Novak Djokovic: what the Serbian tennis player really said about vaccines

The number one in world tennis, Serbian Novak Djokovic, is in the midst of a great controversy after having his visa revoked to participate in the Australian Open that begins on January 17.

The athlete received an exemption from the vaccination requirements against covid-19, something that aroused the ire of Australians and a political and diplomatic fight that for the moment is pending resolution.

But What did Djokovic really say about vaccines?

The 34-year-old Serbian star has not officially disclosed his coronavirus vaccination status, but has made clear his opposition to vaccines in the past.

In April 2020, long before covid vaccines became available, Djokovic said he was opposed to vaccination.

He later clarified his position by admitting that he is not “an expert” and noted that keep an “open mind”But you want to have “the option to choose what is best” for your body.

During a Facebook Live, he explained that he would not want to “be forced by someone to get vaccinated” to travel or compete in tournaments.

He added that he is curious “about well-being and how we can boost our metabolism to be in the best shape to defend ourselves against imposters like covid-19.”

In Djokovic’s native country, where it is estimated that less than half the population has the full vaccination schedule, his comments were criticized at the time by the government epidemiologist, Predrag Kon, who accused the tennis player of creating “wrong ideas.”

Questionable science

Djokovic has a track record when it comes to questionable scientific theories.

In his book “Serve to win”, Djokovic described how in 2010 he met with a nutritionist who asked him to hold a piece of bread in his left hand while pressing on his right arm.

Djokovic claims that he felt much weaker while holding the bread and cited this as proof of his gluten intolerance.

And during an Instagram Live, he claimed that positive thinking can “clean” contaminated water, adding that scientists “have shown that molecules in water react to our emotions.”

According to Dr. David Nunan, a researcher at the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, “on the balance of probabilities it is highly unlikely that these statements are true, at least not under the current conventions of scientific theory and practice ”.

Earlier in the pandemic, Djokovic’s wife shared the 5G conspiracy theory on Instagram. His publication received the disinformation label from the social network.

Anti-vaccine activists

Defended by his followers and by Serbian politicians, Djokovic’s visa dispute has mobilized anti-vaccine activistsAlthough the tennis player has never explicitly supported them in their most extreme positions.

In Telegram groups in which anti-vaccine theories are promoted, he is presented as a hero and a symbol of freedom of choice.

Twitter users have been grouped under hashtags in support of the player and to call for a boycott of the Australian Open.

An influential account linked to conspiracy theories denounced that the athlete is “a political prisoner” and posed: “If this is what they can do to a multimillionaire superstar, what could they do to you?”

The importance of vaccination

The controversy coincides at a time when Australia is going through the worst wave of covid-19 with more than 70,000 new cases reported until January 6.

Australia requires all foreign visitors to be double vaccinated before entering the country. Furthermore, more than 90% of Australian adults have received double vaccinations.

The question that arises then is why so many people who are vaccinated continue to be infected with covid, especially now with omicron being the dominant variant.

It is not just Australia. The trend has been replicated in other parts of the world, including the UK, where the number of infections was seen folded every other day at the beginning of December.

This can be taken by anti-vaccine groups as proof that immunizations are not effective in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

So far it is known that vaccines do not prevent infection; but they have shown that they are very good at preventing severe disease. This protection is just as important, if not more so, because it keeps most infected people away from hospitals and death.

Against the delta variant, the protection of the vaccines against severe illness and death from covid was more than 90% with relatively little decay of protection over at least five months after two doses.

Recently, Renato Kfouri, specialist in infectious diseases and director of the Brazilian Immunization Society, explained to BBC Brazil that the first wave of vaccines is aimed at reduce the risk of developing the most serious forms of the disease.

“Vaccines protect much better against more severe forms than against moderate, mild or asymptomatic forms of COVID. The more severe the result, the greater its effectiveness ”, summarizes Kfouri, director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations (SBIm).

This same reasoning applies to the flu vaccine, which has been available for decades.

The dose, which is offered every year, does not necessarily prevent infection with the influenza virus, but it avoids the frequent complications in the most vulnerable groups, such as children, pregnant women and the elderly.

And the data shows that vaccines are playing that role very well: according to the Commonwealth Fund, dosing against the coronavirus prevented, as of November 2021, a total of 1.1 million deaths and 10.3 million hospitalizations only in the United States.

Another analysis, carried out by the University of Cambridge, England, showed that if an individual is infected with omicron, the risk of hospitalization is a 81% lower if you have taken all three doses of the immunizing agent.

“The vaccine manages to transform covid into a simpler disease, which can be treated at home most of the time,” says Kfouri.