The news cycle the past few days has been filled with the story and video of the tragic collapse of Damar Hamlin during an NFL football game. I found it interesting how much attention this has been receiving. When young and active people are struck down in their prime, from any cause, it is upsetting to those closest to the injured. But this story has caught the hearts and minds of many, and that is a good thing.
American football is a physically violent game; we all know that. It is a “gladiator” sport, but, unlike Roman times, the conflict is played without being armed with weapons and no-one is expected to be killed. Fortunately, and remarkably, most players who are injured during competition, recover and are soon back in the game. But Damar Hamlin did not get back up. In fact, he had suffered a cardiac arrest and received CPR on the field, much to the horror of those watching.
Commentary coming from TV sports commentators and sports analysts in the print press, has centered on the violence of the sport and how can we better protect the players. One of the TV sports jocks was seriously talking about re-engineering football uniforms to protect the chest from blunt trauma. I humorously wondered if we are going to begin seeing kevlar vests, borrowed from law enforcement, in the NFL.
In Thursday morning’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ), there is an article bringing up the issue of the emotional trauma and discomfort within the NFL in response to the video of Mr. Hamlin collapsing. From the WSJ is the following:
“As the NFL grapples with the terrifying midgame collapse and hospitalization of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, it’s also confronting a rapidly evolving sports landscape in which athletes’ mental health has emerged as a crucial issue.”
I understand that on a personal level, particularly amongst his team mates and those who know him throughout the league, the shock and hurt was deep and real. But the Journal article expanded that to state there is a general discomfort and anxiety throughout professional sports including Olympic athletes. If that is true, then something else is operative here.
The few early discussions I saw amongst the TV press, current and former players, and current and former coaches is that they had never seen anything like what we witnessed in that video of Damar Hamlin in their 20, 30, or even 40 yrs of watching, playing, or coaching the game of football. Many of the comments also were reflective of the observation that the “violence” of the physical encounter immediately preceding the collapse of Mr. Hamlin, did not appear excessive and should not have caused the incapacitation of a player. Hmmm… that’s kind of what I thought, but I’m not a football expert.
But I was a big city ER physician for a few years and have been an interventional cardiologist for 35 years and have seen and evaluated quite a bit of blunt force chest trauma in those professional roles. Sorting out whether there was cardiac injury from the collision with the other player should be straight forward with echocardiographic and CT imaging. The logistics of MRI imaging may need to be delayed a few days if he survives. Blood tests for troponin elevation will be less useful because there are the issues of hypoxic injury from the cardiac arrest, there was CPR, and there was electrical cardioversion.
I am not commenting on this as a physician in order to be like those doctors on TV who have been speculating on this and that with no first hand knowledge. I find much of that professional behavior to be distasteful. No, I played the doctor card in order to put the comments of the news and sports commentators and the TV physicians in context as to what they have not been saying.
Have you noticed there is an elephant in the room? For the past year we have seen numerous videos of young amateur and professional athletes playing soccer, football, basketball, or running track and then suddenly collapse. Their collapse always looks like Mr Hamlin’s collapse. Sometimes they are clutching their chest or clearly having difficulty breathing just before they drop to the ground. I’ve never seen anything like it. If you obtain your news from MSNBC, CNN, or the major networks, you probably have not seen those videos. If interested or curious, many of those tragic events on video have been collected and are available through an internet search.
If you research this a bit further, you will learn there has been a striking increase in the number of young athletes collapsing and dying during 2021. Israel did a study and found a 5 fold increase in FIFA soccer deaths during 2021 compared to prior years. One America News Network looked into this issue and tabulated 769 athletes collapsed on the field from March, 2021 to March, 2022. That report stated those athletes were all “recently vaxxed”. I don’t know how their “vaccination” status could have been verified, but just the number who collapsed is startling. Another report counted 1354 athlete cardiovascular events in the 2021 - 2022 timeframe. 922 of them died. This is all unprecedented.
Listening to and reading the news reports of the Damar Hamlin catastrophe, I am hearing a lot of speculation that sounds like a physician differential diagnosis. For those not familiar with that term, it refers to the mental process in which a physician engages during the course of a history and physical. Various diagnosis possibilities come to mind in response to answers to questions (the history). The physical exam, if carefully done, then either lends support to the considered diagnosis or leads the physician in a different diagnostic direction. At that point, if the diagnosis is not obvious, the physician will have formulated a mental list of diagnostic possibilities, usually in order of probability. Thus the term differential diagnosis. The presenting problem or complaint will then need to be confirmed with diagnostic testing utilizing various technologies and techniques.
So, back to the initial TV and print discussions of what happened to Mr Hamlin. The TV doctors, and others, have included in their discussions, references to possible underlying and pre-existing cardiac problems such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, long QT syndrome, coronary atherosclerotic disease, aberrant coronary anatomy to include single coronary vessel, instead of the usual three (read about NBA star “Pistol Pete” Maravich). There are other rare rhythm and anatomical abnormalities but I won’t go into all that; not the point of this commentary.
I have read and been told that the NFL (and the NBA and other professional sports organizations) are very aware of what needs to be screened for in their young, highly compensated athletes. I would think screening would, at the least, include a thorough history and physical, ECG, and probably a cardiac ultrasound to exclude hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and congenital abnormalities.
The corporate press is currently focused on the possibility this was Commotio Cordis (agitation of the heart), a term referring to a more focused strike to the anterior chest over the heart that may be mild to moderate, provoking a potentially lethal arrhythmia (ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation). As you might suspect, 70% of those cases have occurred as a result of being struck with a baseball. Commotio cordis cases are rare. Dr. Robert Malone has an excellent measured and balanced review of all this on his substack if you have further interest.
The press is probably attracted to the “commotio cordis” explanation as it has a mysterious and sexy sounding name, allows them to appear to be intelligent, and it solves the problem of the video apparently not demonstrating a severe blunt trauma occurrence. Also, and probably most important, they can avoid talking about that pesky elephant in the room that is not showing up on any TV doctor’s differential diagnosis list.
Well, as you have probably guessed by now, the elephant in the room is the possibility of vaccine injury. Myocarditis is widely known now to be relatively more prevalent in young people, mostly young males age 14 - 40, and may not have much in the way of symptoms, particularly in professional athletes who are accustomed to having aches and pains, often in the muscles of the chest, as a result of their advanced physical activities.
The pathophysiology of myocarditis is that scarring of the heart muscle occurs as a result of the inflammation provoked by the trillions of spike proteins circulating in the body that are a result of having received the mRNA Covid shots. Covid “vaccine” proponents, including the CDC, strive to attribute all the myocarditis cases to Covid infection, but there are numerous studies and reports now that include biopsy and autopsy data implicating the mRNA “vaccines” as the cause of the majority of cases.
Even if a case of myocarditis results in no weakness of the heart muscle (myocardium), there can be the later occurrence of lethal rhythm abnormalities that appear suddenly, especially when provoked by a surge in catecholamines (adrenalin in layman terms) that would occur with competitive sports activities and at other times. The outcome to such a heart rhythm abnormality would be sudden collapse as we have seen in these athletes and others.
It is also becoming apparent the Covid “vaccine” jabs do not need to be recent as the mRNA in the shots has been shown to be present at least 60 days from injection, and spike protein has been shown to be present in lymph tissue 15 months following the “jabs”. Also, scarring of the myocardial tissue is permanent, it does not resolve. I explained all this in detail in a recent post on my substack.
It is to be clear, I am not speculating that myocarditis and a resulting lethal arrhythmia caused Mr. Hamlin’s cardiac arrest as I know nothing of his cardiac or other health history and know nothing of the results of the initial diagnostic testing. I am, however, observing that the known issue of vaccine injury and myocarditis is not being publicly discussed nor has it appeared as part of the differential diagnosis in this case or any of the other several hundred incidents involving the collapse of young athletes during the past two years. Not mentioned by the corporate press, not mentioned by the TV doctors, not mentioned by the CDC. Thought and behavioral manipulation by the press and government entities can be a result of propaganda by commission but is commonly the result of propaganda by omission.
So, back to the Wall Street Journal article from Thursday morning about all the anxiety within professional sports. I will go out on a limb here and speculate that many of these athletes are very aware of the cases of sudden death among professional athletes here and abroad while competing the past 2 years. Many of them are probably aware of post “vaccine” myocarditis and they all were given no choice and were injected with the mRNA drugs as part of the mandates imposed by their professional organizations. And then they see Damar Hamlin collapse with a cardiac arrest immediately after what appears to be a fairly mild tackle. When they look for answers, they see no one in authority is talking about this, no organized clinical and empirical investigation of these sudden deaths is occurring, there are no offered solutions to their concerns, and they are prohibited from talking about it.
I've been waiting for your commentary on this! Exactly what I expected. Sharing everywhere.❤️ thank you.
Brilliant!