The tennis great, who was kicked out of Australia last year for transgressing a similar, albeit withdrawn, vaccination rule, has conceded he won’t be travelling to the US next week to compete in the US Open, owing to the Biden administration’s insistence foreigners be “fully vaccinated”.
“Sadly, I will not be able to travel to NY this time for US Open,” Mr Djokovic, who had been hoping the US might amend its rules before the top competition began on Monday, said on social media on Thursday (Friday AEST).
Sadly, I will not be able to travel to NY this time for US Open. Thank you #NoleFam for your messages of love and support. â¤ï¸ Good luck to my fellow players! I’ll keep in good shape and positive spirit and wait for an opportunity to compete again. 💪🼠See you soon tennis world! 👋ðŸ¼
— Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) August 25, 2022
“Good luck to my fellow players I’ll keep in good shape and positive spirit and wait for an opportunity to compete again,” the 21-time grand slam champion added.
At least Novak Djokovic, who has had Covid-19, looked up the fine print. On a European holiday earlier this month I excitedly passed through security at Lisbon international airport en route to Casablanca, for a three-night escape to the Moroccan capital.
“I need to see all passengers’ vaccination cards,” the TAP Portugal stewardess announced as we began to board the plane.
I rummaged around to produce my easily forgeable US government vaccine card, where a barely legible squiggle indicated I was “fully vaccinated” against Covid-19 in April 2021, with the one-shot Johnson and Johnson shot.
“Sir you need to be boosted, the Kingdom of Morocco requires boosting within four months to enter,” she said. So back to plague-riddled Lisbon it was for me, with only the hotel and airfare receipts to show for my African adventure.
The Kingdom didn’t care that I’d survived Covid-19 already, and so enjoyed decent natural immunity, or even whether I was vaccinated against tuberculosis, which is a problem in Morocco.
But heaven forbid I wasn’t boosted with a vaccine that doesn’t prevent transmission or infection, and may even hasten illness, according to no less an authority than the German health minister, who dropped a bombshell this week, declaring vaccination helped limit the spread of Covid because the vaccinated became sicker sooner.
“Vaccinated people develop symptoms quickly and stay home, while unvaccinated people develop symptoms more slowly,” Karl Lauterbach said in German at a press conference.
Djokovic’s (and my) ban highlight how Covid-19 restrictions have become increasingly divorced from scientific and practical reality, and like all government regulations, create constituencies, political and bureaucratic, that seek to keep them in place.
“In 2021, when everybody had to show proof of vaccination, Djokovic could play. In 2022, with restrictions rolled back, he is barred. This is a decision rooted not in science but in pandemic puritanism,” wrote Oliver Brown, chief sports write for The Daily Telegraph in London, on social media, a sentiment any sane person should share.
The requirement for foreigners — but not Americans — to show proof of vaccination must be the most ridiculous and vexatious rule on the US government’s books.
In February, before the latest summer and sixth (or is it seventh?) wave of Covid-19 infections, the US Centre for Disease Control estimated that almost 60 per cent of the American population had been infected with the virus.
Elite US cities, in stark contrast to Portugal, London, Sardinia, and the French riviera (places where I wasn’t deemed a threat to public health), are particularly addicted to Covid-19 theatre.
Masking, testing, isolating, and vaccine passports have become, over 900 days into the pandemic, rituals, forms of religious observance that signal faith in The Science.
First Lady Jill Biden, quadruple-vaxed and continually masked, tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, only a few days after emerging from isolation after her first, largely symptomless, bout of the disease.
“Because he is a close contact of the First Lady, the president will mask for 10 days when indoors and in proximity to others,” the White House said in a statement, as Mrs Biden went back into isolation again (with no symptoms at all this time).
”We will also keep the President‘s testing cadence increased and continue to report those results”.
Unlike prayer, Covid restrictions leave a destructive trail of unintended consequences on holiday-makers, sports stars, families who are still unable to reunite with each other, and even the injured.
I accidentally cut my face in London on a window. Fortunately, I discovered an medical establishment called Dam Health about 500 metres away; surely a doctor there would have a quick look to see if I needed stitches, I thought, as I made my way holding a towel to my bleeding face.
“We’re only doing Covid-19 testing, sir,” I was told.
Psychiatric testing might be more appropriate, I thought to myself.
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Novak Djokovic isn’t the only one to have had his travel plans thwarted by increasingly absurd Covid-19 rules.