Young people around the world are dying in unexpected numbers.
It is most evident on the sports field. In the last two years, seemingly healthy athletes have collapsed during football, hockey, and soccer. They were bikers, bodybuilders, and runners. And they didn’t die from COVID-19. They died from heart attacks, strokes, and cardiac arrests.
Of course, sudden cardiac deaths do happen to young athletes. Sports are intense and they put the body through rigorous training. Sometimes the heart gives out. A 2018 study in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates that about 6.8 young athletes per 100,000 people die a year due to cardiovascular causes. They are mostly males with an average age of 16 years, with some kind of undetected heart disease. These are extremely rare events….