COVID cases interrupt ISA Games; contestants shun opening ceremony
With the clock counting down to the Olympics - 23rd July if you're wondering - Fernando Aguerre of the International Surfing Association began to push his advantage.
It's a funny old business, but in the world of surf administration, the Wozzle has the best surfers in the world while the ISA has the Olympic connections.
To avoid being a farce, the ISA and Woz reached an agreement whereby Woz surfers would fill the majority of Olympic places with the empty spots taken by lesser countries qualifying through the Byzantine ISA system. The qualification route ends at the ISA Games, currently being held in El Salvador.
However, and here's where it gets murky, despite the Woz surfers having already qualified, Aguerre ordered their presence in El Salvador - big names equals big crowd equals happy sponsors.
So from Rottnest, the Oz team....sorry, the Irukandjis, flew home, packed their duds, and hopped a flight to El Salvador, and into a COVID mess.
Eco-friendly banditos
For two days prior to the Games starting on May 29th, officials tested 564 competitors with 28 returning positive tests. The cases were spread across 20 teams.
Upon re-testing the 28 positive cases, 10 athletes were cleared while 18 went into quarantine.
Upon re-re-testing the 18 positive cases, 11 were cleared while 7 stayed in quarantine.
Obviously digging the downwards trend, the ISA today released this statement: "...the ISA has implemented a policy to consider an appeal for reintegration into the competition for any athlete or official testing negative, on the condition that the individual can produce another negative PCR test prior to re-entering the Event."
In short, they'll keep testing till they come up negative.
Meanwhile, the Irukandjis stood up Aguerre at the Opening Ceremony and, according to a social media post, are "are self-isolating amidst the news of active Covid cases in and around the World Surfing Games."
Comments
So these pro surfers are free to fly around the place unimpeded while my mate cant come back into Australia to bury his old man. Something really wrong there .
Sports and athletes flitting about the world under the guise of "Essential services" Cmon Australian Government wake the fuck up, didnt the dickhead cricket players going to India (and then cry for help to come home) give you enough of an idea where this can go?
You can get an exemption to travel for work. Surfing is their job.
Cricketers didn't "cry for help" to get themselves home. They just wanted to be able to come home when arrivals from India were banned.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think regular 'work' (sportsperson or otherwise) is a valid exemption.
https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/travel-restrictions
Otherwise, if work is an exemption, then I may need to travel to Indo to validate and verify this upcoming swell for erm, work purposes.
Think you're looking at the wrong side of the equation, Ben.
Leaving Oz IS permitted for work and or business!
"If you are an Australian citizen or a permanent resident you cannot leave Australia due to COVID-19 restrictions unless you have an exemption. You can apply online but you must meet at least one of the following:
your travel is as part of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak, including the provision of aid
your travel is for your business/employer
you are travelling to receive urgent medical treatment that is not available in Australia
you are travelling outside Australia for a compelling reason for three months or longer
you are travelling on compelling or compassionate grounds
your travel is in the national interest."
From here: https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia
Know several people who have used the second item on the list to 'travel'.
The 'return to Oz' side is governed, as per the link you posted. Plus, of course changing situations like the India restrictions, so you could get stuck OS.
And, of course, still need to do the 14 days quarantine on return to Oz.
So, how many intern applications are you taking?
Sounds like some surf verification is required in the Maldives, stat.
Assistant verification positions: the bidding starts at $5K.
Look.
My daily fee is usually $10k.
But.
In this instance I'll begrudgingly accept $5k.
When do we leave?
I've got a telephone bidder at $15K. And he's willing to throw in a red asymmetrical 6'0.
Do I hear $20K plus a fancy board that'll take the whole trip to work out?
Asymmetrical? ... Really, that all he got.
Engage me at my usual daily rate and I'll bring "The FUP"
http://www.ffwsurfboards.com.au/fup-update/
PS: It has a lovely eye catching pink and white stripe spray design... Will stand out awesome in the video's and stills we'll be sending home on a regular basis.
This is whats going down ATM
Photos and videos are an insufficient form of evidence.
I need to personally ride each and every set wave to ensure this swell is of optimum quality.
Need an intern?
To be fair to the dickhead Aus cricketers, they did this with the knowledge they'd be spending 2 weeks quarantining at Honkeys and Sultans. The entitlement these mainstream sports-buggers receive makes me puke.
On the other hand, I'm sorry about your mates loss and in that same breath, give the AU government 2 solid middle fingers
ISA? Who are these people? Does anyone actually care about or want this? How come they get free reign to travel internationally?
This all a farce, covid testing aside, because the Olympics arent going to happen anyways..
The residents of Tokyo / Japan dont want it, but the host country wont want to cancel it because then the insurance doesnt pay out, only the IOC can cancel it to invoke the insurance cover.
So with the Wuflu on the rampage through Asia (again) it will be any day that we hear that Tokyo is in full lockdown and the Olypics are cancelled.
Wonder how accurate your comment is about it getting cancelled again?
I actually don’t mind watching the Olympics for the traditional events when it comes around. It does seem unlikely it will run hey?
How do we always have the worse uniforms.
Team name trumps those uniforms any day!!
I have been asking the same question my whole life. They NEVER get any better just a new flavour of worst. I was always jealous of the yank outfits - simple and bold.
This is the reason (according to the govt website.)
Gold conjures images of Australia’s beaches, mineral wealth, grain harvests and the fleece of Australian wool.
Green evokes the forests, eucalyptus trees and pastures of the Australian landscape.
Doesn't mean that it is easy on the eye though.
Thanks for that gift of inspiration from our government, BUT: the green is all wrong, it is much closer to a wattle phyllode in colour and the yellow is also much closer to a range of wattle blossom- just about all Euc's have a white flower, wool is not gold, only gold is gold mineral wise, and a lot of harvests are not gold in colour. Haven'y they learned anything from 'Australia where the bloody hell are ya' - I think Scotty from marketing was involved with that as well. All it evokes in me is a sad shake of the head.
The pandemic has stripped away much of the cloaking, and we begin to see the face of the puppeteers who secretly control the world from the shadows. Not secret societies, ancient bloodlines, or reptilians - the true rulers of the world are revealed as Sports Administrators.
Anything they want, anywhere they want to go, any time, from anyone no matter how mighty, under any circumstances.
You can never tell what deadly jellyfish will do next.....strange stuff
Ultra lol
Not sure who the others are but can pick out Sally Fitz.
Brand recognition right there folks
VJ , Hollywood seems to get a free pass also , skip hotel quarantine altogether and just do it around the pool at some friends mansion.
Seems a lot of work just to surf a one foot onshore beach break in front of no one!
Sal throwing shaka no 109,000267.......lol
or maybe her hand is deformed and looks like a shaka
They should have just sent masked stunt doubles... I got legs like Steph. Give me a wig and I’d risk covid for some La Lib point break action.
Must of ran out of green masks lol, what a joke.
Reckon its an automatic reaction for Sal to chuck out a shaka when ever she sees a camera
All the bloody quokka's are doing shaka's now, its Sal fault
Gotta watch out for RSI
Anyone know what the go is with that add on telly that keeps referring to Sal as a world-champion surfer?
Did I miss something?
She's won two ISA World Titles (Open and U18) and an ASP Junior World Title.
Clearly there's more than one way to be a world champion.
Reports are the Aussie surfers are unhappy at the unnnecessary travel with Steph rocking up to El Salvador with just one board and Jules Wilson doing all he can to lose his Rd 1 heat, getting beated by a Colombian unknown, and almost bested by another unknown surfer from The Netherlands.
If that's true then I think that's quite disrespectful. It's an insult to the sport and an insult to the other surfers in his heat.
If you're representing your country it's a great privilege and should be regarded as such.
Check your entitlement there Jules.
Yeah, I dunno. Get that it could be construed as disrespectful but the thing is he doesn't have to be there - he's already qualified. Got a young kid at home but he's forced to fly halfway around the world for a dead rubber cos Fernando clicked his fingers. Cannon fodder in the Woz/ISA stoush.
True that, but I guess if he wanted to spend more time with his wife and kids, he might like to lay a little Gyprock closer to home and do away with that pesky tax-payer funded travel?
Is it tax payer funded zen? I think that fwit that is running these games is completely certifiable. WTF is he doing this in the middle of a pandemic of which Central and South American is getting flushed down the shitta. Someone from the WSL, olympics of whoever needs to tell to stick his silly contest where the sun don't shine. The WSL got hammered over its approach and it was in a safe country, this guy is in COVIDville.
That's where I would be inclined to cut him a bit of slack Mem. If however these were normal times and he threw a heat while wearing Oz colours I reckon it'd be pretty wrong irrespective of missing his family.
It's a great honour to represent your country and I think if you are lucky enough to do so, you should give 100% at all times.
Stab reporting that lots of CT surfers - Carissa, Caroline, Gabs et al - are not just throwing their heats but simply flying home. Vamoos!
Again, can't say I blame them. If Fernando forces the fine print on them, then they can return fire by doing the minimum requirement - which is surfing Rd 1.
They've already been away for three months, COVID is spreading in El Salvador, so they're making for the exits.
Nothing to do with representing home colours, they'll be doing that at the Olympics.
Fair enough. I'm 50/50.
Take covid out of the equasion then my sympathy wanes. Getting paid to surf is a dream most of us can only aspire to- so if the travelling gets to you, the pressers get to you, the fans get to you, the loneliness gets to you then there's always bricks waiting to be laid or an office chair to fill.
With all the insight in the event comments on words etc, you come up with equasion, wow! Ha
Ha ha! Slip of the thumb, but I'll own it.
UKR – fuckin' Ukraine?!
Unlucky for Pablo’s son coming 4th in his heat.
Hopefully his competitors don’t suddenly “disappear”
Underrated comment :)
Loosely linked is my favourite wildlife documentary:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/160510-pablo-escobar-...
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-02-10/pablo-escobars-hippos-are-a-threat-a...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-24/pablo-escobars-hippos-cause-envir...
There will come a day when vaccination is required for international travel. Wonder what Taj, Koby, Chef Pete and all the conspiracy theorists will do then?
You think it’s a conspiracy theory that the unapproved and experimental Covid vaccines can cause death, permanent injury and debilitating illness?
So can walking across the street...
Point is, if you want to travel internationally you won't have that choice.
No, the point is that you tried to delegitimise the threat of harm from vaccines by calling those who describe them as conspiracy theorists. Is the threat of harm from the vaccine more likely than the threat of harm from Covid for fit surfers younger than 70 years old? Probably.
“ You think it’s a conspiracy theory that the unapproved and experimental Covid vaccines can cause death, permanent injury and debilitating illness?”
So can all vaccines though can’t they?
Covid vaccines are responsible for more deaths than every other type of vaccine combined, whilst the virus itself is less deadly for healthy younger people than the flu. Not much grounds for comparison with other vaccines.
Other vaccines also require stringent long term testing before human usage. Not the case with the Covid vaccines.
If your first sentence is true then that’s horrendous.
OK I bite , do you have a link to your claims that Covid vaccines kill more people than all the other vaccines combined?
I mean how many people are dead from other vaccines , and what's the figure for Covid?
Yeah, I take a bite too.
Do you really think you should be commenting on this stuff, spreading quite strong contrarian opinions? What's your background, qualifications, what studies have you had published, what experience have you have in medicine/pharmaceuticals?
Unless you are capable of forming strong independent opinions based on your own experience/qualifications, saying anything against the governing medical bodies is straight out conspiratorial. Why? Because you're picking and choosing your sources of disinformation to suit your fantasy.
Hold on. Are you not also choosing your sources of information to suit your narrative? Blowin can't, but you can?
Christ mate, pharmaceutical companies are the most wealthy and influential on this planet, and if you think the news they are allowing the media companies (which also fall under their umbrella) to disseminate isn't serving a profit driven agenda, then I'm bewildered how you got your head that far up there.
He is completely entitled to a contrarian opinion, as are you to yours. What country are you living to say that people can't speak out the against the current government agenda? You might wanna move back to North Korea.
Furthermore, why is human kind taking advice from a software engineer with know grounding in medicine whatsoever? Actually, scratch that, he does have some grounding. A purely financial one.
Come on Blowin, you need to show us the facts on this one. That's a mighty claim which, if true, should be on the front pages.
I can’t remember where I read that but a quick google reveals a few figures from the USA. Numbers show that an all vaccine mortality count of 2149 deaths for the period 1997-2013 vs a 5 month rollout of Covid vaccine alone recording 4863 deaths.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/61/6/980/451431
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events...
Numbers of vaccinated for Covid vs All vaccinations are comparable and that’s being generous to the Covid death rate.
Here’s a few All Vax statistics for USA
“Vaccination statistics by disease
Flu: 62% of children and 45% of adults received the flu vaccine during the 2018-2019 flu season. (CDC, 2019)
Pneumococcal: 69% of adults older than 65 reported ever receiving a pneumococcal vaccination in 2018. (Statista, 2018)
Human papillomavirus (HPV): Nearly 49% of adolescents aged 13-17 received the HPV vaccination series in 2017 to help protect them from cancers related to this viral infection. (CDC, 2018)
Chickenpox: 91% of children aged 19-35 months had received the recommended chickenpox (varicella) vaccine for this age group in 2018. (CDC, 2018)
Polio: 92% of children aged 19-35 months had received a polio vaccine series (defined as a minimum of 3 of total 4 vaccinations) in 2018. (CDC, 2018)“
I appreciate you taking the time to respond on this, Blowin.
I'm very much a layperson on matters of vaccination, and haven't got time to do the proper homework, but I can't see where your assertion is backed up in the study or sites you've identified as a source. Or anywhere else with a solid reputation for the facts.
Firstly, on the matter of vaccination itself being linked to death......
The CDC makes clear that "VAERS accepts reports of any adverse event following vaccination, even if it is not clear the vaccine caused the problem."
Further to that, the paper you cite states that the incidence of post-vaccine deaths recorded from 1997-2013 in the US mirror the same incidence of causes of death in the general population. It then says further along in the discussion:
"Because a large number of vaccines are given to young children (often simultaneously) at scheduled well-child visits, especially during the first year of life, deaths occurring in close temporal association following vaccination are likely to occur by chance alone."
and
"In our VAERS review, we did not detect any concerning patterns that would suggest causal relationships between vaccination and deaths."
So my reading of that means it's difficult to see that there is a causal link between vaccination and death.
A quick consultation with Dr Google suggests that there is much more to be understood re links between the covid vaccines and death eg a Norwegian review published in the British Medical Journal indicates that the Pfizer vaccine is "likely" responsible for some deaths in frail elderly patients in nursing homes - https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1372
Doc Google also suggests that the usual unqualified muppets have been whipping it up about Covid deaths and vaccine eg Tucker Carlson in the US, and even Forbes are stepping in to say hang on a minute - https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/05/05/tucker-carlson-says-vac...
Here's a piece from the ABC which addresses part of the issue.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-19/coronacheck-vaccine-misinformatio...
So let's not muddy the water - everyone needs to get a firecracker up their date and get vaccinated or we are going to be up the proverbial creek with new variants which have more time to evolve.
LOL , ah Covid causes a lot more deaths , also very permanent after affects of lung damage ,headaches , etc.....do you think that stopping the vaccines the world would be better off?
I have had the jab and am still here. Blowin you need to remember, polio, diptheria, small pox, etc...No anti vaxers in those days just dead people, one of them was my brother.
I’m not claiming instant death or even likelihood of death for anyone who has the vaccine,
“Before the introduction of a smallpox vaccine in 1796, on average 7.6% (1-in-13) of all deaths were caused by smallpox”
“The case-fatality rate for paralytic polio is 2–5% in children and 15–30% in adults. The case-fatality rate in bulbar polio is up to 75%”
“ Epidemics in the United States and Europe resulted in case fatality rates as high as 40%, and diphtheria was a major cause of childhood mortality before the availability of diphtheria vaccination.”
Versus my chance of death from Covid being less than 0.0005 percent. That’s why I’m not questioning mandates for the polio vaccine.
My initial point was that those who hesitate to take the vaccine when they don’t believe they need it are not conspiracy theorists. Particularly when people are allegedly still able to pass on the virus and be reinfected themselves after having been vaccinated.
In the interests of full disclosure, I've had the AZ last week and it knocked me around a bit. A small price to pay to push things along, though.
By the way, have a look at Jimmy (Giggle) Rees latest video on this on FB....the Brighton one. Gold.
My mother in law had it and it buckled her enough to declare she doesn’t want her hubby ( Parkinson’s sufferer) to get it. She’s an extremely staunch person so it weighed quite heavily on me. My parents are asking me what I reckon about them getting it and I’ve managed to avoid answering so far.
Sorry to hear that Blowin and that is one awful disease. As I understand it, and I am prepared to be shot down in flames, is that it is more about the herd and helping the whole by getting the jab. It really was a non event for me, bit of a head ache in the morning and that was it. My wife got fluey that afternoon and the next day and a sore arm and that was it also.
My parents have had it and for them all they got was a bit of a sniffle. I used to get bad colds and have had pneumonia twice, so I figure I'm just extra-receptive to it. Makes me hate to think about getting covid.
Anyone watching this ISA comp?
wtf are they doing in El Salvador why not drop em staright into woo hahn.
Stats from the USA = the same place that certified IRAQ had WOMD.
I don’t hold much faith in most statistics from anywhere either, but how else can a topic be discussed beyond feelings if you completely delegitimise these state sponsored data bases?
Had a look at the ISA El Salvador vid released on YouTube today. It was at pains to impress the inclusion of women. They made an effort to put Old mate Fernando front and centre on this issue. Not sure what the fuss is about, Fernando has always made a point of highlighting the inclusion of women.
I don’t like the rushed vaccine process but it is just a matter of time before there is a big outbreak in Oz and that is when the elderly will be impacted. Without the vaccine(s) there will be more deaths than the possible few deaths from adverse reactions.
Surfing in the olympics is stupidity at the highest level anyway.
Is that really the name of the Australian team? I cant even pronounce
it let alone know its Australia.
When is the world going to blow up at China about the deliberate
act of war. RATS,RATS,RATS. Thats to the imbecile who wanted to have me banned when I called them Chinese RATS 15 months.
cock cock cock you're a fucken cock
Gold Gold Gold for wallpaper
so didnt Harley Ingleby make it to the comp?...not in the photo above
Wallpaper and Mattlock
FLOP FLOP FLOP
Wonder where the surfing will be held if Brisbane gets the 2032 olympics??
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/brisbane-olympic-games-bid-2032-2021-6