January 6, 2023

"On Thursday, his doctors announced [Damar] Hamlin had started to awaken. Though he remains critically ill and on a ventilator..."

"... his medical team said the player is showing signs of 'good neurologic recovery' and is making significant improvement.... In cardiac arrest, the heart is no longer pumping blood, which means no oxygen is traveling to the brain or other organs. Seconds matter: The longer a person goes without oxygen, the chances of organ damage increase, and the chances of survival decrease. CPR mimics a pumping heart, which keeps blood flowing.... In audio obtained by CNN... [a]t 8:55 p.m. ET, when Hamlin hit the ground, someone can be heard saying, 'Go over to the cot. I don’t like how he went down.' A few seconds later, another voice says, 'We’re going to need everybody. All call, all call.' Within the minute, several other cries go out for all personnel to rush to the field...."

CNN reports.

And there's this from Yahoo!sports (which sounds like the way you'd write the story in fiction):

About 48 hours after he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest during a nationally televised NFL game, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin awoke for the first time Wednesday night. Unable to speak because of a tube that is helping him breathe, he grabbed a clipboard and scribbled a note on a piece of paper.

“Did we win?” Hamlin asked his bedside nurse.

“The answer is yes, Damar, you won. You won the game of life,” Dr. Timothy Pritts said Thursday afternoon at a news conference in Cincinnati, paraphrasing the response of one of his medical partners....

48 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

An interview with cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough (since taken down by YouTube) has Dr McCullough saying the hospital and the NFL is not giving out information about the health of the player, information they have about what could've happened on the field.

Here is a clip of the interview, a clip that remains up presumably because it's not deemed controversial... yet.

I have YouTube "health & safety" sleeping in the office 😉

Too much speculation out there...

Achilles said...

Going to be a tough few years for the people who redefined the word vaccine and tried to force everyone to take it.

The record profits by companies like Pfizer and Moderna are going to be an issue too.

RideSpaceMountain said...

The seed of doubt has been planted. A lot of those players may not be convinced that the vaccine/booster had or has any role, but they're certainly thinking it loudly.

Curious George said...

That response would make him think the worse.

William said...

He didn't win the point spread. Still, this is as much of a feel good story as we're likely to encounter today.....The preferred place to go into cardiac arrest is in the hospital, but an NFL playing field is a better location than most spots.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Relevant tweet: Yearly commotia cordis cases? ~15. (RARELY over age 20).

1,598 athlete cardiac arrests since Jan 2021. 69% fatal.

(Average athlete cardiacs before vax was 29/yr).

“Science” ignores this.

That’s why people ask questions.


Elon boosted (Scroll up to see relevant tweet)

If true, this is big. If true, there's going to come a time when... the dam is going to break. How else can this be spoken about?

Aggie said...

I'm ready to see a comprehensive and honest analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine risk, but I am far from ready to see it applied wholesale to every athlete that drops on the field. Reason cuts all ways - the data and historical trends will be an important key to this.

Keep the prayers coming for this young man. I hope he makes a quick and complete recovery. And the response by the EMTs and health professionals at the game is to be commended.

gilbar said...

so help me out..
He was hit in the chest.. At EXACTLY the Right Time, to cause his heart to stop?
He needed electric shocks, to restart his heart (which was done.. On the field?)?

Then! his Super Healthy heart restarted.. Because it wasn't damaged by covid vax.. Not At ALL!
Because covid vax Does NOT damage youngster's hearts.. Nope! NOT AT ALL!

So... Please tell me; WHY? He is STILL in critical condition?
and WHY it took three DAYS for him to 'start to awaken'?? Seems like this doesn't all add up

rhhardin said...

It's sort of a Snow White story.

rhhardin said...

His heart is out on bail.

Richard said...

We may be looking at an artifact of reporting. If, for example, Brit soccer players fell over dead in practice five years ago, it didn't make the US news.
The same for a high school basketball player two time zones away.

Usually, the local news has one case a year--that I notice--and the mention of an AED either needed or thank God, available.The presumption could be that the same would be true in other areas covered by other local--but not national--news. Today...?

Going to take some stat research to get this figured out.

tim in vermont said...

There is a study out there of two rugby players who had similar events happen to them in games, both had myocarditis, one undiagnosed. A study of Ohio State athletes done prior to the vaccine being introduced, who had tested positive for COVID, showed that about a third of them had myocarditis, to some degree. It's also true that myocarditis, as a side effect to the vaccine, has been documented in young men.

If I was a young man playing a contact sport, where I take hits like that for the amusement of spectators, I think I would want as much information as I could get about this issue, and reassurances from the same people who told me that George Floyd protests were fine, but Trump rallies where murderous, and who assured me that the virus didn't come from a lab, doesn't count as "information."

Dan from Madison said...

I don't believe much about anything in the press. Sounds like a carefully spun narrative for ratings and clicks. First thing he wanted to know is if they won the game? Sure.

I can't imagine he is conscious with a ventilator in but I don't know much about that.

PEDs, all of them, are terrible for your heart. They are the elephant in the room right now.

tim in vermont said...

"I'm ready to see a comprehensive and honest analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine risk"

LOL, yeah, me too. I am ready for them to quit lying and covering up about a lot of things.

Owen said...

rhhardin @ 8:32: “…a Snow White story.” So who is the prince?

Beasts of England said...

How does a routine tackle put someone on a ventilator?

Edmund said...

@gilbar said:
"so help me out..
He was hit in the chest.. At EXACTLY the Right Time, to cause his heart to stop?"


Looks like it. The place he was hit was where it could cause Commotio Cordis. It could be another condition, but that is the most likely.

"He needed electric shocks, to restart his heart (which was done.. On the field?)?"

Not exactly to restart the heart, but to get it out of ventricular fibrillation - a condition where the heart is quivering instead of pumping in proper sequence. And they had an AED at the game, like many businesses do, to shock the heart back into rhythm. AEDs are responsible for saving lots of lives - they are easy to use and have instruction for laypersons on how to use them. A few years ago, one was used to save the life of a coworker at the office.

You commonly see it done on TV when the heart stops (asystole), but like much of the medicine on TV, that's incorrect, you don't shock a heart that has flatlined.

"Then! his Super Healthy heart restarted.. Because it wasn't damaged by covid vax.. Not At ALL!
Because covid vax Does NOT damage youngster's hearts.. Nope! NOT AT ALL!"


Yeah, his heart restarted. Happens all the time.

So... Please tell me; WHY? He is STILL in critical condition?
and WHY it took three DAYS for him to 'start to awaken'?? Seems like this doesn't all add up


It appears that he had some lung damage, and he was sedated while on a ventilator as part of the treatment. My spouse is a physician and speculated that he aspirated fluid into his lungs, either on the field at the injury, during CPR, or when intubated. CPR can also cause lung damage. But being on a ventilator can require sedation.

Yancey Ward said...

If he really is conscious and alert (and, no, I don't automatically believe these press releases any longer), then they weren't "performing CPR" on him for 9 minutes- they got his heart going much earlier than that.

Joe Smith said...

When he woke up he was so happy that he sprang up and did a chest bump with a teammate who was standing by his bed.

Uh oh...

Esteban Carter said...

Interesting. I wonder what the overlap of folks who cry out that gun violence deaths are being politicized every time someone mentions gun control following a school massacre, with the folks who immediately mention the vaccine in the context of a pretty open and shut case up commotio cordis.

I’m guessing that Venn diagram is just one big circle.

Every time someone posts a list of these folks who supposedly fell over and died while playing sports, you’ll note all sorts of holes and misinterpretations. Dart players having hypoglycemic attacks. An athlete who shot himself is one of the folks who shows up on these lists. Etc.

At least with the gun massacres, we know that they’re happening. WEIRD how the folks to jump at every story about a young person dying under *possibly* mysterious circumstances for some reason can’t bring the same level of care toward these preventable murders done in plain sight.

BarrySanders20 said...

“Did we win?” Hamlin asked his bedside nurse.

I can believe this. He's a competitor and wanted to know whether his team accomplished the goal that they were there to do. I would ask that too.

He probably thinks they and we are all wankers for not carrying on. You know, you can do both things - care about the well-being of a guy who suffered a freak incident and also get on with it. Because if it is the potential for serious harm that must be avoided at all cost, then none of them can play the game and the sport should be canceled.

Ice Nine said...

I've read Damar Hamlin threads on four different blogs over the last few days. On every one of them there were a surprising number of people who were - not just proposing CovVax myocarditis as a *possible* cause - but getting abusively agitated by anyone who did not concede it as *the* cause. "Head-in-the-sand assholes," and the like. It was stunning. That right there is some cult level, emotion-based, doctrinaire rigidity. Whew...

I don't have a dog in this CovVax myocarditis fight. I don't care what the cause of Hamlin's cardiac arrest was. I know that it looked to me like a pretty clear R on T case but it certainly could have been several other things. I'll wait for the definitive diagnosis to come out and if it was something other than R on T, happy to accept that. Myocarditis is a pretty easy diagnosis to make and if Hamlin's event was due to myocarditis with - wow - amazingly coincidental timing to a direct chest blow, so be it. Again, I don't care - I'm just intrigued by those who are so wrapped up in their vehement insistence that it was due to CovVax.

MacMacConnell said...

Only one other pro football player ever had a heart attack on field during a game, he died. That was in 1971.

Most serious injuries during games are of the spinal cord, there has been four in NFL history.

There are no "heros" in this current event just well trained professional NFL medical staff. Each NFL team spends between $13 to $14 million a year on medical staff training.







Leland said...

The preferred place to go into cardiac arrest is in the hospital, but an NFL playing field is a better location than most spots.

I was on the field in 1994, when Jack Jernigan had his heart attack on the 50-yard line in the middle of Kyle Field during the Texas A&M Aggie Band centennial reunion performance. The crowd went from being deafening to complete silence as people started to understand what was happening. Fortunately for Jack, at least 4 former bandsmen next to him were fully trained paramedics (dozens more were located elsewhere in the formation) and the A&M team doctor was on the sideline when it began. A football field during a major game really is a good place if you have to have a heart attack in public. Jack survived and lived fine for another 10 years, when he finally passed away at age 80 in 2005.

MacMacConnell said...

BarrySanders20 said...
“Did we win?” Hamlin asked his bedside nurse.

Evidently, Hamlin was the only alpha male on the field that day.

Owen said...

Esteban Carter @ 9:51: You seem pretty upset about something. Upset enough to try to shift the conversation from Hamlin and his medical situation to...school shootings and gun control? Impressive traverse of the space-time continuum!

tim in vermont said...

" pretty open and shut case up commotio cordis. "

Sure, as long as you ignore the stuff you are not supposed to think about.

https://www.fox26houston.com/news/ohio-state-study-30-of-student-athletes-have-heart-damage-linked-to-covid-19

and. this

Sudden cardiac death risk in contact sports increased by myocarditis: a case series
Grégoire Massoullié, Baptiste Boyer, Vincent Sapin, Frédéric Jean, Marius Andronache, Michel Peoc’h, Guillaume Clerfond, Romain Eschalier
European Heart Journal - Case Reports, Volume 5, Issue 3, March 2021, ytab054, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehjcr/ytab054
Published: 01 March 2021


https://academic.oup.com/ehjcr/article/5/3/ytab054/6154461

Maybe in July of 2019 it would have been "open and shut," but when the facts change, only ideologues don't change their opinion. It's way too quick to close this case.

tim in vermont said...

Question What are the findings on cardiac imaging in children with myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination?

Findings In this case series of 15 children who were hospitalized with myocarditis after receipt of the BNT162b2 messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine for 1 to 5 days, boys were most often affected after the second vaccine dose, 3 patients had ventricular systolic dysfunction, and 12 patients had late gadolinium enhancement on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. There was no mortality, and all but 1 patient had normal echocardiogram results on follow-up 1 to 13 days after discharge.

Meaning COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis may have a benign short-term course in children; however, the long-term risks remain unknown.


https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/article-abstract/2783052

Find your own, go to scholar.google.com and search on myocarditis and vaccine. It has always been, and remains, an experimental vaccine, and never should have been mandated, but that doesn't mean that the risk of myocarditis isn't higher with the unvaccinated, maybe it is, IDK, but since they have been feeding us lies, I hope nobody minds if I keep my mind open.

Roger Sweeny said...

BarrySanders20 is absolutely right, "Because if it is the potential for serious harm that must be avoided at all cost, then none of them can play the game and the sport should be canceled."

It was this same attitude that lead to much of the COVID restrictions.

Which is why I'm coming to hate all the "human life is more important than X" statements. In some sort of abstract way, that may be true. But practically, the question is, "how much potential risk of human life are we willing to take in order to have something we want?" There have been two professional football player deaths in the hundred year existence of the NFL. If we knew professional football would result in one player death every 50 years, should it be abolished? I suspect the vast majority of people now saying (and not meaning to lie) that human life is more important than football would not be willing to give up their football watching.

Steven Wilson said...


At 8:18 here


Relevant tweet: Yearly commotia cordis cases? ~15. (RARELY over age 20).

1,598 athlete cardiac arrests since Jan 2021. 69% fatal.

(Average athlete cardiacs before vax was 29/yr).

“Science” ignores this.

That’s why people ask questions.

Elon boosted (Scroll up to see relevant tweet)

If true, this is big. If true, there's going to come a time when... the dam is going to break. How else can this be spoken about?




In regard this to the above:

The source of the nearly 1600 athletes suffering cardiac arrest.
The number of athletes suffering cardiac arrest in the two previous years.

And that's only a start. I personally feel that requiring vaccinations for young people is unwarranted, just as I know that the utility of masks was vastly overstated, and I argued against lockdowns despite the fact that I was 73 and in the cohort that needed protection. I would love to know the facts about the assertion in this post quoted above but I honestly don't know who I would believe at this time.

I remember as a naive 20 year old I thought it was great that information was more readily available and that we would have a more informed electorate. I didn't know then that Gresham's Law not only applies to currency, it seems to apply to information as well.

I had also failed to take into account that half of everyone is below average, nor did I recognize that the average was going to be getting lower with each passing year.

It will be a long time before we know the truth about the efficacy of the vaccines and/or the potential side effects and if those side effects varied from one age cohort to another.

And I think we should all have a thought for Chuck Hughes.

Michael K said...

At least with the gun massacres, we know that they’re happening. WEIRD how the folks to jump at every story about a young person dying under *possibly* mysterious circumstances for some reason can’t bring the same level of care toward these preventable murders done in plain sight.

The major difference is that Covid deaths are concealed and gun deaths are wildly exaggerated, except of course in the most common examples, which are black gang battles.

I kind of agree with Ice Nine that we don't know enough details. My objection has always been mandatory use of this mRNA product with no testing on healthy low risk populations, like 24 year old athletes and children.

Curious George said...

"Blogger Esteban Carter said...
Interesting. I wonder what the overlap of folks who cry out that gun violence deaths are being politicized every time someone mentions gun control following a school massacre, with the folks who immediately mention the vaccine in the context of a pretty open and shut case up commotio cordis."

His doctors say it's too early and they don't have a cause for his heart attack, but you got it all figured out....from watching the game on TV. Okee. Dokee.

Tom T. said...

His second note: “I meant 'Did we win the game, you jackass!'”

1,598 athlete cardiac arrests since Jan 2021. 69% fatal.

How many of those athletes had had COVID? The disease itself presents a noticeable risk of myocarditis. For that matter, has Hamlin had COVID?

He was hit in the chest.. At EXACTLY the Right Time, to cause his heart to stop?

As opposed to, "the vaccine kicked in at EXACTLY the right time to stop his heart"? Why is that timing more plausible to you?

He needed electric shocks, to restart his heart (which was done.. On the field?)?

...they weren't "performing CPR" on him for 9 minutes- they got his heart going much earlier than that.


This all played out on national TV. What's the alternative theory as to what was happening out there on the field? Are you saying they were doing something other than CPR to him? Or simulating CPR and defibrillation? Why?

Tom T. said...

and gun deaths are wildly exaggerated

"He died *with* a gunshot wound, not *of* a gunshot wound."

tim in vermont said...

"I remember as a naive 20 year old I thought it was great that information was more readily available and that we would have a more informed electorate."

As a naive 20 year old, I believed that Oswald was a "lone gunman" and anybody who believed otherwise was obviously crazy.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Truth about the Jab is there'll be no truth. Reportage was "filtered" from the start. Too much at stake for the truth to foul up the works. The big money is not riding on truth.

Jim at said...

I'm ready to see a comprehensive and honest analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine risk, but I am far from ready to see it applied wholesale to every athlete that drops on the field.

Correct. But the fact they're not willing to even consider the vax as part of the problem should give everyone pause.

If they are hiding something, what is it? And why?

Jim at said...

in the context of a pretty open and shut case up commotio cordis.

Nice to know we have an expert amongst us. Don't question anything. At all.

And your anti-gun screed as some sort of comparison is weak sauce.

But I'll let you go back to your rounds, Doc. Thanks for checking in.

Inga said...

“I've read Damar Hamlin threads on four different blogs over the last few days. On every one of them there were a surprising number of people who were - not just proposing CovVax myocarditis as a *possible* cause - but getting abusively agitated by anyone who did not concede it as *the* cause. "Head-in-the-sand assholes," and the like. It was stunning. That right there is some cult level, emotion-based, doctrinaire rigidity. Whew”

Are you surprised by the overwhelming adherence to some lunatic QAnon conspiracy theory?

I’m not.

Jim at said...

but getting abusively agitated by anyone who did not concede it as *the* cause. "Head-in-the-sand assholes," and the like.

At no point did I say it was THE cause. I used the term head-in-the-sand because that person insisted it wasn't and then waved her finger of shame at anybody who didn't agree.

WA-mom said...

If God wanted to impress millions of people with the power of prayer, who and when would He pick to suffer cardiac arrest? Just sayin'.

hawkeyedjb said...

Esteban Carter said...
"At least with the gun massacres, we know that they’re happening. WEIRD how the folks to jump at every story about a young person dying under *possibly* mysterious circumstances for some reason can’t bring the same level of care toward these preventable murders done in plain sight."

I care very much about preventing murders. What is proposed after every gun murder has nothing to do with preventing murders; it is simply politicians posturing and bullshitting. They have nothing to offer; indeed politicians recoil from any thought that we need more criminal control. Proposals that have no connection to the actual event do not demonstrate any "level of care." Taking guns from law-abiding owners and inconveniencing them has no effect whatsoever on the criminals who actually commit crimes. Show me the politician who has put forth any proposal to stop the daily carnage in Chicago or Los Angeles.

walter said...

"I wonder what the overlap of folks who cry out that gun violence deaths are being politicized every time someone mentions gun control following a school massacre, with the folks who immediately mention the vaccine in the context of a pretty open and shut case up commotio cordis. "

Right on! Open and shut! Fuck that so called cardio dude McCullough. Know nothing blabbermouth. I just heard a segment on WISN with MCW doc about Damar. Didn't mention vaccine once!
Open and shut!
Good time to invest in AED market, BTW.

walter said...

"It will be a long time before we know the truth about the efficacy of the vaccines and/or the potential side effects and if those side effects varied from one age cohort to another."
Especially when folks who pimped it, mandated it, profited from it or took it really don't want to know.
Too big to fail.

walter said...

Too big to fail in the sense that FDA tried to hide data for about the same time frame as Kennedy files. At least they had a precedent to lean on.

Tom T. said...

Hamlin has had his breathing tube removed, and he spoke to his teammates. Assuming you believe he was ever actually intubated in the first place, and that that wasn't just a cover story.

walter said...

Let's see if he is jabbed, requires an implanted d-fib

walter said...

In the meantime, arrange to have your random cardiac episodes on an NFL field during a game.