COVID-19 struck the Pan Macedonian Association of Melbourne and Victoria despite following strict entry protocols.
A person positive to COVID-19 entered the association, despite being double vaccinated and spread the virus to 15 people.
Among those who tested positive were Paul Mavroudis, the President of the Pan Macedonian Association.
He was treated for pneumonia and was discharged from hospital on Monday, and states that he is lucky as, according to doctors, the state of his health could have been much worse had he not been vaccinated.
“I am truly lucky that from generation to generation, our grandfathers told our family story,” he wrote to Neos Kosmos.
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“Our real name was Tsatsoulis, not Mavroudis, and our nickname was Manialis because our background was from Areopolis in Mani, as my grandfather said. One of my great grandfathers killed a Turkish officer and had to disappear with his family,” Mr Mavroudis said. “He ended up in Karabourno of Asia Minor and a priest or teacher (unknown which) managed to change his name to Mavroudis which was his name too. My mother was born in 1910 and my father in 1911.
“My mother was totally uneducated because she lived through the exile of 1912 and the exile of 1922, and as my grandfather said, ‘I couldn’t send my children to school because they grew up in the streets from one place to another due to the exile.’
“My mother, as I said, was uneducated but she was a MOTHER with capital letters.
“My parents acquired eight children. I was born in 1949.
“My mother told me the story of how she would knead 10 to 15 loaves of bread each week prior to the end of the civil war.
“One day, when the bread was ready to be taken out of the oven, a group of rebels appeared and one of them came before her with a rifle and said, ‘Make way. We’ll take the bread’, and my mother, with the shovel in her hand told him that to take the bread needed to feed her children he would need to kill her and her unborn child.
“Luckily, his leader was beside him, and told him to go, and that is how I reached my 72 years.
“As I said, my mother was uneducated and in those days there was no internet. Not even Facebook.
“Whenever the president came and said that ‘on such a day the doctor is coming for a vaccination’ she would put us all in a row and say ‘forward march for the vaccination’.
“I remember when I was four or five years when my turn came for the vaccination and as we went to the doctor I hid behind her and said, ‘mum, I’m afraid’. She asked, ‘What are you afraid of? What am I doing here? Would I let them harm you my Pavli?’
“I got vaccinated and from that day until today I have had all vaccinations and I have never regretted that.
“My wife is teasing me for writing this and crying. I am not crying because I lost my parents. That was natural. I am crying for the way in which we are headed and how we ended up. Perhaps someone may wonder as to who I am and why I am writing this. I am one of the ‘idiots’ who are double vaxxed in Australia and who tested positive to COVID-19 and had to unfortunately go to hospital.
“Perhaps someone may ask: Then why did he get vaccinated?
“I had not learnt in time that ‘scientists’ of the internet and Facebook had found the ‘pill’.”
Mr Mavroudis said that he ended up at Monash Hospital with pneumonia and wants to thank his doctors. “Sorry to the simple ‘doctors’ because as I said the real ‘scientists’ are on Facebook,” he jokes.
“Lucky for me I did not meet and nor do I want to meet any of the ‘scientists’ of the internet.
“The real scientists, the simple doctors, nurses work 24 hours round the clock, doing all they can to save human lives.
“It is unfair for young people to leave behind their families because they did not get vaccinated. What did their children do to deserve this?
“Five days in hospital, and I got many calls from friends and I thank them. Some called me to ask how I, someone double vaxxed could end up in hospital. For their info, the pneumonia came from Sarciodosis, a condition of the lungs and not from COVID-19.
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“Someone even said, ‘run fools because in one and a half years everything will be ours because you would have died.
“I am not a scientist and I don’t have the right to tell anyone what to do, nor do I accept that anyone should tell me and my family what to do. I hope we have done the right thing for our children and grandchildren.
“If you ask me where my background is from, I wouldn’t be able to say. From Mani, Smyrna, Kozanni where I was born or Thessaloniki where I grew up. But I am certain of one thing. For 48 years, I have lived in the largest and best Greek community of Melbourne and I can proudly declare that I am Macedonian and Greek and can, until my last moments, offer everything.”
He signed his letter Pavlos Mavroudis, OAM, “one of the double vaxxed ‘idiots’ of Australia”.
