Damar Hamlin & The Heart Of The Matter: Political Football Follies

The defensive back wearing his white Buffalo Bills No. 3 jersey cut across the field, eyes lasered on his target. In full stride, he lowered his shoulder and hit the running back midsection, stopping him short. A textbook tackle. Nothing you don’t see in every NFL game. 

What made this play so notable was the tackler, Damar Hamlin. The last tackle he’d made in competition last January was almost fatal. Here’s how we described it then. “It’s a scene few who witnessed it live or on TV will forget anytime soon. Buffalo Bills DB Damon Hamlin made a jarring tackle on Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins. They fell to the turf. The two men quickly resumed their feet to get back in position. It seemed like a routine play. Then Hamlin wavered and collapsed to the turf.

For football fans, seeing a player on the ground is, unfortunately, not unique. Injury occurs in a violent game. Some in the crowd thought Hamlin might be faking to slow down the Bengals. But this moment was unlike almost any others. Players on both teams began urgently waving to medical staffs to attend to Hamlin. 

As we know now, Hamlin was technically dead on the field. He was in the same crisis as Danish soccer star Christian Eriksen, who fell dead on the pitch at the 2021 Euro championships. Both men were in a frantic race for EMS help. Luckily the first responders reached both men in time to restart their hearts. Eriksen  was able to resume his career after eight months following a diagnosis of cardiac arrest.“

As we know now, the game was cancelled as Hamlin fought for his life. But, like Eriksen, his conditioning and will brought him back to the point where, eight months later, he laid a crunching tackle, with no fear, on the Indianapolis Colts runner. ‘I made the choice that I wanted to play,” he said after the game. 

“It wasn't nobody else's choice but mine. So making that choice, I know what comes with it. When you see my cleats laced up and my helmet and shoulder pads on, there ain't going to be no hesitation. You can't play this game like that.”

While Hamlin is seemingly making his way back, the nasty debate over vaccine damage that started with his collapse still resonates from that January night. “Almost immediately the opposing sides in the debate over vaccine injuries leapt to social media to stake their sides in the argument— despite having no firsthand knowledge of Hamlin’s case. Some cited the diagnosis of commotio cordis , blunt-force trauma.

Others took up the ‘terrible, horrible people' theme. Indianapolis Colts writer Gregg Doyel harkened back to the hysteria that prevailed over those who refused to be vaccinated. “Anti-vaxxers using Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin to promote their deadly agenda are evil, and need to be exposed for what they are. Those who believe them are gullible, and need to understand they’ve been told lies.”

The denials flew fast and furious here  and here.” The debate that started over the efficacy of vaccines and the integrity of health care continues today. Anyone who thinks that the people who used intimidation to repress vaccine information since 2020 (Health Canada, Justin Trudeau, CDC, FDA, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx etc.) are now suddenly going to reveal, from the goodness of their hearts, anything that might show their duplicity doesn’t understand the links between the NFL, the government and Big Pharma. 

As researcher John Leake explained, “the NFL is a member of the COVID-19 Community Corps—a Biden Administration & HHS program for transferring money to participating organizations in exchange for promoting COVID-19 vaccination among their members. This may explain why Green Bay Packers quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, came under such immense pressure to receive the vaccine in spite of his known severe allergy to one of its ingredients…”

The vaccine enthusiasts are assisted by an elite commentariat that bit hard on the “15 days to flatten the curve” narrative to crush Donald Trump. And who’ve whitewashed dissent since at the behest of government officials in Canada and the U.S. (Twitter files now reveal that politicians used the media to ban reporters/ columnists whose vaccine takes they didn’t like.)

With any reversals of their intimidation policy by CDC, WHO, Health Canada et al. why should anyone believe a sentence that comes out of the mouths of Big Pharma politicians, health officials, media and corporate shills these days? We needn’t list the misrepresentations (about the origin of the virus) they made while accusing others of misrepresenting the facts, but you can see but a few here. (Don’t get us started on the magic of masks.) 

From Day One of the Covid panic the establishment side has insisted there’s only been one side to truth— even when, as revealed by Covid Task Force member Deborah Birx— they knew their policy was unsupported by data. Now, via Twitter reveals and determined scientists, we see how the population was intimidated into accepting a policy pushed by Big Pharma.”

In recent days, these authorities have allowed that, maybe, the vaccine’s efficacy was oversold. Data shows that, far from being spreaders of Covid, anti-vaxxers are no more dangerous than people who’ve had five or six jabs. Only the most corrupt deny the lab source for the virus. 

However, the hysterics who wanted neighbours dead because they declined to join a cult urged by medical elites are still silent as vaccines sit unused by the millions. That includes Canada’s PM who locked returning citizens into hotel jails and then declared a public emergency when truckers didn’t sign up for his bullshit. Crickets from him.

As we said in January: “Damar Hamlin’s restored health will be one positive outcome of this frightening incident. The second should be the restoration of active public debate on healthcare. Both are to be celebrated.” 

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx