Coronavirus - latest global news - discuss Irish news the other thread

Yep, complete clown. I hope Australia do the right thing and kick him out.

In fairness he was giving an exemption & was told he was ok to travel. There where also 26 other tennis players who applied and a few others were given the same exemption however none of them have been treated the same.....
 
In fairness he was giving an exemption & was told he was ok to travel. There where also 26 other tennis players who applied and a few others were given the same exemption however none of them have been treated the same.....
If he fulfilled the medical criteria he'd still have the exemption but obviously he didn't he hasn't.
I'm delighted for him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke. He's a clown, spouting his anti-vax nonsense.
 
Maybe we should dump all the anti-vax and the unvaxcinated people onto there own little island..Australia comes to mind
 
If he fulfilled the medical criteria he'd still have the exemption but obviously he didn't he hasn't.
I'm delighted for him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke. He's a clown, spouting his anti-vax nonsense.
I've no time for him either. But why was he given an exemption and then all of a sudden not. Has a reason been given for his deportation? If he has lied then of course kick him out but if he has supplied real proof he should be allowed play like the other players who got exemptions.
 
I'm glad he was treated like anyone else who didn't have their papers in order.
 
I've no time for him either. But why was he given an exemption and then all of a sudden not. Has a reason been given for his deportation? If he has lied then of course kick him out but if he has supplied real proof he should be allowed play like the other players who got exemptions.
He got the exemption based on having his paperwork in order when he got there. It seems he didn't have said paperwork in order.
 
I've no time for him either. But why was he given an exemption and then all of a sudden not. Has a reason been given for his deportation? If he has lied then of course kick him out but if he has supplied real proof he should be allowed play like the other players who got exemptions.

The exemption was from the Tennis organisers not the Melbourne authorities / border control afaik. While no doubt the border control paid a lot more attention to his case because of public opinion overnight - that public reaction was also self inflicted as he has spouted about having the exemption on Instagram before leaving.

Just as an example - the Australian Tennis require a vaccine to even attend as a spectator unless you have an exemption .One of the grounds for an exemption was having been infected already in the last 6 months. However prior infection isn't valid for an exemption for entry to Victoria. So it could be that he didn't have the required documentation. Or it could be that the exemption to play / attend wasn't valid as an exemption to enter Victoria

More fun to come - the next major is the French Open. Good luck with that one
 
The exemption was from the Tennis organisers not the Melbourne authorities / border control afaik. While no doubt the border control paid a lot more attention to his case because of public opinion overnight - that public reaction was also self inflicted as he has spouted about having the exemption on Instagram before leaving.

Just as an example - the Australian Tennis require a vaccine to even attend as a spectator unless you have an exemption .One of the grounds for an exemption was having been infected already in the last 6 months. However prior infection isn't valid for an exemption for entry to Victoria. So it could be that he didn't have the required documentation. Or it could be that the exemption to play / attend wasn't valid as an exemption to enter Victoria

More fun to come - the next major is the French Open. Good luck with that one
And he will have plenty of volunteers to give him the jab before the French open ...
 
Novax is still 2.8 favourite to win the Aussie Open. So the smart money thinks this is all a storm in a teacup. If you think he is going to be deported short him at 2.8. Even if not deported he still might lose the thing.
 
Djokovic has a match point versus the Australian government it appears...

WORLD TENNIS NUMBER one Novak Djokovic won a shock victory in his bid to remain in Australia today, overturning the cancellation of the tennis star’s visa on Covid-19 health grounds and ending his detention. It was an extraordinary setback for the Australian government... But the Australian government’s lawyer told the court that Immigration Minister Alex Hawke may still decide to use his “personal power of cancellation” despite the player’s victory.

 
I'm sure we've all seen the NHS Dr tell the Health secretary that he does not want to get vaccinated and is not happy about the mandatory requirement however what I thought very interesting was the nurses reaction when the health sectary asked them. It's terrible that people are too afraid to speak up.
 
I'm sure we've all seen the NHS Dr tell the Health secretary that he does not want to get vaccinated and is not happy about the mandatory requirement however what I thought very interesting was the nurses reaction when the health sectary asked them. It's terrible that people are too afraid to speak up.
I didn't see any of that.
There are a half a million nurses in the UK. Some of them are bound to be idiots.
There are over 300,000 doctors in the UK. Some of them are also bound to be idiots.
To be clear, I am saying that, as this stage, anyone who doesn't accept that vaccines reduce your risk of serious disease and death and that outweighs the tiny risk the vaccines pose, is an idiot. We've seen idiot professors here and idiot doctors and idiot nurses who refuse to get vaccinated. People are entitled to be idiots. It's one of the great things about living in a free country.
 
Here is the link if you're interested:

Okay so an anaesthetist is taking a position against the experts (he's not an expert). I stand by my point above.
 
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To be clear, I am saying that, as this stage, anyone who doesn't accept that vaccines reduce your risk of serious disease and death and that outweighs the tiny risk the vaccines pose, is an idiot.
Your unequivocal view notwithstanding, I think it's valid to ask questions about the vaccines.

They were produced at breakneck speed. The more traditional vaccines (viral vector\protein subunit\inactivated virus) haven't had stellar performance against the virus. The efficacy of the newer mRNA type drops off alarmingly also. That Israel are on their fourth jab wouldn't instil confidence. The vaccines don't seem to be doing all that much re Omicron, perhaps reducing the already mild symptoms. The risks appear to be small but the vaccines have caused damage to some and deaths. Obviously the time-frame did not allow for longitudinal studies so we won't know for a while whether the vaccines cause any long-term issues.

While the vaccines may reduce serious disease and death in the overall population that may well make little difference to young, healthy people. It seems to me that the vaccines offer little to young children as Covid doesn't seem to be much of a risk for health younger kids. Do you view parents who decide not to vaccinate their young children to be idiots also?
 
So if they choose not to to vaccinate their young children against Covid on the basis that it poses little risk to them (and perhaps also because it may be morally questionable to vaccinate those not really at risk while many at risk people in other jurisdictions can't get a vaccine) then maybe they're not necessarily idiots?
 
Your unequivocal view notwithstanding, I think it's valid to ask questions about the vaccines.

They were produced at breakneck speed. The more traditional vaccines (viral vector\protein subunit\inactivated virus) haven't had stellar performance against the virus. The efficacy of the newer mRNA type drops off alarmingly also. That Israel are on their fourth jab wouldn't instil confidence. The vaccines don't seem to be doing all that much re Omicron, perhaps reducing the already mild symptoms. The risks appear to be small but the vaccines have caused damage to some and deaths. Obviously the time-frame did not allow for longitudinal studies so we won't know for a while whether the vaccines cause any long-term issues.

While the vaccines may reduce serious disease and death in the overall population that may well make little difference to young, healthy people. It seems to me that the vaccines offer little to young children as Covid doesn't seem to be much of a risk for health younger kids. Do you view parents who decide not to vaccinate their young children to be idiots also?

"Just asking questions" - the comfort blanket of the uninformed (whether deliberately or not).

The vaccines in question were not developed at "breakneck" speed. I watched the Dimbleby lecture where Prof Sarah Gilbert (led the Oxford vaccine team) described how the work on the Oxford and MRNA vaccines had actually been going on for years. What had been realised after MARS and Ebola outbreaks was that there was a risk of more new viruses and the traditional vaccine development approach was too slow to respond. So they had been developing a new vaccine delivery infrastructure that would then allow for quicker development and testing of vaccines - so the delivery mechanism was already tested and safe and therefore just needed to be adjusted for a new virus. COVID was sequenced within days of appearing and the initial vaccine was ready for testing within a month or two. She also explained that none of the testing was skipped -what allowed quicker deployment was that they were funded to prepare for the following stages before completion of prior stage - so for example, mass production facilities were being prepared before testing was complete. If anything was done at breakneck speed it was political and funding decisions, not a reduction in scientific rigour. The MRNA approach was an alternative but similar logic to the Oxford one

The reduction of efficacy is due to the amount of variation and Omicron has significant variations. She also made the point that they could produce a variant of the vaccine to a new variant virus within 3 months but that there is always a balance between higher efficacy versus production delay to switch. So if the vaccine is reasonably effective on a new variant, it is more efficient to keep using the current stocks. It may be that they end up producing a new booster adjusted for Omicron

Omicron has resulted in much higher hospitalisation for younger populations - where before there was a low probability of illness it seems that is higher now.
 
So if they choose not to to vaccinate their young children against Covid on the basis that it poses little risk to them
Then they are deliberately choosing the option that carries a higher degree of risk to their children. If they don't care enough about their children to have worked that out by now...

...then maybe they're not necessarily idiots?
A colleague of my wife was recently faced with the parents of a child now suffering from post-covid MIS-C, they will sadly admit they were idiots whose decision will likely have lifetime consequences for their child.
 
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