The International Institute of Naming Covid-22 Strains (IINCS) yesterday succumbed to pressure from the pro-Covid lobby and named the newest variant after tennis legend Novak Djokovic.
The highly polarising pro-Covid lobby has been in existence since the Delta variant started doing the rounds last spring. They think Covid is a divine intervention to separate the weak from the strong, because just when the world thinks it has the virus beat, it comes back resurrected, as it has with the variant now known as Nole (Djokovic's nickname).
This correspondent could not find out whether Serbia's Djokovic is a member of the lobby, because Djokovic would not answer his phone. Djokovic's father said his son was detained in an Australian hotel and had no access to his cell phone. Subsequently, this correspondent lost interest.
Djokovic has said that he is against vaccination and also, at the height of the first wave in 2020 when the world was at a standstill, he held a tennis event and partied in nightclubs, which contributed to the spread of the virus.
The new variant, Nole, is uncannily able to invade the tightest of defence systems. Scientists say masks and even face shields cannot protect people from Nole.
"We thought of Nole as the name for the new variant because Djokovic is a champion who breaches the defences of the best tennis players in the world," a Covid lobby member, Phil Phlegm Cofferson, told this correspondent. "Also, he breached the most obsessive immigration system in the world -- which doesn't even let people out or into the country for medical reasons -- by getting into Australia unvaccinated. That is the kind of guy we want as the face of the new variant."
