Late in January this year, I read a Medscape Medical News article that addressed the effect of concussion on life expectancy. The gist was that even a single concussion episode increases a person’s risk of dying from any cause by 66% over that of persons who have never had a concussion. The more episodes of concussion an individual has in a lifetime, the greater the effect. For two or more episodes, the risk of death at any age becomes 120% greater than that of people with no history of brain trauma.
This is not unexpected since reports going back to at least 2005 show that the life expectancy of folks who sustain traumatic brain injuries (TBI aka concussion) is 8-9 years shorter than those who do not. That effect is probably greater among the elderly, but the point is that even a single knockout at any age can shorten a person’s life expectancy.
This came to mind as I watched video of police officers trying to position an already battered Tyre Nichols so that one of them could administer a knockout punch. I suppose that a battered prisoner in restraints was too much trouble for them to manage; better to administer a pugilistic coup de grâce and thus render him concussed, unconscious, and inert, I suppose.
Just as choke holds and other potentially lethal takedown techniques need to be outlawed, so do knockout punches.