So now we know how to get around Australia's vaccination rules. You need to be box office. You need to be rich, famous and privileged.
Oh, and you need to have a valid medical exemption. It's just this status seems rather easier to come by if you fit one of the aforementioned categories.
The little people cannot so much as peer at one of Melbourne's 35 outside courts without a jab but Novak Djokovic can walk to the heart of the arena, through the heart of the city, footloose and vaccine-free. After months of sparring, Australia caved.
Novak Djokovic will play at the Australian Open vaccine-free after being granted an exemption
The Serb - and world No 1 tennis player - confirmed he was 'heading Down Under' on Tuesday
Djokovic, whose scepticism around Covid prevention and vaccination has already seen him host one super-spreader event, has now been allowed to become the poster boy for backward conspiracy theories and alarmist nonsense.
If he wins the first Grand Slam of 2022 - which is likely as he has already won nine of the last 14 - it will be viewed by his disciples as further evidence that vaccines weaken and resistance creates the strong.
Australia, which has bullied its ordinary citizens with unrelenting fervour, will have given a public platform to a man who, in the fight against Covid, appears to work for the other side. They have made Djokovic's stance, his views, a cause célèbre. And now they will put him centre stage. They should be ashamed.
Tournament director Craig Tiley will not be, of course, because he never is. In 2018, of all the female tennis players in the world, he chose Maria Sharapova to parade the cup at the opening ceremony.
She was ranked 47th in the world at the time, and her most recent contribution to the competition had been a failed drug test. In 2020, he had Sharapova on official duty again. By then she was ranked 147 and needed a wildcard invitation to play at all.
Tiley might be considered somewhat in thrall to celebrity, or maybe he is just a man trying to plug a hole. The Australian Open lost £56million last year, and burned through reserves of £45m doing so. There is a whiff of desperation around the welcome now being afforded Djokovic.
He is not alone, of course. Other players have also received medical exemptions. But as the world's finest tennis player Djokovic's story travels further. It hardly helps,
