Iiuc this impacts 4.22 as well: https://sippy.dptools.openshift.org/sippy-ng/tests/4.22/analysis?test=Undiagnosed%20panic%20detected%20in%20pod

I'll use this bug here to push the hotfix for 4.21 WITHOUT actually adding the hotfix to 4.22. I'll leave it to prasriva@redhat.com to fix properly.

(Feel free to update this bug's summary to be more specific.)
Component Readiness has found a potential regression in the following test:

Undiagnosed panic detected in pod

Significant regression detected.
Fishers Exact probability of a regression: 99.99%.
Test pass rate dropped from 100.00% to 93.33%.

Sample (being evaluated) Release: 4.21
Start Time: 2025-12-31T00:00:00Z
End Time: 2026-01-07T12:00:00Z
Success Rate: 93.33%
Successes: 42
Failures: 3
Flakes: 0
Base (historical) Release: 4.20
Start Time: 2025-09-21T00:00:00Z
End Time: 2025-10-21T23:59:59Z
Success Rate: 100.00%
Successes: 199
Failures: 0
Flakes: 0

View the test details report for additional context.

This is quite rare and unfortunately just popped up now. Over past two days we can only see it on vsphere for some reason. We treat panics very seriously, marking release blocker, may qualify for an SBAR though if we cannot fix in the coming weeks.

  pods/openshift-monitoring_kube-state-metrics-7755d7786b-6zfmk_kube-state-metrics_previous.log.gz:E0107 00:10:19.335958       1 chan.go:416] "Observed a panic" panic="close of nil channel" panicGoValue="\"close of nil channel\"" stacktrace=<}