(LifeSiteNews) — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling on the Biden administration to allow Serbian Christian tennis player Novak Djokovic to enter the United States despite not being vaccinated for COVID-19, blasting the White House for imposing the controversial restriction on visitors to the country.
Controversy erupted last year over news that Djokovic would not be able to participate in the 2022 U.S. Open tennis championship because of his refusal to take a COVID-19 shot “based on all the information that I got,” citing the “principle of understanding what is right and what is wrong for you,” for which he says he is willing to put his career on hold.
READ: Novak Djokovic withdraws from tournament after US gov’t denies him entry over COVID jab status
He has also been barred from competitions in Canada and Australia for his stance, and recently withdrew from the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.
“The only thing keeping Novak Djokovic from participating in the Miami Open tennis tournament is President Biden’s misguided and unscientific COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreigner [sic] travelers,” DeSantis said in a March 7 letter to President Joe Biden. “I note that since the onset of COVID-19, Mr. Djokovic has visited the United States twice – including once during your presidency – without any apparent health incident.”
The only thing keeping Novak Djokovic from participating in the Miami Open tennis tournament is President Biden’s misguided and unscientific COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreigner travelers.
Mr. President – lift your restrictions and let him compete. pic.twitter.com/fFyhNoUV4S
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 7, 2023
READ: Novak Djokovic wins Australian Open one year after he was deported for being unvaxxed
“It is also not clear to me why, even by the terms of your own proclamation, Mr. Djokovic could not legally enter this country via boat,” the governor said. He also suggested the administration was hypocritical for having “pointedly allowed thousands of unvaccinated migrants to enter our country through the southern border.
“In sum, the current ‘travel ban’ as applied to Mr. Djokovic – and presumably millions of other potential unvaccinated foreign visitors – seems completely ungrounded in logic, common sense, or any genuine concern for the health and welfare of the American people,” DeSantis said.
In January, the administration extended the vaccination requirement for foreign visitors until at least April 10. It remains to be seen whether it will extend it again; under pressure from House Republicans, the White House announced that the federal COVID emergency declarations, which are separate policies, would be allowed to expire in May.
Many Americans continue to harbor both moral objections and safety concerns about the COVID shots, which were developed and released in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under former President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, even as the Biden administration attempted to legally force Americans into receiving them.
READ: Djokovic’s Australian Open win is a symbolic victory of the unvaccinated over COVID tyranny
According to a detailed overview by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson all used aborted fetal cells during their COVID vaccines’ testing phase; and Johnson & Johnson also used the cells during the design & development and production phases.
While many have attempted to deny or downplay the jabs’ links to abortion, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney notes that the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science admits as much, as does the left-wing fact-checking outlet Snopes.
As for safety, the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting system (VAERS) reports 34,576 deaths, 193,318 hospitalizations, 18,706 heart attacks, and 26,541 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of February 24. An April 2022 study out of Israel indicates that COVID infection itself cannot fully account for the myocarditis numbers, despite common insistence to the contrary.
Jab defenders are quick to stress that reports submitted to VAERS are unconfirmed, as anyone can submit one, but U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
Furthermore, VAERS is not the only data source containing red flags. Data from the U.S. Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) shows that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181 percent), neurological disorders (1,048 percent), multiple sclerosis (680 percent), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551 percent), breast cancer, (487 percent), female infertility (472 percent), pulmonary embolism (468 percent), migraines (452 percent), ovarian dysfunction (437 percent), testicular cancer (369 percent), and tachycardia (302 percent).
Last September, the Japanese Society for Vaccinology published a peer-reviewed study conducted by researchers from Stanford, UCLA, and the University of Maryland, which found that the “Pfizer trial exhibited a 36% higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group” while the “Moderna trial exhibited a 6% higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group,” for a combined “16% higher risk of serious adverse events in mRNA vaccine recipients.”
In December 2022, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–WI) hosted a roundtable discussion during which civil rights attorney Aaron Siri detailed data from the CDC’s V-Safe reporting system revealing that 800,000 of the system’s 10 million participants, or approximately 7.7 percent, reported needing medical care after COVID injection. “25 percent of those people needed emergency care or were hospitalized, and another 48 percent sought urgent care,” Siri added. “Also, another 25 percent on top of the 7.7 percent reported being unable to work or go to school.”
Another study by a team of American, British, and Canadian researchers, published last December by the in the Journal of Medical Ethics, found that COVID booster mandates for university students – a relatively healthy group at relatively low risk from the virus – do far more harm than good: “per COVID-19 hospitalisation prevented, we anticipate at least 18.5 serious adverse events from mRNA vaccines, including 1.5–4.6 booster-associated myopericarditis cases in males (typically requiring hospitalisation).”
Now in his second term, DeSantis has established a record as arguably the most proactive conservative governor in the nation, which has generated significant interest in him as a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.