by Dr. Joseph Mercola
January 16, 2023
from Mercola Website


 

Story at-a-glance

• Over the past two years (2021 and 2022), more than 1,650 professional and amateur athletes have collapsed due to cardiac events and 1,148 of them proved fatal
   

• Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old Buffalo Bills football player went into cardiac arrest on live television after making a tackle during a January 2, 2023, game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Team trainers and emergency medical staff performed CPR for more than nine minutes, which saved his life
   

• Whether the COVID jab played a role in what happened to Hamlin is impossible to know for sure, but Dr. Peter McCullough suspects it may have played a role - provided he actually got the shot
   

• A condition called commotio cordis is known to occur in baseball when a player is hit hard on the breastbone, thereby causing cardiac arrest. There are approximately 20 to 30 such cases each year, but never in pro football. In McCullough’s view, commotio cordis can likely be ruled out. The more likely cause for Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, he believes, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), or abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, which is the primary cause for athletes suffering cardiac arrest
   

• During exercise, adrenaline is pumping, and when the heart is damaged this adrenaline rush is what triggers the cardiac arrest. This helps explain not only the death of athletes on the field, or people dying while jogging, but also why so many are dying in their sleep, because adrenaline is released between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., as your body readies to wake up

With every passing day, the list of people suffering tragic consequences from the COVID mRNA shots grows longer.

As of December 23, 2022, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) had received 33,334 reports of post-jab deaths, 26,045 cases of myocarditis and 15,970 heart attacks. ¹

Many of these people and their stories have remained hidden from public view as social media have universally censored these stories.

As a result, people who only read mainstream media are largely unaware of the damage being done. However, there is a population of people whose injuries and deaths have been far more public.

Over the past two years (2021 through 2022), more than 1,650 ^2,3,4,5,6,7 professional and amateur athletes have collapsed due to cardiac events and 1,148 ⁸ of them proved fatal.

In his book "Cause Unknown - The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022," ⁹ Edward Dowd writes extensively about the anomalous number of deaths now occurring among athletes, which, despite "fact checkers" best efforts to dismiss it as "normal," ^10,11 is anything but.

What Happened to Damar Hamlin?

More than likely, you've heard that Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old Buffalo Bills football player went into cardiac arrest on live television after making a tackle during a January 2, 2023, game against the Cincinnati Bengals. ^12,13

Team trainers and emergency medical staff performed CPR for more than nine minutes, which saved his life.

After initially being placed in a medically-induced coma, Hamlin was reportedly on the mend within a week. ¹⁴

Whether the COVID jab played a role in what happened to Hamlin is impossible to know for sure. Looking at the replays, it's clear he took a very severe hit right to the chest right before his collapse, and this certainly could have caused the heart attack.

At bare minimum, it's not unheard of.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker had a similar incident in 2017, as did hockey legend Chris Pronger in 1998. ¹⁵

On the other hand, it's also not inconceivable that the COVID jab - if Hamlin was in fact "vaxxed" - could have affected his heart, thereby playing a contributing role.

We now know the COVID shot is associated with a significantly elevated risk of myocarditis, which in turn raises the risk of sudden cardiac death in contact sports. ¹⁶

While the NFL enforced strict COVID jab rules for employees who have contact with players, the players and coaches were not subject to mandates. ^17,18

That said, 95% of players did get the shot, according to the NFL league. ¹⁹

Cardiologist Offers His View

In a January 4, 2023, Children's Health Defense interview, Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist and internist, reviewed what could have happened in Hamlin's case.

As noted by McCullough, a condition called commotio cordis (Latin for "agitation of the heart") is known to occur in baseball when a player is hit hard on the breastbone, thereby causing cardiac arrest.

There are approximately 20 to 30 such cases each year.

However, no such case has ever occurred in 100 years of pro football. Football players have padding that protects the breastbone, so in McCullough's view, commotio cordis can likely be ruled out.

The more likely cause for Hamlin's cardiac arrest, he believes, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), or abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, which is the primary cause for athletes suffering cardiac arrest.

The reason why HCM is the No. 1 cause of cardiac arrest in professional athletes is because it causes few if any symptoms and often goes undiagnosed.

Professional athletes undergo extensive medical evaluation and cardiovascular screening ²⁰ before being given the green-light to play, and they also constitute the healthiest segment of society in general, ²¹ so most heart problems are ruled out before they ever enter the field.

"The elephant in the room," however, according to McCullough, is the COVID jab.

Before these shots were rolled out, the average number of cardiac arrests in all European soccer and football leagues combined was 29 per year.

Since the advent of the COVID shots, 1,598 European pro-athletes have suffered cardiac arrest, giving us a comparative annual tally of nearly 800.

Of those 1,598 cardiac arrests, 1,101 were fatal...

McCullough detailed these and other stats in a December 17, 2022, letter to the editor of the Journal of Scandinavian Immunology.

The paper was co-authored by Panagis Polykretis, Ph.D., a researcher at the Institute of Applied Physics, which is part of the Italian National Research Council. ²²

McCullough and Polykretis have been, and still are, calling for a proper investigation of these deaths.

McCullough Suspects COVID Jab-Induced Myocarditis

McCullough and Polykretis suspect COVID jab-induced myocarditis is the explanation for this otherwise inconceivable increase in cardiac arrests among athletes, and McCullough believes it also tops the list of potential reasons for Hamlin's cardiac arrest, considering,

95% of NFL players had received the jab as of March 2022. ²³

McCullough cites research showing,

about 2.5% of COVID jab recipients sustain heart damage, 90% of them being men.

 

And, in about half of all jab-related myocarditis cases, there are no symptoms to alert you there might be a problem.

As explained by McCullough, myocarditis causes scarring on the heart, and it is this scarring that causes an abnormal electrical rhythm (ventricular tachycardia) and sudden adult death syndrome.

There are now more than 200 scientific papers on jab-related myocarditis.

A January 2023 study ²⁴ in the European Journal of Pediatrics found high levels of circulating spike protein in 16 male high school students hospitalized with myocarditis induced by the shots, which again suggests the spike protein your body produces is a key pathogenic factor.

McCullough explains in greater detail how the shot may have triggered Hamlin's cardiac arrest:

During play, adrenaline is pumping, and when the heart is damaged this adrenaline rush is what triggers the cardiac arrest.

This helps explain not only the death of athletes on the field, or people dying while jogging, but also,

why so many are dying in their sleep, because adrenaline is released between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., as your body readies to wake up...

1,696% Increase in Sudden Death Among Athletes

Whatever caused Hamlin's cardiac arrest - and hopefully a careful medical investigation after his recovery will clarify what happened - there's no doubt that athletes in general are dying in far greater numbers now than ever before.
 

The number of athletes who 'died suddenly'

between January 2021 and April 2022

was 1,696% above the historical monthly norm

between 1966 and 2004:

42 per month compared to

just 2.35 per month...

In related news, a November 2022 report ²⁵ by The Exposé showed the number of athletes who "died suddenly" between January 2021 and April 2022 was 1,696% above the historical monthly norm ²⁶ between 1966 and 2004,

42 per month compared to just 2.35 per month....

The following graph illustrates the rise in recorded athlete collapses and deaths between January 2021, the month the COVID shots started to roll out, and April 2022.

As noted by The Exposé: ²⁷

"In all between Jan 21 and April 22, a total number of 673 athletes were known to have died.

 

This number could, however, be much higher. So that's 428 less than the number to have died between 1966 and 2004.

 

The difference here though is that the 1,101 deaths occurred over 39 years, whereas 673 recent deaths occurred over 16 months...

The yearly average number of deaths between 1966 and 2004 equates to 28. January 2022 saw three times as many athlete deaths than this previous annual average, as did March 2022.

 

So this is obviously highly indicative of a problem.

The 2021 total equates to 394 deaths, 14x higher than the 1966 to 2004 annual average. The Jan to April 2022 total, a period of 4 months, equates to 279 deaths, 9.96x higher than the annual average between 1966 and 2004.

However, if we divide the 66 to 04 annual average by 3 to make it equivalent to the first four months' worth of deaths in 2022, we get 9.3 deaths.

 

So in effect, by April 2022, deaths among athletes were 10x higher than the expected rate ...

[B]etween 1966 and 2004. the monthly average number of deaths equates to 2.35. But between January 2021 and April 2022, the monthly average equates to 42.

 

This is an increase of 1,696%."

Risk of Cardiovascular Damage Soars After Second Shot

A nearly 1,700% increase in sudden cardiac-related death among athletes is inexplicable unless you take the experimental COVID jabs into account.

Research ²⁸ published in November 2021 found inflammatory markers - signs of cardiovascular damage - rose dramatically after the second COVID shot, and the risk of heart attacks and other heart-related problems more than doubled in the months following these injections.

Pre-jab, patients had an 11% five-year risk of heart attack.

 

Post-jab, that risk rose to 25%, a 227% increase in risk.

As reported by The Exposé, other statistics also reveal heart damage has become ubiquitous among those who got one or more mRNA jabs: ²⁹

"Acute cardiac failure rates are now 475 times the normal baseline rate in VAERS. Tachycardia rates are 7,973 times the baseline rate.

 

Acute myocardial infarction is 412 times the baseline rate.

The rates of internal hemorrhage, peripheral artery thrombosis, and coronary artery occlusion are all over 300 times the baseline rate...

 

It doesn't take a genius to work out that COVID-19 vaccination is the reason the monthly average number of athlete deaths was 1,700% higher than the expected rate by April 2022."

Sudden Death: The No. 1 Cause of Death for Under 65s in 2021

In late December 2022, Steve Kirsch also published data showing the shots are a public health disaster. ³⁰

According to the results of a survey Kirsch conducted, "sudden death" was the No. 1 cause of death in 2021 and 2022 among Americans under 65 who had received the COVID shot.

The second and third causes of death in this group were cardiac-related death and cancer respectively. Importantly, the incidence of turbo-charged cancer among the jabbed was also significant, and myocarditis killed more than COVID-19.

Among the unjabbed, the primary cause of death for people 65 and younger in 2021 and 2022 was hospital treatment for COVID. Incidences of sudden death, pulmonary embolism and turbo-charged cancers were all low, and there were no unknown causes of death, nor any myocarditis deaths.

Kirsch summarized the three most stunning differences between the jabbed and unjabbed as follows: ³¹

"Sudden death rates are off the charts for the vaccinated cf. unvaccinated for those <65 ... It's the #1 cause of death for this age group...

Myocarditis as a cause of death is registering now for both age ranges but only for the vaccinated...

Cardiac issues as a cause of death in vaccinated young people (<65) are significantly elevated vs. their unvaxxed peers."

Learn CPR, It Saves Lives
 

While we cannot make any definitive statements about what caused Hamlin's cardiac arrest, one thing that is not in doubt is that immediate and ongoing CPR is what saved his life.

Nine minutes is a long time to give CPR, and most people will simply give up after two or three minutes. Hamlin's case is proof positive that sometimes you need to give CPR for an extended period of time.

As many who got the experimental COVID shots will have some level of heart damage that raises their risk of cardiac arrest and sudden death, the need for CPR know-how is only going to grow.

So, please, learn CPR..

It could be the difference between life and death of someone you love. Also, consider investing in an automated external defibrillator (AED) for your home and/or office.

These machines are lightweight and battery operated. Sticky pads with sensors are attached to the chest and those electrodes send information to the computer inside the machine.

The AED computer will analyze the heart rhythm to determine if electric shock is needed. If required, the machine uses voice prompts to tell you what to do and when to do it.

AED machines are safe to use and there are no reports of them harming bystanders or users or, of delivering inappropriate shocks. ³²

When an individual suffers a cardiac arrest, the heart immediately stops beating. This means there is no blood being pumped to the body or brain.

At this time it is critical for bystanders to:

• Call emergency services (dial 911 in the U.S.)

• Begin CPR

• Apply the nearest automated external defibrillator (AED)

If you don't have formal training, 911 dispatchers can give you specific instructions on using an AED and performing CPR until paramedics arrive.

While you may hesitate, being afraid you could hurt the victim, at this time the person is clinically dead and can't get any worse.

Bystander CPR and AED can only help.

For cardiac arrest, CPR and treatment with an AED as needed (while awaiting emergency services) significantly increase the potential for survival and, importantly, lower the risk of permanent disability.

It is now believed Hamlin has a good chance of neurological recovery, which would not have been possible had it not been for the fact that he received CPR for more than nine minutes.

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