Two hundred seventy-nine athletes and former athletes in the United States have died from cardiac arrests after taking COVID-19 vaccines, according to data from a recent peer-reviewed study.
Authored by structural biologist Panagis Polykretis, and board-certified internist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, the study’s cited data found that from 2021 to 2022, at least 1,616 cardiac arrests have been globally documented in vaccinated athletes, with 1,114 of those being fatal.
The global data also showed that between 2021 to 2022, former and current American athletes made up 279 of the mortalities.
Athletes have a lower chance of cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death as compared to nonathletes. A 2016 U.S. study calculated that nonathletes, compared to athletes, have a 29 times higher chance of sudden cardiac death.
One of the reasons is because “athletes are screened out for the common causes of sudden death on the playing field,” McCullough told The Epoch Times.
Players are screened for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which makes up almost 50 percent of sudden cardiac deaths in athletes, as well as other less common heart abnormalities.
The intensive screening is what makes competitive-level sports safer than everyday sporting activities, McCullough argued.
Sudden Cardiac Deaths in Athletes Increased After Vaccination
McCullough pointed to a European study that tracked sudden cardiac deaths in European athletes over 38 years from 1966 to 2004. The study reported 1,101 sudden cardiac deaths over the interval, which Polykretis estimated would be around 29 deaths per year.
This recent paper from Dr. Polykretis and myself gets the sharp rise in athlete deaths into PUBMED. Since vaccination, “1598 athletes suffered cardiac arrest, 1101 of which with deadly outcome. Over a prior 38-years (1966-2004), 1101 athletes < age of 35 died (~29/yr). https://t.co/lGWFctLx2L pic.twitter.com/SCieZTsoNZ
— Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH™ (@P_McCulloughMD) January 3, 2023
In the United States, it is estimated that 100 to 150 athletes die every year from sudden death.
The data cited in the study, however, showed that in 2022 alone, over 190 deaths from cardiac arrests have been reported in current and former athletes.
This does not include the deaths of athletes with unknown vaccine statuses and those whose names did not make it into the media.
By Marina Zhang
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