Tennis world number one Novak Djokovic has been told by rival Rafael Nadal that he only has himself to blame for being denied entry to Australia over his vaccination status. The Telegraph has more.
Nadal took aim at his long-time rival, who was facing being deported on Thursday for failing to provide “appropriate evidence” to warrant him being granted a medical exemption to play at the Australian Open.
The Spaniard, who is tied with Djokovic and Roger Federer on 20 grand slams and could now be the only one of the three at the first major of the year, also implied those who refused to be jabbed were selfish.
Nadal said: “If he wanted, he would be playing here in Australia without problems. He makes his own decision. Everyone is free to take their own decisions, but then there are some consequences. I don’t like the situation that is happening. In some way I feel sorry for him. But at the same time, he knew the conditions since a lot of months ago, so he made his own decision.”
Djokovic has repeatedly refused to reveal whether he had been inoculated against COVID-19 but has previously stated he was “opposed” to vaccination.
Stressing the importance of players being jabbed, Nadal said: “We have been going through very challenging [times] and a lot of families have been suffering a lot during the last two years with all the pandemic.
“I believe in what the people who know about medicine say, and if the people say that we need to get vaccinated, we need to get the vaccine. That’s my point of view.
“I went through Covid. I have been vaccinated twice. If you do this, you don’t have any problem to play here. That’s the only thing.
“The only, for me, clear thing is if you are vaccinated, you can play the Australian Open and everywhere, and the world in my opinion has been suffering enough to [not] not follow the rules.”
Nadal’s comments come as Downing Street uses the incident to encourage everyone to get vaccinated.
Asked about concerns sportsmen are not getting jabs, the [Downing Street] spokesman said: “We absolutely think that everyone should get vaccinated and get boosted, regardless of profession.”
Pushed further on the Djokovic developments, the spokesman declined to comment directly on the incident but noted U.K. Government scientists have addressed concerns from professional sportsmen.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “We do absolutely want to see everyone get vaccinated.
“We know from a raft of evidence that it is completely safe regardless of your profession and that everyone should come forward, both to benefit themselves and to benefit others.”
The claim that the vaccines are “completely safe” is blatant misinformation as Government advice itself is clear that the vaccines come with risks of serious side-effects. The U.K. Yellow Card adverse event reporting system has so far clocked up over 1,314,659 adverse reactions including 1,822 deaths associated with the coronavirus vaccines, one of the highest profile being BBC presenter Lisa Shaw. A number of elite sportsmen have reported serious adverse reactions that have affected their performance and there are worries about a spike in heart attacks among professional footballers.
The claim that the vaccines benefit others is also misleading given studies which show vaccine effectiveness dropping below zero (meaning the vaccinated are more likely to be infected) and U.K. Government data likewise showing infection rates much higher among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated in many age groups.
Nadal’s blaming of Djokovic for not being vaccinated and referring to “consequences” is perverse and sinister. Why should there be consequences for not being vaccinated against a disease that is no real threat to you, particularly when you have already had it, as Djokovic appears to (it is reported his exemption was based on having Covid recently). It is disturbing that when there are draconian laws requiring young, healthy, even recovered people to be vaccinated with novel vaccines of questionable safety profile in order to enjoy basic freedoms, people blame those who resist going along with the madness rather than the illiberal rules themselves.
Djokovic was in any case abiding by the rules by applying for an exemption, which he had been granted, though it is now in dispute. Jamie Murray complained that Djokovic’s exemption represented special treatment that players with a lesser status wouldn’t have received, but it is now being reported that three other players had already been granted entry to the country on the same kind of visa. This makes it looks not so much like special treatment as special mistreatment to make an example of him as a high profile opponent of mandatory vaccination.
Djokovic is currently in a Melbourne hotel that his mother has called a hotel “for immigrants, full of fleas with horrible food”, where he will spend the next three days before the next hearing in his effort to overturn the ban on entering Australia is held on Monday.
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Tell Nadal and Downing Street to bugger off and mind their own business.
Just because Nadal can play a decent game of tennis doesn’t mean he’s the brightest button in the box.
The best test… If anyone has symptomatic covid, they will be flat out in bed with fever and exhaustion, and the last thing they will want to do is play top level tennis at 100mph!! Let Novak play!!
Yes as the number of young athletes collapsing on the pitch continues to rise and 13 year olds are dying of heart attacks and defibrillators are suddenly installed in every school. Folks, wake up. Kids don’t get heart attacks. Nor do healthy athletes in the numbers that are occurring now. There is a 40% rise in deaths ages 24-60, claims the ceo of a very large life insurance company in the USA (Indiana). He made the statement publicly three days ago.
these vaccines appear to be a concern. Do your homework. Read the literature. Do not take this or any government’s word.
I’m eagerly waiting for when Djokovic releases results of tests he took in Australia, showing that he is covid-free, while at the same time, tournament organisers and Australian officials are twisting themselves into pretzel shapes, trying trying to explain why 50% of the competitors that were allowed in (fully vaxxed and boosted, negative tested on entry, and masked up at all times, natch) are being tested positive for the lurgi.
I’m not a fanatic Djokovic fan and do think he has some funny ideas but in this case he is right and I’m pleased he is standing his ground. (Rather sitting around in a flea-bitten pseudo jail.)
“A number of elite sportsmen have reported serious adverse reactions that have affected their performance and there are worries about a spike in heart attacks among professional footballers.”
For an up-to-date list (“412 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 242 Dead, After COVID Shot“) see the following:
https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/
I suppose this is a big pharma selling tactic, trying to recruit various sportsmen to speak for their products (and Lenny Henry). Whether it will counteract all those collapses of sportsmen, or change the fact that “vaccine” discrimination is effectively racist is another matter.
I especially love the “you are completely free, but there are consequences to your bad decision” part of the narrative. It has this sadistic ring of adding insult to injury, it’s essentially the same argument as when a rapist tells his victim that it’s her own fault for chosing to wear skimpy clothes.
Funny enough, it’s also the same argument used by “conservatives” to defend their ideas (about rape victims) and by “progressives” to [rightly] ridicule “conservatives” who resort to it. It’s a great proof of how authoritarian thinking is exactly the same on both sides of the spectrum.
Nadal: ““The only, for me, clear thing is if you are vaccinated, you can play the Australian Open “
Really? Tell that to Jeremy Chardy you ignorant, conformist bell end
Ivermectin help reduce the severity of vaccine adverse reactions. If someone is suffering from a post vaccine syndrome, FLCCC clinicians and a growing network of colleagues have reported significant clinical responses to ivermectin. Because Ivermectin has 5 different mechanisms of action against coronaviruses, the medication is also effective with the different variants of the virus. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Novax Jock O’Vitch, the Scots-Irish tennis superstar, is a very naughty boy. He will be unpersonned soon.
So Gavrilo Princip is no longer the most notorious Serb? The Archduke of Australia has been saved from a germ-warfare assassin hell-bent on bringing ruin to Oz. (draft press release for Morrison, may need some tidying-up).
‘Nadal’s comments come as Downing Street uses the incident to encourage everyone to get vaccinated.’
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? 🙄 As for saying the vaccines are completely safe, well that’s utter bullshit as they themselves, responded in an email to me today about the petition to open an inquiry into the harms caused by vaccines, said the vaccines were “apparently” safe!
Get vaxxed so you can REALLY live the tyranny you know is real!
Turnip head paella.
Funny how they don’t say that it’s the only thing that will keep us all safe against this deadly pandemic, the virus that is ‘ripping through’ the population, laying low countless thousands and leaving bodies pilled up in the streets. Suddenly, it’s about something quite different – being ”allowed” to do something.
Wedge/thin end.
Will we be expected to show sympathy if Nadal is unfortunate enough to collapse from a very rare heart condition during the australian open?
Personally, I’m all out of sympathy, empathy whatever for all these pro vax mouthpieces.
Same here.
Any pro sportsman who has gone along with the injections without doing their own research has only themselves to blame.
Nadal should STFU. He made his choice, let Djokovic do the same.
It’s astonishing that “Downing Street” can keep coming out with this lying tripe. Then again, it’s a mystery why so many gormless people wolf it down.
Nadal may be a fine racketeer, but a crap propagandist. I hope that neither he nor his jabbed playmates come to grief, but something may concentrate their minds.
Have been a long time lover of Djokovic on and off the court and this has merely confirmed his integrity, insight, wit and brilliance as a tactician and survivor. Best of luck with those shots Nadal – you might have noticed the stats on athletes having heart attacks (all post shot) has skyrocketed. You deserve better.
You are his lover?
Please tell more, especially the on court bits
I used to be Nadal’s lover.
Absolute respect for the man
Meanwhile after slating Novaxx for not sacrificing his health, play had to be halted at another match when on of the players was struggling to breath.
Wow, who would have thunk it.
I hate to say it, but it’s going to take a vaccinated athlete with world stature dying on national TV to break through the news blackouts and maybe change the entire narrative and get people to question themselves and these authorities. This person will be a martyr to a great cause … That is, if his surviving family members raise hell, which they probably won’t. And I’m sure the mainstream media will ignore the story or come up with some cover story. So we actually need two ingredients: 1) A death of a high profile athlete and 2) A high-profile news outlet that actually confirms he almost certainly died because of his vaccination.
I have had measles. mumps and German measles. My blood was tested and found still to have immunity a number of decades on. Why is it suddenly not available to have blood tests to show whether or not you have the superior immunity that comes from having had Covid19, in which case you do not -similarly-need the vaccine and can save the NHS the unnecessary cost?
I would have thought governments would have welcomed this, had they been playing with a straight bat, because it makes complete sense. This can only lead me to conclude that they are not playing with a straight bat, at all.
Whether he plays or not, Djokavic wins!
What a creep Rafael Nadal is. What kind of scumbag jumps to say the victim deserves it when a fascist regime stomps on a person for having the guts to speak out and resist?
Good on you, Novak Djokovic – your health is much more important than hitting a ball with a fancy stick over a rope. Long may you thrive.
Ignorant paella.
So presumably if someone takes the jab and suffers a serious reaction they would now have basis of a law suit against the Downing Street spokesman, if they could show they took it following official assurance that there was no risk?
Is it just me or do the “authorities” look increasingly desperate to keep the line? To me the wheels are falling off.
I’m not sure. All we can do is keep on making a huge fuss and spreading the facts, e.g. the Canadian Covid Care Alliance’s excellent presentation on the Pfizer trials.
Also in the UK there’s *never* been a mandate since 1853 (childhood smallpox) and I don’t see under the common law how there could ever be one even if the stuff was safe and effective. Yet it kills more than it saves.
That has been my reading for the last week I’d say. And I’m NOT a natural optimist! I think the dam’s about to burst. Rogan helped. Oh and also the abject complete stark raving madness of current Western policy making.
Talking of ‘sceptical celebs.’, what’s Clarkson’s view been?
I heard him say that when he had it he just rested and read a book for a few days … that doesn’t really sound like a deadly disease in a 60 y old man.
Since then I’ve heard nothing one way or the other. He’d help the sceptic cause if he’d make some ‘choice’ comments, basically that the last 2 years have been a disaster and have damaged some peoples’ lives for good.
You can hear it in their voices, it’s slipping away from them. Low numbers getting boosted, masks disappearing fast, football managers having ‘it’ 3 or 4 times. Even the dumbest are starting to wake up, just look at Piers Morgan LOL.
Does anyone else find it strange that Novak Djokovic is actually called “Novak” (as in “no vac”) given his stance on the issue?
No Vac Docs a Witch.
What is Nadal famous for? His double-backhander.
The Swiss guy I take is neutral on all of this?
“Nadal Parera is a Spanish professional tennis player.”
There’s an adjective in above quote which might explain why Rafael Nadal would, against an abundance of oppositional evidence, say:
“I believe in what the people who know about medicine say, and if the people say that we need to get vaccinated, we need to get the vaccine.”
True story:
Back in the day I had dealings with a particular company that imported a product from continental Europe into the UK.
This product had various components and each product might have been assembled in either one of two locations in Europe. There was an assembly plant in Germany and another in Spain. The end product that reached the British Isles could have been assembled in either one of these locations.
Customer’s bought these products and for some they worked flawlessly, but for others they didn’t work properly at all, parts came loose and they malfunctioned.
A bit of head scratching went on as to why some of these products failed and practically fell-apart, while identical ones worked fine.
The answer to this conundrum was that it was the products which had been assembled in Spain… Read more »
“Completely Safe”
❤ ❤ 😻 😍 How bad is your batch?! 😀 😸 ❤ ❤
😋 Check it out at http://howbad.info 😎
😉 Just enter the batch number on your vaccine card and see how many people died or got injured from the batch you just took! 😇
✨ 🥰 Yay! 😊 ✨
The link below is easily one of the best pieces I’ve read skewering colleges for their harmful and non-sensical COVID mandates. It’s not completely off topic as the author is writing about the absence of real risk to healthy young people (like, say, tennis players).
FWIW, the author is a professor at Johns Hopkins Medical Hospital so he is no “non-expert.”
I particularly like his lede, which questions why so many parents and students continue to trust the officials and faculty at these so-called “institutions of higher learning.” I hope this one makes the “Daily Round-up.” Here’s the first few paragraphs:
“Universities are supposed to be bastions of critical thinking, reason and logic. But the Covid policies they have adopted—policies that have derailed two years of students’ education and threaten to upend the upcoming spring semester—have exposed them as nonsensical, anti-scientific and often downright cruel.
Some of America’s most prestigious universities are leading the charge.
At Georgetown University, fully vaccinated students are randomly tested for Covid every week. Using a PCR test, which can detect tiny amounts of dead virus, asymptomatic students who test positive are ordered to a room in a designated building where they spend 10 days in… Read more »
Punishing people for the crime of being younger than the people who hand out the punishments is completely atrocious. No one doing that should ever be considered worthy to be a member of a civilized society.
Nadal, if you followed the doctors who say you’re at risk from these ‘vaccines’, would you follow their advice?
Hilarious-Nadal who consistently has never followed the rules regarding the length of time between points,esp between 1st and 2nd serves both serving and recieving.
Never liked his tedious game and arrogant nature.Hopefully a qualifier will turf him out early
Good point.
Or better still, he collapses on court.
I would literally piss myself with laughter.