Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has written to President Joe Biden to ask him to end the “absurd” ban on tennis number one Novak Djokovic from entering the United States to play at the Miami Open due to his vaccination status. Here is the letter in full.
March 7th 2023
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden
President of the United States
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Northwest Washington, DC 20500Dear President Biden:
It has been reported that Novak Djokovic has formally applied and been denied permission from your administration to enter the United States so that he may compete at the upcoming Miami Open tennis tournament. This denial is unfair, unscientific and unacceptable. I urge you to reconsider. It’s time to put pandemic politics aside and give the American people what they want — let him play.
While Mr. Djokovic is surely a supreme competitive threat to his fellow tennis professionals, his presence in our country poses no meaningful health or public safety risk. I note that since the onset of COVID-19, Mr. Djokovic has visited the United States at least twice – including once during your presidency – without any apparent health incident. It is also not clear to me why, even by the terms of your own proclamation, Mr. Djokovic could not legally enter this country via boat. Please confirm no later than Friday March 10th 2023 that this method of travel into Florida would be permissible.
Furthermore, even as you enacted the Proclamation on air travel that remains in force to this day, your administration pointedly allowed thousands of unvaccinated migrants to enter our country through the southern border. In sum, the current ‘travel ban’ as applied to Mr. Djokovic and presumably millions of other potential unvaccinated foreign visitors seems completely ungrounded in logic, common sense, or any genuine concern for the health and welfare of the American people.
Affectionately known as ‘Tennis’s Fifth Grand Slam’, the Miami Open is the second most popular tennis event in the United States and routinely attracts hundreds of thousands of fans as well as premier tennis professionals from around the world. Novak Djokovic, as you surely know, is the most accomplished tennis player in history and the reigning top-ranked player in his sport. As a result of his illustrious career and philanthropic efforts, he has a strong following of loyal fans in the United States. There can be no question that his inclusion in the Miami Open would be a tremendous boon both for this treasured tournament and the tennis community at large.
The only thing keeping Mr. Djokovic from participating in this tournament is your administration’s continued enforcement of a misguided, unscientific, and out-of-date COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreign guests seeking to visit our great country. American tennis legend John McEnroe recently termed this restriction “absurd”. He was quite right to say so.
We are now three years since the onset of COVID-19, and we have learned many valuable – and often painful – lessons during that time. For one thing, it is now clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are not as effective as initially advertised. A new study in the Lancet has found that natural immunity is at least as effective as the Covid vaccines. (“Our analysis of the available data suggests that the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines.”) Furthermore, data also suggest that exposure to COVID-19 is now significantly less likely to result in hospitalisation or fatality. Finally, not only is the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine now in question, but recent scientific studies have identified serious potential health risks from the vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General has issued guidance recommending against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old – precisely the cohort of Mr. Djokovic.
Here in Florida, we took a leadership role in rejecting vaccination mandates. Since November 2021, it has been illegal for businesses to require their patrons to be vaccinated against COVID-19. I am proud of these efforts, which unquestionably promoted personal liberty and economic growth without exposing our citizens to any substantiated harm. Although it has taken some time, most of the rest of the world has now come to recognise COVID-19 vaccination requirements as obsolete. At present, it appears that the United States is one of only a handful of countries that requires foreign visitors to have received a COVID-19 vaccination. Indeed, in an interview on September 18th 2022, you personally declared that “the pandemic is over”, and your administration has already communicated to Congress that the COVID-19 emergency will formally end on May 11th. The time has come to give up the fiction that Covid vaccines remain a necessary tool to promote public health.
Mr. Djokovic is an extraordinary tennis player who should have every right to compete in this year’s Miami Open, which will commence on March 20th. I respectfully ask you to grant his requested exemption so that he may delight and inspire tennis fans in Florida and around the Nation.
Sincerely,
Ron DeSantis
Governor
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I’ve said it before, America is a world laughing stock atm and only desantis can bring it back again!
It is a laughing stock. Sadly however the institutionalised wokeism, anti white racism, BLM pandering, LGBTQALPHABETSOUP worshipping, endemic corruption spewing out of Washington DC and the White House especially exerts a huge gravitational pull on the rest of the world, especially the UK and the EU. They are going down, and will take us with them, like crabs in a bucket.
It looks like the spineless downvoter wants to go down with the wokerati. That’s quite appropriate when you think about it. It has a certain karmic symmetry.
Djokovic is only healthy because the jabbed have protected him.
So say some of my acquaintences. It’s painful beyond words.
Ugh. I feel your pain.
I bet they washed and quarantined their shopping.
I know people who put their shopping bags containing food and goods in the garage for four days after buying them. They loved the lockdowns. I think it gave them some sort of structure to their lives. A lot of people are very scared of liberty!
The most depressing part of this whole, sorry debacle is that you’re absolutely right. There are very many people who would prefer to be told that they must go on isolating, masking, getting boosters and all the other nonsense….because they don’t know what to do with their liberty.
They are the ones who will use “We were just following orders” as an excuse when they are judged by history.
Indeed, they are terrified of liberty. Also, the lockdowns gave some semblance of meaning to their otherwise utterly meaningless lives. Quite sad, really.
And probably sprayed it with Lysol too.
Acquaintances. Goodness knows where that e came from. I am taking myself off into the desert.
It’s stupid beyond words. Djokovic had a certified case of COVID (ie, illness and a positive test) and no amout of vaccination of other people improves the immune response of someone who wasn’t vaccinated against a pathogen.
It’s also self-defeating nonsense: For this to be true, Sars-CoV2 must have been eradicated by vaccine-induced sterilizing immunity. That’s obviously not true (two n-times vaxxed people personally known to me had COVID recently) but assuming it was true, any future COVID discussions would obviously be moot. Arguing about what could have happened in the past if something that didn’t happen in the past had happened in the past is a waste of time. The past is over.
Indeed. The slothful induction is strong with those folks. Anytime someone says something to that effect, I lose at least 10 IQ points, lol.
I’m not a fan of politicians or public leaders in principle, but I can’t help having a tremendous amount of respect for DeSantis.
Put it this way, I wish he was rhe PM in our country.
IMO he would make a great POTUS.
Novak is the gift that keeps on giving
How is the U.S. getting away with this discriminatory nonsense?
Are U.S. citizens banned from other countries dependent upon their jab status?
Consider this information from the U.S. CDC:
Two doses is considered ‘fully vaccinated’, or one dose of an accepted single-dose vaccine, even though they’re ‘recommending’ up to five doses/boosters now to be fully jabbed! So the two or one dose ‘fully vaccinated’ status is rubbish…
Meanwhile…
And…
So unvaccinated U.S. citizens can come and go as they please, and immigrants…but other foreigners are discriminated against.
Again, how does the U.S. CDC get away with this vindictive and discriminatory policy, which makes a laughing stock of any supposed ‘scientific’ basis?
The US can’t legally stop its citizens from entering the country. To stop them would be equivalent to putting them in exile which would be a legal bomb.
During all the covid madness, none of countries could force conditions for reentry even though they pretended they could.
The whole thing was a morass of insane policies.
The Morrison Government in Australia imprisoned most Australians within the national border for almost two years, and Australians outside the country were forbidden to return for a period. State borders were also closed on the back of a few ‘cases’ aka positive tests, preventing free movement and association. People were imprisoned for crossing borders ‘illegally’…but was any of this assault on Australians’ liberty legal?
It is unbloodybelievable what happened in Australia, at the behest of treacherous ‘medical officers’ and politicians.
The damage done to this country by these traitors, to our society and the economy, is incalculable.
People were set against each other based on jab status.
Critical thinking people who refused to consent to the often mandated jabs were discriminated against and ostracised. An apartheid was created where people were denied their livelihood for refusing the jabs – No Jab, No Job – and denied entry to restaurants, entertainment, sports, and travel etc – No Jab, No Life.
People were told a tissue of fear-mongering lies to make them comply.
Our supposedly free societies have been debased by this treachery, time for the perpetrators to be brought to account.
The US “gets away with it” because the US Federal Administration will be given “cover” by the corporate media.
But looking at the information from the U.S. CDC noted above:
It’s complete bullshit!
What the hell is happening in our world that the U.S. CDC isn’t being called out by all and sundry on this travesty?
Seriously, the U.S. is banning foreign travellers like Novak entering the country, while U.S. citizens and immigrants are treated differently…this is soooooo not about a ‘virus’…
Forget China and Russia, it’s the rotten U.S. that’s the most dangerous country in the world…and so much more needs to be exposed about this country’s messing around with stuff in laboratories…e.g. the scandalous gain of function research on H5N1 that Fauci funded via the NIAID, which emerged in 2011. Way past time to revisit that debacle.
Fauci…what a piece of work!!!
Re the H5N1 gain of function debacle, I sent letters challenging this potentially dangerous research, questioning if it contravenes the Biological Weapons Convention, see:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
re Opposition to Lab-engineering of Potentially Lethal Pathogens,17 December 2012
See more on this webpage:
Arrogant scientists and dangerous ‘gain-of-function’ experiments – a letter to the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB)
Corrected link:
A submission to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
re Opposition to Lab-engineering of Potentially Lethal Pathogens
‘high-quality mRNA vaccines’ has to an oxymoron. I’d hate to think what a low-quality mRNA ‘vaccine’ would be like.
Mr Biden’s response.
Eff Off Ron.
Top Man and a breath of fresh air in an ever dystopian world.
How did Mike Yeadon manage to get into Florida then? Anyone know? He didn’t take the death jab did he?