as efforts to vaccinate against the
coronavirus continue around the world
some elite athletes are refusing to do
so putting not only their careers in
jeopardy but the safety of fans and
other players the australian open gets
underway without the defending champ
novak djokovic novak djokovic out his
visa had been canceled because he misled
authorities about his vaccination status
novak djokovic is the number one player
in the world he holds many records in
men's tennis so djokovic chose not to
get vaccinated and he never publicly
explained his reason
like many athletes novak djokovic is
known for his extreme commitment to his
sport and the length he's willing to go
to achieve an edge their entire athletic
career is based on being
exceptional
the extreme particular nature of their
diets their sleep patterns and djokovic
is one of these extreme characters
they said yoga wasn't for tennis players
and neither was your diet he treats his
body like a temple so he's just not the
type of person who's going to believe oh
and now you need to inject this
substance in your body
so i think athletics are an interesting
and distinctive group in this sense and
that's partly because
on the one hand they're a group whose
bodies are
constantly the subject of medical
authority and intervention we're doing
our very best to catch the cheats and
that's our role here at the itu sports
science advice
media representation you might think
that might lead to being more amenable
to something like vaccination because
you know it might not be seen as being
that different as an activity from say
having a painkiller injection but on the
other hand we can also see how the
concern about the source of your
livelihood and as well as other
considerations might lead to a
heightened sensibility towards bodily
control at the start of the pandemic
djokovic said he wouldn't want to be
forced by someone to take a vaccine
of course there are plenty of athletes
who don't subscribe to this logic and
have received the vaccine all the while
continuing to play sports at the highest
levels
what we know about athletes at least in
several elite sport leagues is that the
uptake of vaccination rates is actually
high relative to the general population
or at least relative to their comparable
age groups in the general population
in fact nearly 95 percent of nfl players
and over 90 percent of nba players are
vaccinated and actually during the u.s
open only 50 percent of their playing
group was vaccinated and today it's more
than 97
but there are a few athletes who cite
similar reasons as djokovic for
remaining unvaccinated kyrie irving a
seven-time all-star basketball player
for the brooklyn nets said his refusal
was a matter of personal freedom
in the nfl aaron rodgers to green bay
pecker starting quarterbacks that he
believes strongly in bodily autonomy
cole beasley of the buffalo bills and
irish soccer player callum robinson also
called it a personal choice
that is difficult to disagree with
because it fits with wider beliefs about
democracy and about liberal societies
that we shouldn't be impinging on the
individual choice particularly when it
comes to
the borders of one's own body that said
i think a lot of his supporters a lot of
his fans much of serbia sees him as a
crusader you know a pioneer
less in terms of the vaccine but for
individual liberty for being true to
himself
djokovic was ultimately prevented from
participating in the australian open and
other athletes continued to face
consequences
you know i just really empathize and i
and i understood their uh their choice
to to say if you're not going to be
vaccinated fully vaccinated then you
know you can't be a full participant
as a sociologist i would say we need
richer and deeper accounts of the social
groups that we're interested in their
relationship to vaccines how it is the
scientific knowledge about vaccines
competes with the knowledge that they
already have about the substances that
they do and don't take into their bodies
and how being vaccinated sits
and is talked about in their social and
cultural worlds you know that we know
too often be quite insular when it comes
to being an elite athlete
you