I saw one lady in her early forties hit the pavement yesterday in front of a pharmacy — as if an invisible puppeteer had just cut off her strings. Click. Drop. She never got up again. A friend spotted another raggedy doll the day before.
Professional athletes are also going raggedy. Of the 183 FIFA players who have collapsed since December 2020, 108 died almost immediately after hitting the relatively soft pavement, according to an Israeli newspaper investigation. That’s just for FIFA players, the ones who got caught in a live broadcast. A German online outlet Wochenblick counted 69 collapses among sportsmen in October 2021 alone.
Should we worry? Experts say no – at least the experts that BBC quotes.
Who Should We Listen To?
Heart attack is by no means rare. According to the CDC, coronary disease is the leading cause of death, responsible for one in four crossings over the River Styx, which happens once in every 36 seconds in the U.S. alone — in regular times. So it shouldn’t be an anomaly to spot people dropping in extraordinary times, either, right? Dropping dead from any cause is entirely normal just about anywhere on the planet, considering that out of 7.9 billion people, roughly 60 million die, and 140 million are born in a year, come hell or high water. That’s about two departures and four arrivals per second.
So, should we listen to the experts? Well, yes and no. We should listen to them when they say that we shouldn’t worry. As a norm, worry tends to mess up the immune system. But we should question the raggedy doll part. It’s necessary to ask questions. If not for ourselves, then at least for our kids.
Questions like: why did that lady, or soccer player, drop like a raggedy doll just now? Maybe it was an ordinary cardiac arrest, and perhaps it was not.
Young and (Not) Healthy
What’s significant about the recent spate of raggedy dolls is the core demographic: the exceptionally healthy and young individuals in the 17-40-year segment whose last concern should be heart disease. They are dropping at five-fold rates compared to the previous year. They’re dropping on TV, in restaurants, on playing fields, at conferences, and in other public spaces while taking a bite, kicking a ball, or uttering a sentence. Click—raggedy drop. Hard to ignore, but ignored they are. Even the sportscasters act as if they are prepped not to ask questions. “Player 41 just hit the ground, but 43 is taking the lead! Defense is strong as we near the first half of the game.”
And so on. Men in white overalls whisk away a corpse on a stretcher while the camera points at the other end of the field – where the ball is.
“Did you see that?” A child in the parking lot shrieked to her mom yesterday. “She fell like a tree!” The mom pulled the kid into the car without so much as turning her head. The kid’s brain was full of Marvel visions. Obviously.
Kids are taking the brunt of the sudden raggedy doll spike, incidentally. In the U.K. and Wales, teenage mortality increased by 63 percent compared to last year. One week it went up by 700 percent, while myocarditis amongst kids, in general, went up by about 1900 percent. No doctor, who still has a job and is part of the mainstream healthcare establishment, can explain this phenomenon, which is strange, considering the amount of data pouring in. The problem is, that the algorithms happen to dislike the data, so it’s best not to spell it out unless you’re behind a triple-encrypted wall. Besides, the relevant peer-reviewed study on kids with myocarditis vanished seconds after being rolled out. So it’s no point to talk about that either.
It’s better to publish a picture about a bunny shoveling a carrot into its mouth in record time and say, “how cute is that!”
Denying The Drops
Two-thirds remain in a state of deep denial, with their heads surgically planted in the sandbox, plugged into terabytes of a one-dimensional narrative. They worry sometimes and maybe even ask questions silently, in the dark recesses of their black box, but never ask those questions publicly. The misalignment of inner and outer truth ferments an inch beneath the deadpan, stressing the synapses, cells, and organs in a slow, fermentation-like process. Buried worry is more toxic than ordinary straight-up worry. It’s acidic enough to contribute to heart disease, ironically.
Some of us choose to remain grateful and positive. Others pull back and cocoon, afraid and anxious. A third segment lives by a bizarre cocktail made of both. A fourth segment decides to ignore all of it.
It makes no difference. All four are denial mechanisms.
When we refuse to acknowledge the pink T-Rex (a mere elephant isn’t big enough for this topic) in the bedroom, one that’s trumpeting a 120-decibel warning straight into our eardrums, 24/7, we are trying to bury the obvious.
Imagine the noise in the head, unabated. What does it do to the autonomous nervous system when it goes on for days, weeks, and months on end?
But no. We will try to suffocate the signal with some daily niceties, engagements, trivialities, “absolutely binding” obligations, and other frivolities – act and speak louder than the noise.
Moving On With Life
“Let’s make some pancakes!”
“What’s on TV tonight?”
“What are you planning for the holidays?”
Maybe the implications of the pink T-Rex are too hard to digest. The act of conscious acknowledgment could alter reality’s fabric, undermine our identities, break our trust in authority, and demolish the idea that someone out there thinks and plans for the benefit of our wellbeing.
The last part may be the hardest to deal with — akin to the shock effect of a child losing a parent, or parents. Or having someone we trust and depend on throw us off the cliff — just like that, without warning. Some eagles do that with their young, by the way. Over and over again, until the chicks learn to catch the wind. The shock teaches them to fly or to crash.
Maybe that’s a way to perceive the current absurdity, without splintering to pieces.
Recent post-mortem studies reveal definitive clues to the “sudden collapse mystery.” Commentary by Dr. Sucharit Bakdi.
Jan Wellmann
Founder & Health Coach
Energy For Living
