The NFL, NHL, and other sports organizations are freaking out because many of their fully vaccinated athletes are testing positive for COVID-19.  In Europe, some more concerning sports-related news has been circulating below the radar for several months alleging an extraordinary number of otherwise healthy young athletes have died suddenly of heart attacks in the last six months.  Some even suggest that the deaths are COVID vaccine (vax)–related, although the evidence is hotly disputed. 

The absence of mainstream news about the alleged spike in athlete deaths inspired some personal research.  By now, most everyone paying attention knows that the vax does have some serious cardiac-related side-effects as reported in the unreliable VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).  This alone suggests that a link to athlete deaths shouldn't be dismissed.  The British medical journal The Lancet has done a better job than VAERS in identifying the number and severity of the vax side-effects and is questioning the wisdom of universal mandates and boosters:

Although the benefits of primary COVID-19 vaccination clearly outweigh the risks, there could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects (such as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of some mRNA vaccines, or Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been associated with adenovirus-vectored COVID-19 vaccines). If unnecessary boosting causes significant adverse reactions, there could be implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, widespread boosting should be undertaken only if there is clear evidence that it is appropriate.

On Nov. 19, 2021, PolitiFact was quick to claim that the vaccines have nothing to do with the alleged cardiac deaths of 75 athletes cited in a German news story and simply stated, "We rate this claim False."

Another article in the December 6, 2021 edition of Science 2.0 claimed: 

Social media outlets are once again bubbling with misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and cardiovascular disease. The latest uproar is over claims of a link between vaccines and increased rates of sudden cardiac arrest in athletes.

Despite the outcries of vaccination opponents, there is no connection between COVID-19 vaccines and sudden cardiac arrest in athletes. In fact, there is no increase in sudden cardiac arrests among athletes.

Lorphic News presented information that directly contradicted both PolitiFact's and Science 2.0's negative claims.  It included some credible death statistics from FIFA covering 20 years.  FIFA, according to its web page, is an international professional soccer association "[f]ounded in 1904 to provide unity among national soccer associations."  "[T]he Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) boasts 209 [country] members, rivaling that of the United Nations, and is arguably the most prestigious sports organization in the world."  Its data graphically confirm a major death spike in 2021:

Source.

The sample is long enough (20-year history) and large enough (265,000 players and coaches) to indicate something out of the ordinary and widespread.  And the timing of these sudden cardiac deaths (SCDs) correlates with the increased rates of athlete COVID vaccinations.  The following quote summarizes it: 

"Dr. Josh Guetzkow, a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University, analyzed the data. "An article published in the British Medical Journal shows that the risk of SCD is one in 50,000 (with a range from one in 30,000 to one in 80,000)," he explains. "According to FIFA data, in 2000 there were 242,000 athletes registered in the association, and in 2006 there were 265,000 athletes registered. Assuming FIFA has not changed significantly in twenty years, can expect about 5 deaths a year".

Vaccinedeaths.com last month included more science-based information about the known cardiac-related vax side-effects on athletes from both mRNA and Pfizer vaccines: 

"Young athletes who aren't at risk from a natural infection are continuously being coerced to take experimental mRNA spike protein vaccines in order to keep their career[.] ... The spike proteins have also been shown to cause clumping in the blood, leading to blood clots."

However, this article like all the others failed to include data on how many of the reported athlete deaths followed the jab and by how long, nor did any include information about how many, if any, athletes died of COVID.  Therefore, based only on the above limited and conflicting information, it would be difficult to convince hardcore skeptics that the vax is at fault.  Making a risk assessment based on this minimal information also requires some fact-based assumptions:

1. The FIFA data are accurate, and the data sample is large enough to confirm the fivefold increase in athlete SCDs. 
2. The majority of professional athletes are required to get the jab in order to stay employed.
3. Young physically fit people are the least likely to die or experience serious symptoms from COVID. 
4. The vaccines have side effects that could have caused the observed SCDs of FIFA players.
5. The vax's effectiveness is declining because the formulation targets only the alpha variant and has not been modified to keep pace with COVID's mutations.  All coronaviruses (which include COVID-19, the seasonal flu, and the common cold) mutate frequently, so it is extremely difficult for developers to keep pace.  
6. Numerous safe and effective therapeutics are available for early treatment but are restricted from use by government medical establishments in most Western countries.
7. Naturally acquired COVID-19 immunity lasts longer and protects against a wider range of variants than vax-acquired immunity.  

Conclusions:

• Virtually all 108 FIFA players and coaches who died had the vax, making it likely that the majority of the observed SCDs were due to the vax.  
• There is little in the above information to explain the fivefold increase in deaths of the FIFA athletes other than the concurrent vaccination rates in 2021.
• The same FIFA SCD ratio likely applies to most healthy people of similar age and fitness (this group should also include military, first responders, pilots, police, firefighters, medical personnel, etc.). 
• Therefore, the health risk to this group from the vax likely exceeds the health risk from COVID. 

Recommendations:

• Implement a moratorium on universal vax mandates until a serious investigation can be completed by unbiased highly credentialed medical experts to prove or disprove that the vax health risk to athletic young people exceeds the risk from COVID.  
• Approve the use of tested, safe, and effective therapeutics (i.e., ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, etc.) as an early treatment protocol for front-line doctors. 

Dr. Harvey Risch, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, makes a much more credible, well-researched, and scholarly case for these two recommendations in a Dec. 14, 2021, Federalist article.

I doubt that any of these conclusions or recommendations will be taken seriously.  Political pressure for worldwide vaccine mandates will continue to make double-digit billions of dollars and buy more political clout for Big Pharma.  The continuation of COVID fear propaganda provides a huge political advantage to the left, and the societal and economic chaos it created to date has empowered a progressive ruling class who claim only they have the wisdom to save us if we temporarily suspend our freedoms until they can implement their "Build Back Better" plan, paving the way for The Great Reset.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the current state of the secular West's politicization of medicine was written 21 centuries ago by St. Paul in Romans 1: 22: "Professing to be wise, they became fools."

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