What Caused Mike Dickson's Death?

Sudden and unexpected death has been normalized.

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.