CV and mad panic behaviour

[DJC]

Cirsten Weldon, an author, “influencer”, QAnon conspiracy theorist and committed COVID-denier and anti-vaxxer has died of COVID.

[kruddler]

Cirsten Weldon, an author, “influencer”, QAnon conspiracy theorist and committed COVID-denier and anti-vaxxer has died of COVID.

We should do a Pagan-esque 'Hall of shame' for all the covid denier/anti-vaxxers who die from covid.

[Mav]

There are a few sites dedicated to exactly that. One site was the subject of an article in Slate and I posted about it a while ago:

Interesting article. I’m clearly not as angry as many in the US, but then again Covid and its enablers aren’t anywhere near as bad in Australia:

The Unbelievable Grimness of HermanCainAward, the Subreddit That Catalogs Anti-Vaxxer COVID Deaths, Slate.

It is cruel, a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude. This is a place where deaths are celebrated, and it is not the only one. While endless ink has been spilled on the anger of Trump voters and Fox News viewers and QAnon adherents, there are other angers that haven’t been nearly as well explored. The exhaustion and fury doctors and nurses feel, for example, as they deal yet again with overwhelmed ICUs. Instead of being hailed as heroes, this time around they’re risking their lives to serve while walking through anti-vax protesters and being called murderers or worse by misled family members demanding or indeed suing for sick unvaccinated relatives on ventilators to be dosed with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or vitamin C. There is the anger of family members of those without COVID who are dying or sicker than they should be because treatment was delayed or denied to them at dozens of hospitals that had no beds available. There’s the frustration of parents trying to keep their children safe, the constant, destabilizing calculations and adaptations people are forced into when (for instance) the governor of Texas prohibits schools from taking safety measures and then two teachers at a single school die, forcing closures once again. There’s the run-of-the-mill anger of those weary of living under pandemic conditions and demoralized—in the most literal sense—by the selfishness of their compatriots.

Subscriptions to the HermanCainAward subreddit are increasing exponentially, from 2,000 subscribers on July 4 to 5,000 at the beginning of August to more than 100,000 on Sept. 1 to 243,000 Friday to 276,000 today. If that rate is any indication, rage is growing toward anti-vaxxers deliberately prolonging the pandemic out of an anti-social and deadly understanding of their rights. Now, it’s true that not everyone on the subreddit assents to its spiteful premise: One exhausted nurse wrote a long post about how much one of her anti-vax patients suffered, as an attempt at counterbalance. She acknowledged her own compassion fatigue but also urged readers to think harder about how we got to this sorry pass. Plenty of the discussions do orbit around that basic question. But most of the comments are angry. A collection of screenshots generally elicits a common sentiment: The person got their just desserts.

There's another one which deals with the evangelicals who've died after fighting a holy war against Covid warnings.

[Mav]

It's a lot easier to feel sorry for Renata Voracova than it is Novak Djokovic. She's a 38 year old journeywoman doubles specialist with a lowly ranking of 81 in the world after a career high of 29. Her career prizemoney is just $US1.8m which sounds good until you consider all the travel & accommodation expenses she's paid over the years. Novak has earned $US153m, leaving aside the offcourt earnings he rakes in.

She was waived through on arrival and played a match before being detained by the ABF after the Djokovic saga started. She ended up in the same refugee hotel that Djokovic is staying in and has decided to leave Australia forthwith as she believes she won't have time to properly prepare for her matches now.

She says she was going to get the vaccine but unfortunately caught Covid before she did. Given her lowly status, there's no chance Tennis Australia went out of its way to bend the rules for her, and as she'd be operating on a shoestring budget there's little doubt she needed to rely upon Tennis Australia to organise her paperwork. I hope Tennis Australia reimburses her for her expenditure on this ill-fated trip.

[LP]

It's a lot easier to feel sorry for Renata Voracova than it is Novak Djokovic. She's a 38 year old journeywoman doubles specialist with a lowly ranking of 81 in the world after a career high of 29. Her career prizemoney is just $US1.8m which sounds good until you consider all the travel & accommodation expenses she's paid over the years. Novak has earned $US153m, leaving aside the offcourt earnings he rakes in.

She was waived through on arrival and played a match before being detained by the ABF after the Djokovic saga started. She ended up in the same refugee hotel that Djokovic is staying in and has decided to leave Australia forthwith as she believes she won't have time to properly prepare for her matches now.

She says she was going to get the vaccine but unfortunately caught Covid before she did. Given her lowly status, there's no chance Tennis Australia went out of its way to bend the rules for her, and as she'd be operating on a shoestring budget there's little doubt she needed to rely upon Tennis Australia to organise her paperwork. I hope Tennis Australia reimburses her for her expenditure on this ill-fated trip.

Very true, although it's perhaps not quite as bad as you suggest, most of the big tournaments cover basic flights and accommodation, or at least partially reimburse the players with an allowance.

I agree, there is no chance she got special treatment, but then if she had Djoker would have a more legitimate claim so they are probably very lucky they didn't bend the rules for her.

Personally, I've no problem with Djoker playing unvaccinated as long as the tournament obeys suitable isolation conditions and he completes the mandatory quarantine. However, I can see where it becomes unfair to those who have lost their job because they are not vaccinated, some people have no choice as isolation is impossible in many service roles.

[Mav]

Voracova must be stabbing her Novak doll with needles right now. In a parallel universe in which Novak isn't a notorious anti-vaxxer, she's preparing for the Aus Open right now.

[ElwoodBlues1]

No special rules for sportspeople, you get vaxxed or you don't enter Australia.
Liam Jones at least was honest enough to tell the truth about his status. Novax as he is now known should have pulled out of the tournament initially and saved everyone the hassle.

[capcom]

No special rules for sportspeople, you get vaxxed or you don't enter Australia.
Liam Jones at least was honest enough to tell the truth about his status. Novax as he is now known should have pulled out of the tournament initially and saved everyone the hassle.

The court of public opinion will be interesting to see should he be granted Federal permission.

[Mav]

It'll be interesting watching Scotty from Marketing trying to deflect blame. No doubt, the Govt had the ability to exclude Djokovic and didn't.

Of course, he'll try to blame the Vic Govt but the Vic Govt was entitled to use the same framework as it uses for all other events. Indeed, it would have created a storm if the Vic Govt had set separate rules for the AusOpen as this would have been used as proof of special treatment for elite tennis players (even if they were in some ways harsher). That framework applies to those who are in the country either because they live here or because the Federal Govt has allowed them in.

Two expert panels – set up by the Victorian Health Department and Tennis Australia – deemed Djokovic eligible for an exemption to play at the Open. However, this exemption applied only to his participation in the Open and held no legal status at the federal border where Commonwealth officials applied their own test to his exemption claims for a visa.

We need them: Tennis Australia pleaded for vaccine exemption for players, The Age.

It would be amusing if ScoMo tried to argue that Victoria should have fallen in behind the Fed Govt. After all, Victorians haven't forgotten that when we were trying to keep Covid out of Victoria, ScoMo paid little heed to our stricter requirements. He resumed international travel over pleas from Victoria and other states and then said it was Victoria's problem if travellers coming into Sydney immediately hopped onto domestic flights to Melbourne.

But a major problem for ScoMo will be that the Fed Govt never seemed to deal with the Vic Govt over the AusOpen issue. As the above article notes, the Acting Premier, Jacinta Allan, has given TA a please explain, saying TA didn't advise the Vic Govt about Hunt's comments. I'm sure if Hunt had involved the Victorian Govt, we would have heard about it by now. It almost looks like Hunt proceeded on the basis that this was a Fed Govt issue.

It also looks like TA won't accept the blame:

Tennis Australia’s response to those reports, sent at 10.14pm on Friday, said: “We reject completely that the playing group was knowingly misled. Informing players they could get into the country on a medical exemption was taken from the Smart Traveller website that Greg Hunt directly referred us to.”

The article also notes tennis officials have privately fumed that there was further correspondence after the letters Hunt relies on and the Fed. Govt didn't make its position clear.

It's also hardly surprising Djokovic's proof of prior infection isn't all that great:

Three sources familiar with Djokovic’s paperwork, speaking anonymously to detail confidential documentation, said evidence to support the player’s exemption was “minimal” and was only supported by one doctor.

[Mav]

And BANG!

Federal government officials told Tennis Australia the Victorian government was responsible for assessing vaccine exemptions, according to leaked correspondence that shows Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton declared people with a prior infection could enter Victoria quarantine-free.

The new letters also show federal officials declined to check exemption applications in advance of travellers boarding planes, which could have avoided the need for Novak Djokovic’s paperwork to be examined for the first time only when he arrived at Melbourne Airport.

Leaked letters: Federal authorities advised vax exemptions were Victoria’s responsibility, The Age.

It looks like ScoMo's pathological drive to avoid taking responsibility for anything is about to deliver Djokovic a win in Court. WTF? How the hell did his government refuse to scrutinise visa applications which were clearly its responsibility?