someone comments:
"Many Americans think Fauci is a grade-A dickhead. It is politically unpalatable for him to be allowed to stay"
Even if there was a point there, it could clearly have been expressed in an acceptable way. And probably will in the future again
I agree with you that the GP should have used a different phrase there, but this sort of thing is a matter of degree, and what you posted was several degrees further into flamewar. Please don't do that, even when another post includes a provocation. That's in the guidelines too, btw:
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."