Novak Djokovic's treatment in the days since he arrived in Australia has seemed harsh to those who think money and fame should buy you a free pass for anything. To many of the rest of us, it has felt like karma.
I respect Djokovic’s right not to be vaccinated but I don’t respect him. Not any more. When I look at Djokovic, I don’t see the best men’s tennis player in the world. I see a dangerous fool.
I realise this will sound overly emotional to some people, and I apologise for that, but it is hard to be measured about something when your dad’s death certificate has Covid-19 typed in the box that tells you what killed him. So even though my father was coming to the end of his life before the pandemic hit, I suppose I have a heightened interest in this debate around Djokovic. Millions of other people do, too.
Novak Djokovic should either have got jabbed or he should have stayed away from Australia
It is the right of people like Djokovic not to get vaccinated. It is the right of others to feel seething anger at the selfishness of that. I know too many vulnerable people who still stand to suffer from the actions of people like Djokovic. I know too many bereaved sons and daughters dotted among hundreds of thousands of grieving families in this country who have lost loved ones, some of them because of the actions of people like him, who have an extremely limited grasp of the concept of a wider responsibility to a community.
This is a man, a phenomenal tennis player admired and adored by millions of fans across the world, who has form in this area. And we’re not talking about the kind of form that might win him the Australian Open this month. It is the kind of form that makes him a repeat offender, a man who organised a super-spreader tennis event, the Adria tour, in June 2020.
Djokovic does not actively promote anti-vax views but this is a player who tested positive for Covid a second time last month and still turned up for a photo-shoot the next day and posed for pictures without a mask. This is a man who blamed his agent for concealing the number of countries he had visited in the build-up to his arrival in Melbourne last week. This is a man who thinks rules are for the little people.
The world No 1 has been practicing, but his participation in Melbourne is still in doubt
It is very unlikely he is in danger himself, of course. He knows that. He is supremely fit and he is young. He’s all right, Jack. But what about the people he came into contact with during the time he had Covid-19 last month?
Or the time before that, in 2020? They had families, too. Maybe he came into contact with people who had relatives who might have got seriously ill with the virus.
The irony, of course, is that having had Covid so recently — if his timeline is to be believed — Djokovic poses very little direct health threat to anyone in Melbourne for
