GP made a valid point. The 5x increase of cardiac arrest after 2 shots might be OK if that risk was very low, but if you need to keep getting boosters twice a year, that risk will also grow (how? exponentially?), until one day it becomes a bigger problem than covid. That's my reasoning for waiting out on those booster shots.

Going to assume you meant this seriously; but just to enumerate the things you aren't certain about:

- IF the cardiac arrest risk indeed rises 5x

- AND that is not related to study effects (perhaps the risk of those athletes using performance enhancing drugs which you presumably aren't using was many time higher than 5x)

- AND the chance of of 5x higher cardiac arrest risk is higher than the increased risk you run of dying from COVID

- AND the risk of booster shots increasing cardiac arrest risks (which has not been proven yet) is indeed exponential, which seems quite unlikely at first glance (since the dose of boosters is only increasing linearly over time)

And several other factors I can't think of off the top of my head. It looks like you are assigning a very high risk to booster shots and assigning a very low risk to dying of COVID. Given the amount of people who have died of COVID vs the amount of people who have died from booster shots this seems like a misassignment of risk.

One also must control for physical fitness and age. Those are by far the most powerful factors correlating to severe covid morbidity or mortality.

The comparative disease vs vaccine risk assuredly differs between fit young FIFA players and obese geriatric persons. It may well be that even in the former case the vaccine reduces overall risk, but surely the effect is smaller than in the latter group.

I don't need a study to learn that Pfizer/biontech vaccines mess up with heart rate, especially when excercising. I know that from personal experience. The heart rate issues seem to be long lasting, but the vaccines are no good after 6 months, as we know now. My problem is that if just 2 shots cause such effect, then after a few boosters I'll have to take heart rate control pills. I'd rather pass on boosters and use the good old masks and social distancing.

Well, football calendar, at least in Europe, has been crazy full since the suspension in the spring of 2020: https://www.fifpro.org/media/bffctrd1/at-the-limit.pdf

This could be of course a cause of spike in deaths: I'd say way more data is necessary to find a cause.

I don't know, but just to throw this out there, I believe very cardiovascularly 'fit' people have a risk of death because their heart rate can drop dangerously during sleep(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT8GZlBBv5k). I would also think soccer players are more likely to use performance enhancing drugs. I wouldn't blame it on the vaccine without more data.

Unless there’s also a corresponding increase in somnambulism, “sudden collapse” doesn’t sound like it’s related to sleep.

The increase is over the last year. I don’t follow soccer so for all I know there has been an increase in PED year over year too. Or it could be any number of other confounding factors.

As for the cause, I feign no hypotheses. I just think that if and only if this increase is real it merits further research by persons with far greater subject matter expertise than myself. If the science ends up showing it is vaccine related than we should accept that, just as we should if it shows it isn’t. Fortunately, for the sake of the science, we’re going to continue gathering a great deal of data.

Discussed at the time in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29242509