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More fuel to the fire - no reason he should get a pass when other people can't. Sorry - it's only tennis and he's trying to cheat to get in. This isn't to po

More fuel to the fire - no reason he should get a pass when other people can't. Sorry - it's only tennis and he's trying to cheat to get in. This isn't to political leaders talking about the fate of their people.

joshenberg 5y ago
Especially in tennis where tournaments are designed to be 'open', that is semi-professional and allowing for amateur entrants. If he were professionally affiliated with a particular country, that might be an extenuating circumstance. But as he is a private citizen seeking glory in AU, it's inappropriate to make an exception in this case.
- mfer 5y ago
  The exception was a process provided by the Australian Open tournament. More than 20 people applied for it and a handful of people were approved. Should all of the people who got exceptions be turned away now? Was the Australian Open tournament wrong for providing this process? Was Novak wrong for taking advantage of a process provided by the tournament?
  - megous 5y ago
    > Should all of the people who got exceptions be turned away now? Some (or maybe all) already were.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > in tennis where tournaments are designed to be 'open' I thought 'open' meant 'open to people from outside the host region' not 'open to amateurs and professionals alike'?
  - boringg 5y ago
    Opens are for amateurs - see the golf open tournaments as well. Its kind of like open enrollment
    - Scarblac 5y ago
      The tennis Grand Slams used to be for amateurs only (I think the Olympics were the same). Professionals used to be looked down on as selling out to money etc. Eventually tournaments became Open as they also allowed pros in.
      - boringg 5y ago
        My bad I thought the opens were amateur and professionals. I.e. giving the amateurs a chance to take on the pros.
  - tzs 5y ago
    OT: what sports and games have the most open major "Open"s? Are any more open than US chess? The US Open in chess is open to anyone who is a USCF member, which is anyone who wants to buy a membership ($45/year, $40 for seniors, $27 for young adults, $20 for youth, $85 family plan covers parent and children under 19 and college age students up to 24, $55 family plan that covers all children under 19 in the same household). Obtain a USCF membership, pay the US Open entry fee, and you are in. When you play in the open, regardless of whether you are an experience pro grandmaster or some newbie who barely knows the rules that entered on a whim, everyone is in the same group. It uses the Swiss system rather than a knockout system, so every plays the same number of games. There's really not much difference as far as the tournament goes between that top grandmaster and that newbie, except that the press and spectators will be a lot more interested in watching the grandmaster play, so the top boards will usually be set off in some place making it easier for observers, and they might be fancy wood boards and set instead of the paper or vinyl boards and plastic pieces most players will be using, and maybe nicer chairs. If that newbie wins enough to be a leader, that newbie will be playing on those top boards. If that grandmaster has some bad games and ends up in the middle of the pack, they will be down playing with the hoi polloi. BTW, if you win the US Open you are automatically invited to the US Championship, an invitation only round robin tournament. Every other year the US Championship also serves as the "zonal" tournament for the US in the World Championship cycle. Doing well in your zone's zonal earns you a spot in the FIDE World Cup. Doing well in the World Cup earns you a spot in the Candidates Tournament. Win that and you are the next challenger for the World Chess Championship. In chess then if you sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for winning the next 50 games of chess you play you should be able to become World Champion! 9 to sweep the US Open, 11 to sweep the US Championship, 8 for the World Cup, 14 for the Candidates Tournament, and 8 for your match with Carlsen for the Championship. Is there any other individual sport or game where selling your soul gets you such a short path from complete unknown to World Champion?
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      Golf has a shorter path to "world championship." Compete in local qualifiers, then sectional qualifiers, and then win the British Open ("The" Open). I suppose you'd need a some number of rounds (6? 20?) before then to build up an official handicap first, so that they'd let you into the local qualifier, or you could fake those.
- darrenf 5y ago
  The "open era" in tennis refers to the opposite situation: where the grand slam tournaments are open to professionals. Amateurs were always allowed in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tennis#Open_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tennis#Open_Era
azangru 5y ago
> and he's trying to cheat to get in Sorry, I don't really follow those sports news, so maybe I missed something; but how did he try to cheat? He applied to Australian Open for an exemption, and was granted an exemption [0]. How is this cheating? [0] - https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1478329044156309505 https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1478329044156309505
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  From the looks of it, it's because he may have lied about his activity and the documents may also be false. Seems that he didn't want to take the vaccine so instead he got a backdated positive test because the rules allow for unvaccinated people with recent positive tests to have more freedom of movement.
- toddmatthews 5y ago
  his exemption was based on the fact of him having the virus and being recovered. But based on the twitter thread they are suggesting the positive test happened after the negative test.
- PopeUrbanX 5y ago
  [dead]
- jmcs 5y ago
  He got an exemption the Victoria state rules, this is the same as you getting a paper from Florida saying you can travel freely there and trying to enter the US based on that paper.
  - mfer 5y ago
    His exemption was a process provided by the Australian Open tournament. More than twenty people applied for it and only a handful got the exemption. The process they outlined was a blind process (those evaluating the applications did not know who the players were) and two stage. It's not like he tried to cheat the tournament or Australia with this. He was following a provided process. Note, this is separate from any notion of him cheating or not with the process. Just saying it doesn't appear he tried to sneak in by bypassing the processes. The reason he's being looked at instead of the others who went through this process is likely that he posted about it on social media.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Sorry - it's only tennis Real question is why are the Australians running an international tennis competition in the first place?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ls15 5y ago
  In a country that currently has rules that exclude the current world No. 1...
- gertrunde 5y ago
  I'd imagine the same reason why anyone runs an international tennis competition? Although in this case at least they've been doing it for 117 years... so they do have precedent on their side.
  - xienze 5y ago
    I think the parent comment’s question is more along the lines of “if Australia is so deathly afraid of Covid, why are they hosting an international sporting event at this particular time?”
    - gertrunde 5y ago
      Ah, I see, that does make a bunch more sense!
    - mdoms 5y ago
      They're taking suitable precautions, such as requiring entrants are fully vaccinated.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        > such as requiring entrants are fully vaccinated That's not what they're doing, which is the whole point of this story and controversy. But anyway a tennis competition should be the very bottom of the list of anyone's priorities.
Scoundreller 5y ago
This is basically the Canada problem: we have tough rules for 95% of people, but we exempt 5% from it, so every variant quickly ends up here uncontrollably anyway. Windsor Ontario has something like 1000+ health care workers commuting to the Detroit area that have been exempt from most entry test/vaccination/quarantine requirements. Same for truckers and flight crews and ~30 other groups. I think this is only changing next week with an actual vaccination requirement. If you want to go for covid-zero, go for it, but if you half-ass it, you get all the disadvantages without any of the advantages.
- frandroid 5y ago
  I agree with you that Detroit/Windsor has been a sieve when it comes to sealing cases outside of the country, but considering that we've never come anywhere close to COVID zero, it's a minor concern at this time.
- rhino369 5y ago
  Your entry tests aren’t strong enough to prevent 100% of cases anyway. You need a strict, no exceptions quarantine that lasts long enough to cover any incubation period. And even then, workers at the quarantine site might get infected. Probably not even worth attempting given our border has so many illegal crossings.
  - atkailash 5y ago
- nradov 5y ago
  A vaccination requirement wouldn't do anything to control the spread of every new variant. The primary benefit of vaccination is preventing severe symptoms; it doesn't prevent infection or transmission. Covid-zero is impossible in any open society. China is still pursuing a covid-zero policy, but even with locking down entire cities and imposing travel bans they're far from zero.
  - aix1 5y ago
artursapek 5y ago
If the vaccines don't prevent spread or contraction of the virus, why are people upset with him standing up against these pointless vaccine mandates?
- samarama 5y ago
  Because boostered individuals have a drastically reduced infection risk by 80%. On top of they are 66% less infectious when being infected since they clear the virus twice as fast and 40% of their virus particles are dead. This gives them an overall reduced risk of infecting someone else by 93%. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.24.21266831v1.full https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.24.21266831v... https://news.arizona.edu/story/covid-19-vaccine-reduces-severity-length-viral-load-those-who-still-get-infected https://news.arizona.edu/story/covid-19-vaccine-reduces-seve...
  - logifail 5y ago
    > This gives them an overall reduced risk of infecting someone else by 93% Q: How long does that reduced risk persist for? Then read this story: We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months, says JCVI chief https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/03/fourth-covid-jab-cant-vaccinate-planet-every-six-months-says/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/03/fourth-covid-jab... "Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said there was no point in trying to stop all infections, and that 'at some point, society has to open up'"
  - wackro 5y ago
    Thanks for the info and those links. There hasn't been nearly enough public information on _how_ jabs help. The rhetoric is always 'get jabbed because it protects health services', which despite being true, leaves a lot out. It also doesn't help that a lot of easily accessible information is contradictory and focuses on considering one's own heath rather than everyone's.
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  They don’t prevent the spread or contraction of the virus but they reduce the transmission period and greatly reduce the severity of the disease if a fully vaccinated person contracts Covid-19. They may not be a panacea but they’re a very useful tool in dealing with Covid-19 and keeping people out of hospital unnecessarily.
neither_color 5y ago
I agree he shouldn't get a pass but for different reasons. If the wealthy can get exempted from onerous burdens like quarantining or waiting 3 weeks + 14 days to become vaccinated then they will never remove that burden for the rest of us.
- boringg 5y ago
  Which wealthy are you speaking of? I haven't heard of wealthy people getting this kind of treatment...
- hirako2000 5y ago
  It's a great point. We could turn things around and point out that if a questionable and unexpected restriction can be imposed on a wealthy, given what's at stake, and knowing all the press coverage it would generate, then they would never hesitate to jeopardise important stakes for the rest of us due to some bureaucratic interpretation of the current travel restrictions, interpretation of course hardly possible to challenge.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

joshenberg 5y ago

Especially in tennis where tournaments are designed to be 'open', that is semi-professional and allowing for amateur entrants. If he were professionally affiliated with a particular country, that might be an extenuating circumstance. But as he is a private citizen seeking glory in AU, it's inappropriate to make an exception in this case.

mfer 5y ago
The exception was a process provided by the Australian Open tournament. More than 20 people applied for it and a handful of people were approved. Should all of the people who got exceptions be turned away now? Was the Australian Open tournament wrong for providing this process? Was Novak wrong for taking advantage of a process provided by the tournament?
- megous 5y ago
  > Should all of the people who got exceptions be turned away now? Some (or maybe all) already were.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> in tennis where tournaments are designed to be 'open' I thought 'open' meant 'open to people from outside the host region' not 'open to amateurs and professionals alike'?
- boringg 5y ago
  Opens are for amateurs - see the golf open tournaments as well. Its kind of like open enrollment
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    The tennis Grand Slams used to be for amateurs only (I think the Olympics were the same). Professionals used to be looked down on as selling out to money etc. Eventually tournaments became Open as they also allowed pros in.
    - boringg 5y ago
      My bad I thought the opens were amateur and professionals. I.e. giving the amateurs a chance to take on the pros.
- tzs 5y ago
  OT: what sports and games have the most open major "Open"s? Are any more open than US chess? The US Open in chess is open to anyone who is a USCF member, which is anyone who wants to buy a membership ($45/year, $40 for seniors, $27 for young adults, $20 for youth, $85 family plan covers parent and children under 19 and college age students up to 24, $55 family plan that covers all children under 19 in the same household). Obtain a USCF membership, pay the US Open entry fee, and you are in. When you play in the open, regardless of whether you are an experience pro grandmaster or some newbie who barely knows the rules that entered on a whim, everyone is in the same group. It uses the Swiss system rather than a knockout system, so every plays the same number of games. There's really not much difference as far as the tournament goes between that top grandmaster and that newbie, except that the press and spectators will be a lot more interested in watching the grandmaster play, so the top boards will usually be set off in some place making it easier for observers, and they might be fancy wood boards and set instead of the paper or vinyl boards and plastic pieces most players will be using, and maybe nicer chairs. If that newbie wins enough to be a leader, that newbie will be playing on those top boards. If that grandmaster has some bad games and ends up in the middle of the pack, they will be down playing with the hoi polloi. BTW, if you win the US Open you are automatically invited to the US Championship, an invitation only round robin tournament. Every other year the US Championship also serves as the "zonal" tournament for the US in the World Championship cycle. Doing well in your zone's zonal earns you a spot in the FIDE World Cup. Doing well in the World Cup earns you a spot in the Candidates Tournament. Win that and you are the next challenger for the World Chess Championship. In chess then if you sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for winning the next 50 games of chess you play you should be able to become World Champion! 9 to sweep the US Open, 11 to sweep the US Championship, 8 for the World Cup, 14 for the Candidates Tournament, and 8 for your match with Carlsen for the Championship. Is there any other individual sport or game where selling your soul gets you such a short path from complete unknown to World Champion?
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    Golf has a shorter path to "world championship." Compete in local qualifiers, then sectional qualifiers, and then win the British Open ("The" Open). I suppose you'd need a some number of rounds (6? 20?) before then to build up an official handicap first, so that they'd let you into the local qualifier, or you could fake those.
darrenf 5y ago
The "open era" in tennis refers to the opposite situation: where the grand slam tournaments are open to professionals. Amateurs were always allowed in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tennis#Open_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tennis#Open_Era

azangru 5y ago

> and he's trying to cheat to get in Sorry, I don't really follow those sports news, so maybe I missed something; but how did he try to cheat? He applied to Australian Open for an exemption, and was granted an exemption [0]. How is this cheating? [0] - https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1478329044156309505 https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1478329044156309505

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
From the looks of it, it's because he may have lied about his activity and the documents may also be false. Seems that he didn't want to take the vaccine so instead he got a backdated positive test because the rules allow for unvaccinated people with recent positive tests to have more freedom of movement.
toddmatthews 5y ago
his exemption was based on the fact of him having the virus and being recovered. But based on the twitter thread they are suggesting the positive test happened after the negative test.
PopeUrbanX 5y ago
[dead]
jmcs 5y ago
He got an exemption the Victoria state rules, this is the same as you getting a paper from Florida saying you can travel freely there and trying to enter the US based on that paper.
- mfer 5y ago
  His exemption was a process provided by the Australian Open tournament. More than twenty people applied for it and only a handful got the exemption. The process they outlined was a blind process (those evaluating the applications did not know who the players were) and two stage. It's not like he tried to cheat the tournament or Australia with this. He was following a provided process. Note, this is separate from any notion of him cheating or not with the process. Just saying it doesn't appear he tried to sneak in by bypassing the processes. The reason he's being looked at instead of the others who went through this process is likely that he posted about it on social media.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> Sorry - it's only tennis Real question is why are the Australians running an international tennis competition in the first place?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ls15 5y ago
In a country that currently has rules that exclude the current world No. 1...
gertrunde 5y ago
I'd imagine the same reason why anyone runs an international tennis competition? Although in this case at least they've been doing it for 117 years... so they do have precedent on their side.
- xienze 5y ago
  I think the parent comment’s question is more along the lines of “if Australia is so deathly afraid of Covid, why are they hosting an international sporting event at this particular time?”
  - gertrunde 5y ago
    Ah, I see, that does make a bunch more sense!
  - mdoms 5y ago
    They're taking suitable precautions, such as requiring entrants are fully vaccinated.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > such as requiring entrants are fully vaccinated That's not what they're doing, which is the whole point of this story and controversy. But anyway a tennis competition should be the very bottom of the list of anyone's priorities.

Scoundreller 5y ago

This is basically the Canada problem: we have tough rules for 95% of people, but we exempt 5% from it, so every variant quickly ends up here uncontrollably anyway. Windsor Ontario has something like 1000+ health care workers commuting to the Detroit area that have been exempt from most entry test/vaccination/quarantine requirements. Same for truckers and flight crews and ~30 other groups. I think this is only changing next week with an actual vaccination requirement. If you want to go for covid-zero, go for it, but if you half-ass it, you get all the disadvantages without any of the advantages.

frandroid 5y ago
I agree with you that Detroit/Windsor has been a sieve when it comes to sealing cases outside of the country, but considering that we've never come anywhere close to COVID zero, it's a minor concern at this time.
rhino369 5y ago
Your entry tests aren’t strong enough to prevent 100% of cases anyway. You need a strict, no exceptions quarantine that lasts long enough to cover any incubation period. And even then, workers at the quarantine site might get infected. Probably not even worth attempting given our border has so many illegal crossings.
- atkailash 5y ago
nradov 5y ago
A vaccination requirement wouldn't do anything to control the spread of every new variant. The primary benefit of vaccination is preventing severe symptoms; it doesn't prevent infection or transmission. Covid-zero is impossible in any open society. China is still pursuing a covid-zero policy, but even with locking down entire cities and imposing travel bans they're far from zero.
- aix1 5y ago

artursapek 5y ago

If the vaccines don't prevent spread or contraction of the virus, why are people upset with him standing up against these pointless vaccine mandates?

samarama 5y ago
Because boostered individuals have a drastically reduced infection risk by 80%. On top of they are 66% less infectious when being infected since they clear the virus twice as fast and 40% of their virus particles are dead. This gives them an overall reduced risk of infecting someone else by 93%. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.24.21266831v1.full https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.24.21266831v... https://news.arizona.edu/story/covid-19-vaccine-reduces-severity-length-viral-load-those-who-still-get-infected https://news.arizona.edu/story/covid-19-vaccine-reduces-seve...
- logifail 5y ago
  > This gives them an overall reduced risk of infecting someone else by 93% Q: How long does that reduced risk persist for? Then read this story: We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months, says JCVI chief https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/03/fourth-covid-jab-cant-vaccinate-planet-every-six-months-says/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/03/fourth-covid-jab... "Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said there was no point in trying to stop all infections, and that 'at some point, society has to open up'"
- wackro 5y ago
  Thanks for the info and those links. There hasn't been nearly enough public information on _how_ jabs help. The rhetoric is always 'get jabbed because it protects health services', which despite being true, leaves a lot out. It also doesn't help that a lot of easily accessible information is contradictory and focuses on considering one's own heath rather than everyone's.
Anthony-G 5y ago
They don’t prevent the spread or contraction of the virus but they reduce the transmission period and greatly reduce the severity of the disease if a fully vaccinated person contracts Covid-19. They may not be a panacea but they’re a very useful tool in dealing with Covid-19 and keeping people out of hospital unnecessarily.

neither_color 5y ago

I agree he shouldn't get a pass but for different reasons. If the wealthy can get exempted from onerous burdens like quarantining or waiting 3 weeks + 14 days to become vaccinated then they will never remove that burden for the rest of us.

boringg 5y ago
Which wealthy are you speaking of? I haven't heard of wealthy people getting this kind of treatment...
hirako2000 5y ago
It's a great point. We could turn things around and point out that if a questionable and unexpected restriction can be imposed on a wealthy, given what's at stake, and knowing all the press coverage it would generate, then they would never hesitate to jeopardise important stakes for the rest of us due to some bureaucratic interpretation of the current travel restrictions, interpretation of course hardly possible to challenge.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]