On January 17, 2024, the British sports reporter, Mike Dickson, suddenly collapsed and died at the Australian Open. By numerous accounts, he was a talented reporter, vivid writer, and delightful man. Among the many notable people in the sports world who expressed their condolences was tennis champion, Novak Djokovic:
Ever the class act, Djokovic set aside the fact that Dickson had written several rude and condescending columns about the champion’s refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Jim Hoft at the Gateway Pundit covered this story from the perspective of a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic and critic:
An Australian reporter shot back with a report headlined: “Anti-vaxxers hijack tragic Aus Open death”
Missing from all of the reporting I could find was any attempt to address the question: Why did an apparently fit 59-year-old Englishman die suddenly and unexpectedly?
Life expectancy for a British male is 80.5 years old. What killed Mike Dickson over twenty years before reaching this statistically significant age?
No so long ago, such a death would have prompted questions about possible foul play. If Agatha Christie were still alive, Dickson’s death at the Australian Open might have inspired her to write a detective novel, though she would have probably set it at Wimbledon instead of Melbourne.
Nowadays the sudden and unexpected death of a relatively young man or woman — apparently of cardiac arrest—seems to prompt zero curiosity in the mainstream media about the cause of death. Such deaths have been normalized.
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