Novak Djokovic’s health and wellness initiative catches up with him – but also serves as a timely warning

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Novak Djokovic is not having a fun pandemic.

The best tennis player in the world first stepped in it early on when he said he was “opposed to vaccination.”

That was a weird thing to say, but it does help explain everything that happened next.

Djokovic did a series of kooky videos on health and wellness. In one of them, he suggested “molecules in water react to our emotions.”

“Scientists have proven that,” Djokovic said.

Really?

This led me to undertake a four-day experiment of feeling really excited around a water-cooler jug of Evian in the hopes that it would become vodka. No joy.

Djokovic must have been feeling fairly excited himself when he organized an off-the-books exhibition tournament in the Balkans featuring some of the world’s top players. During play, there was no effort at even pretending to keep people physically distanced from each other.

Everyone was so excited they decided to have a little nightclub celebration and film it. This turned into a sort of “how not to pandemic” guide for dummies.

The players and guests were piled atop one another in a darkened bar. They danced the Macarena. They danced shirtless. They limboed.

It was a Paolo Sorrentino film minus the cool soundtrack.

Grigor Dimitrov was there that night. Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of the tournament citing “physical effort and exposure to the sun.” He went home to Monaco and tested positive for COVID-19. The tournament was cancelled just as the final was set to begin.

Djokovic also hustled home to Serbia before getting tested. Turns out he’s positive, too. As is his wife. As are two other top players.

Novak Djokovic – not just world No. 1 at tennis. He’s also climbing the global rankings as a contagion vector.

We’ve had this moment before, if more innocently. Back in March, Utah Jazz centre Rudy Gobert convinced the rest of us the pandemic was serious.

Initially, Gobert was ripped for being cavalier. At one press conference near the end of The Before Times, he jokingly touched all the digital recorders laid on the table in front of him.

But after a little quiet consideration, the majority agreed Gobert had done the world a service. At just the right time, he gave COVID-19 a young, vibrant face. That scared the rest of us straight.

People are down on Djokovic right now. His “Borat with a PhD” shtick doesn’t seem as funny when actual, non-famous people are still dying.

But Djokovic has done us a similar service. He is reminding a rapidly reopening world that we need to slow our roll.

One of the irritations of lockdown for those who didn’t get sick was the mixed messaging. Scientists don’t seem any better than the rest of us at being able to say, “You know what? I’m not totally sure. Some of these are best guesses.”

Every instruction came down like a papal bull – “This is the way and the truth.” Then those fiats started changing according to the moment, the person delivering them, or political expediency.

Once things started reopening, it happened in staggered fashion. That created a lot of angst in people who still couldn’t get their hair cut in their neighbourhood, but could do it an hour’s drive away.

About a week ago, a friend called me from New Brunswick.

“Guess where I am?” he said.

I dunno. (Though I did know. I’d know that combo of braying laughter, glassware hitting wood and bad Canadian rock anywhere.)

“I’M AT A BAR,” he said.

Why would you do this?

“Because I knew it would enrage you,” he said.

I don’t think there’s a law against this. But there should be.

As things untightened unevenly, a parallel pressure was created by constant reminders of the second wave. That introduced a time element. You have these four weeks, or two months, three at the outside, to enjoy yourself. Then it’s back into isolation.

Maybe that’s why some people are coming out of their homes and heading into the streets like it’s a prison break. They know they’re getting caught eventually. That’s how every prison break ends. But right now, they will live like it’s the last night on Earth.

Although these people are not from Florida, I think of them as Floridians. The sort of people whose definition of liberty is the freedom to believe what suits them. The guy in Tampa Bay who will, on the one hand, tell you the coronavirus was created in a Chinese laboratory and, on the other, that it’s not real.

The Floridian practices a sort of Bacchanalian paranoia. Nothing is as it seems, except the tiki bar at the Courtyard Marriott in South Beach.

Djokovic is the type par excellence. Maybe he thought he could alter the chemical structure of the coronavirus with a vaccine of good vibes. If so, I suppose we can tell the Nobel committee to stand down.

Djokovic is plainly not stupid. He’s what happens when an averagely smart person spends too much time on the internet. That’s where you’ll find reams of misinformation reinforcing whatever stupid opinion you’d prefer to hold.

Coronavirus getting you down? Here’s why it’s a fake. Or overblown. Or coming to an end. Or whatever.

But eventually the Djokovics of the world have to head back out into lived reality and put their goofy theories to the test. At which point they go wrong.

The only value in this is that Djokovic & Friends are famous. So we get to see them go wrong. He’s proving to the gullible and stir crazy that coronavirus is still a thing, and it’s waiting for you to screw up. Because the virus doesn’t read the internet.

What Djokovic has just provided is a better public-service announcement than anything put out recently by any medical officer of health. If you go to a nightclub and spend all night there, hugging and singing and acting a fool, you may as well book your hospital room ahead of time.

Yes, what Djokovic did is bad. And one hopes no terrible harm comes from it.

But in the end, it will turn out to be an aggregate good.