Tipsheet

How Novak Djokovic Responded to the Death of the Reporter Who Attacked Him Over His Vaccination Status

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 20, 2024 9:30 PM

Blessedly, the debate over the COVID vaccine has died off. The ‘Karens’ have retreated into their darkened lairs. The world has reopened. No one sane wears masks anymore. Only the weirdos and the Democrats continue to abide by the social distancing protocols that were ineffective. Yet, while these Fauci commandments were atrocious, the drama over the vaccine will never fade. We were lied to about the efficacy. 

The madness over the mandates turned some of the world’s best athletes into social pariahs, even barring them from competition. Aaron Rodgers was raked over the coals regarding the controversy concerning his vaccination status. The future hall of famer and Super Bowl champion couldn’t take the vaccines over concerns about allergies to its ingredients. Yet, Rodgers’ treatment was no match for what Novak Djokovic endured. 

Djokovic, the world's current number-one ranked tennis player, was barred from the 2022 Australian Open over his refusal to get vaccinated. It led to his detention and eventual deportation. He was heckled at matches over the matter. His 2023 season was something of a comeback year, not that he suffered any significant injuries, but because the world has returned to a resemblance of sanity post-pandemic. Djokovic has also played at an elite level. But one person known throughout the tennis world won’t be able to write more about Djokovic: Mike Dickson, the reporter who attacked him over his vaccination status, even going so far as to suggest his legacy could be impacted. He collapsed and died in Melbourne while covering the Australian Open. Djokovic offered his condolences to the family. Dickson was only 59 (via Associated Press):


British tennis writer Mike Dickson has died while covering the Australian Open in Melbourne. He was 59. 

His death was announced Wednesday by his wife, Lucy, in a joint message with the family on X, formerly Twitter. It was confirmed by The Daily Mail, the British newspaper where Dickson had worked since 1990. 

“We are devastated to announce that our wonderful husband and Dad, Mike, has collapsed and died while in Melbourne for the Aus Open,” the Dickson family wrote in a post on his X account. 

[…] 

The Australian Open said it was “shocked and saddened” to hear of the death of Dickson, someone the event organizers called “our long-standing colleague and friend.” 

Dickson, who lived in Wimbledon, was a cricket correspondent at the Mail before moving to tennis. The newspaper said he covered 30 different sports across nearly 50 countries in total.


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Is this another ‘died suddenly’ case, where someone otherwise young and healthy who got the COVID shot passed away? We don’t know, but it hasn’t stopped others from noting the irony. Djokovic handled it like a pro—let’s leave it at that. Others around the tennis and sports world also paid tribute to Dickson, known as 'Mr. Wimbledon.'

As an aside, the scores of young folks who took the vaccine and developed severe side effects is another part of this COVID saga that never got a fair shake. If you talked about it, you were a conspiracy theorist. If you wrote about it, you got banned. The pervasive campaign to shut down debate or even discuss matters that come with any new vaccine was unprecedented and undemocratic. And that’s why, among other things, the medical regime might never be trusted again; at the very least, they will be met with extreme skepticism whenever another pathogen supposedly threatens mankind.

With COVID, the ‘take the shot, take off the mask’ salesman pitch quickly disintegrated when Omicron arrived and got everyone else sick. It hit liberals especially hard, shattering their self-righteous position on the whole matter: they did everything right and got infected like the rest of us. Notice how the lefty schadenfreude over those who contracted the virus or died from infection ceased after that wave. 

Still, the Djokovic-Dickson dynamic with his passing is jarring.