Athletes Having Heart Attacks Normal, Study Says
A quick cyncial view of the media and a medical study
Study “proves” that athletes in top physical shape having heart attacks or dropping dead is perfectly normal, you anti-vaxxers. In fact, it’s happening less often since the jab came out!
Here’s a very dubious piece from Daily Mail:
My first question was “what study?” Yes, it’s cited and linked:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.123.065908
No paywall; you can download the full paper if you wish.
My first instinct is to “Follow the money.” Let’s see what it says:
Most of it’s there on page 10. Under affiliations and disclosures, at least one researcher has disclosed links to Pfizer, as well as numerous other Pharma corporations. They are members of various university and other academic positions. Several non-medical, non-academic entities are mentioned (e.g. sports industry affiliated).
It is well known that non-profits and foundations are a way to skirt laws against bribery and other influence buying by effectively laundering payments to individuals and to cloud sources of funding. I keep the working assumption that these affiliations and (undisclosed) sources of funding have many unmentioned strings attached.
Curiously, under heading “Sources of Funding” it merely says “None.” How wonderful, a bunch of academics and scientists did a study all for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. God bless them. Perhaps they looked under the seat cuishons of the faculty lounge couches and collected up what loose change they could find.
Note that I’m not even treating the topics of either the Daily Mail’s article nor the study published in Circulation. I’m more interested in the likely motives of the entities involved.
What is the explicit message of the article? Isn’t it basically “See you silly anti-vaxxers? Here’s proof that not only is it normal for perfectly healthy athletes to drop dead mid-game, it’s been happening for decades, in fact it’s happened LESS often since the jabs came out.”
Now, I’m operating under the assumption that scientists rely heavily on corporate and other donations to fund their future projects, and perhaps even to keep their careers. Similarly, I suspect the Daily Mail and academic journals like Circulation rely heavily on income from advertisers and subscriptions from industry connected sources like medical libraries. I’d wager the Daily Mail too relies on advertising revenue.
Isn’t it just the least bit possible that these would tend to influence what people would say, what topics are allowed for discussion, and color what results might be obtained?
Meanwhile in early November in the span of one week not one but two former NFL stars died unexpectedly (source: Jeff Childers at Coffee & Covid):
11-08-23: Matt Ulrich aged 41.
https://sports.yahoo.com/matt-ulrich-super-bowl-champion-with-colts-dead-at-41-owner-jim-irsay-heartbroken-005228861.html
11-15-23: Devon Wilie, aged 35.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/devon-wylie-nfl-player-death-b2448689.html
Nothing to see here folks. Perfectly normal for two ex-athletes presumably in the prime of life, to drop dead unexpectedly. Happens all the time.
Meanwhile, excess death rates continue well above historical (pre-pandemic) norms in many nations that jabbed up starting three years ago. The media and the authorities don’t seem to have much enthusiasm investigated why hundreds of thousands “too many” people are dying. In both the US and the UK, legislators hold hearings on this topic to nearly empty chambers.
Their claim about a decrease only looked at diagnosed myocarditis, which is only 6% of the deaths in their study. I guess because everyone is pretending that is the only problem? I wonder if they could say the same about all cause mortality or even cardiac mortality? I suspect I know the answer.