Originally Published on DailyClout
On Monday Night Football, January 2, a figurative shot was heard around the world. Before collapsing on the field, Bills Safety (defensive player) Damar Hamlin made a routine tackle on Bengals receiver Tee Higgins. There was some contact in the neck and chest area — but nothing out of the ordinary for professional football.
After making the tackle, Damar stood up, appeared to attempt to clap his hands, then fell straight down.
CPR was subsequently performed, and his heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm. He was then put on a form of ventilation through an endotracheal tube and loaded into a paramedic unit, where the team of medics waited in the football tunnel for Damar’s mom to hop on board the vehicle before transporting the Bills Safety to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. The diagnosis: cardiac arrest.
Now, heart attacks are quite rare in healthy, young athletes. And the screening process for such conditions is stringent in the NFL. That’s where we turn to Dr. Peter McCullough for some insight on what might have exactly caused this.
Dr. McCullough sat down this morning (1/4/23) with Children's Health Defense and provided an in-depth analysis concerning Damar Hamlin’s situation.
Dr. McCullough is an internist, epidemiologist, and one of the most published cardiologists ever in America. Throughout the course of his career, he has received many patients who’ve had cardiac arrest outside the hospital — and has published papers on the topic as well.
“I watched the game live and certainly watched the replays. And a doctor’s mind goes through a differential diagnosis of what could have happened when we see a collapse like that,” stated Dr. McCullough.
“Let me tell you that I did see head and neck contact with a tackle which is not uncommon at all in football. Remember that the shoulder pads have a breastbone protector, [a] pretty substantial breastbone [protector]. So they take helmets in the chest all the time.”
Dr. McCullough continues, “And a condition that occurs rarely in baseball, called Commotio Cordis, where a baseball hits an unprotected breastbone, can precipitate a cardiac arrest. It’s about 20 to 30 cases per year. And it’s never actually happened in pro football. So we quickly ruled that one out. And as I watched things unfold, it was relatively clear that he was in a primary cardiac arrest.”
This morning, Damar’s uncle reported that Hamlin suffered a second cardiac arrest in the hospital. Dr. McCullough informs, “a second cardiac arrest happens in about 50% of cases (of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests) — which it did in his case. Because, again, the milieu was present for this to happen.”
But there is some good news, disclosed Dr. McCullough. “Importantly, in our analyses. Damar has multiple features that would lead us to conclude that he will neurologically recover. And so everyone’s hoping and praying that he’ll have a complete neurologic recovery. And then, there’ll be an investigation into what is the cause of this primary cardiac arrest.”
CHD’s Aimee Villella McBride asks for further clarification from Dr. McCullough that it wasn’t Commotio Cordis because of that second cardiac arrest.
“Right, so it’s not Commotio Cordis,” affirmed Dr. McCullough. “Other things in the differential diagnosis include kind of a head, spinal cord injury — that wasn’t the case. Those things were quickly ruled out because he tackled, and then he popped up, and he stood up. He almost was gonna clap his hands, and then he fell over backwards.”
Dr. McCullough made an appearance on Tucker Carlson last night (1/3/23), and the conclusion he came to was primary cardiac arrest.
“And I think all experts now have settled on a primary cardiac arrest,” he said. “What I told Tucker last night is that there is a differential for primary cardiac arrest. Now in professional athletes, many of the causes of primary cardiac arrest [for] a man his age have already been ruled out because the athletes are so heavily evaluated and scrutinized before they’re ready to play. So the leading cause of an athlete having a cardiac arrest on the field is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And that is an abnormal thickness of the heart.”
Dr. Cullough then addresses “the elephant in the room.”
“You saw the emotion not only on the commentators, the players — people in the stands. [In an] unprecedented manner, they’ve actually suspended the game. Everyone left the stadium. The elephant in the room that no one could bring up until I brought it up yesterday on national TV, as the first public figure, is COVID-19 vaccination.”
Dr. McCullough published with Dr. Polykretis from Europe the number of athletes who suffered cardiac arrests before and after the rollout of the C19 injections.
“Before COVID-19 vaccines, the average number of cardiac arrests in all of the European soccer football leagues, which is way more players than the NFL, the average number of cardiac arrests was 29 per year. That’s before the vaccines. The vaccines are ushered in in 2021, and since that time, the tally now for cardiac arrests on the field with professional sports players in Europe — 1,598! 1,101 of them have been fatal cases. Two-thirds cannot be resuscitated. So Damar Hamlin was very fortunate he was in the third that was successfully resuscitated and survived thus far.”
And when it comes to suspected causes of Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, Dr. McCullough says vaccine-induced myocarditis is “at the top of the list!”
Why does he say that? Because by August 2021, the NFL touted a C19 vaccination rate of 93%. Interestingly, in March 2022, the NFL dropped all C19 protocols.
“But the important point here,” emphasized Dr. McCullough, “is we’re learning that the vaccine can cause heart damage. Two papers: Mansanguan and Le Pesic have given us the point estimate of about 2.5% of people sustain heart damage when they take the vaccine. It’s not equally distributed, by the way. 90% are men, and 10% are women.”
He continues, “[In] more than half of cases [of heart damage], there are no initial symptoms. There’s no initial presentation; a scar is formed in the heart. That scar is readily identified by MRI. And that scar becomes the setup for an abnormal electrical rhythm that circulates around the scar — it’s called ventricular tachycardia. And then, it degenerates into ventricular fibrillation, causing the sudden adult Death Syndrome. This is the leading thinking of what’s happening with athletes on the field.”
Dr. McCullough denotes that there have now been 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts on C19 vaccine-induced myocarditis, and the FDA agrees that the vaccines can cause myocarditis. Today, in a bit of breaking news, Massachusetts General Hospital found in 16 teenagers hospitalized with myocarditis, circulating spike protein induced by the vaccine in high levels.
“So it looks like the spike protein is part of the pathogenesis of the acute myocarditis syndrome,” added Dr. McCullough. “For Hamlin, they’ll have to work through this differential diagnosis. But in my view, there’s now a unique public health responsibility that’s been thrust upon all the various players in this dramatic scene.”
We at DailyClout send our thoughts and prayers to Damar Hamlin and his family — in hopes that he makes a complete neurological recovery.
Many thanks to Dr. McCullough for this comprehensive analysis. You can follow Dr. McCullough here on Substack.
Or you can learn more about his latest project with The Wellness Company, healthcare with an alternative approach to “a pill for every ill.”
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Dr. Peter McCullough Provides In-Depth Analysis on Damar Hamlin’s Sudden Cardiac Arrest