For context, this is quite common, especially in larger races. People like to take on challenges they're in no way fit to handle. I used to work with a doctor whose wife was a competitive long-distance runner, so he'd work medical staff at marathons. They'd always have a few heart attacks. It wasn't uncommon for someone to pass away from over-exertion. Dehydration, exhaustion, heat stroke were all very common as well as the obvious musculoskeletal injuries. If you put 40-50 thousand people together for one of the major marathons like Chicago, NYC, Boston, London, Berlin, etc, you will see all of this stuff.
This headline doesn't give us any perspective. The life insurance numbers reporting double-digit jumps in "excess deaths" 2 years after a pandemic was supposed to have thinned the herd (that is, we should be seeing less excess death following COVID's years of high excess death rates), that's much better evidence.
Even then, the "excess deaths" numbers still lack a cause. This would seem to be an obvious line of research that government agencies in particular would be interested in in the interests of public health. NIH is currently funding NO STUDY to try and explain the root cause(s) of this spike in excess deaths. Are we seeing more heart attacks, cancers, strokes, shark attacks? What? TPTB don't even want to know.
Here's hoping some enterprising grad student is working on this as a springboard to launch his career (or destroy it utterly before it ever gets off the ground after the establishment crushes him).
For context, this is quite common, especially in larger races. People like to take on challenges they're in no way fit to handle. I used to work with a doctor whose wife was a competitive long-distance runner, so he'd work medical staff at marathons. They'd always have a few heart attacks. It wasn't uncommon for someone to pass away from over-exertion. Dehydration, exhaustion, heat stroke were all very common as well as the obvious musculoskeletal injuries. If you put 40-50 thousand people together for one of the major marathons like Chicago, NYC, Boston, London, Berlin, etc, you will see all of this stuff.
This headline doesn't give us any perspective. The life insurance numbers reporting double-digit jumps in "excess deaths" 2 years after a pandemic was supposed to have thinned the herd (that is, we should be seeing less excess death following COVID's years of high excess death rates), that's much better evidence.
Even then, the "excess deaths" numbers still lack a cause. This would seem to be an obvious line of research that government agencies in particular would be interested in in the interests of public health. NIH is currently funding NO STUDY to try and explain the root cause(s) of this spike in excess deaths. Are we seeing more heart attacks, cancers, strokes, shark attacks? What? TPTB don't even want to know.
Here's hoping some enterprising grad student is working on this as a springboard to launch his career (or destroy it utterly before it ever gets off the ground after the establishment crushes him).
Also this is an ultramarathon - 112 miles - run through the hottest part of South Africa.