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Dr. Anthony Fauci discusses prospect of NFL season starting on time

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© Jack Gruber | 2020 Mar 10

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and a lead member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, had a lengthy discussion with Peter King of NBC Sports in a piece that dropped on Monday morning. Fauci was asked multiple questions about what it will take for the NFL to return on time, with the first game of the regular season still scheduled for September 10th.

Fauci says that the coronavirus will make the decision for us, but that things must change between now and that date even for games without fans.

“I think it’s feasible that negative testing players could play to an empty stadium,” Fauci began. “Is it guaranteed? No way … There will be virus out there and you will know your players are negative at the time they step onto the field. You’re not endangering … Also, if the virus is so low that even in the general community the risk is low, then I could see filling a third of the stadium or half the stadium so people could be six feet apart. I mean, that’s something that is again feasible depending on the level of infection. I keep getting back to that: It’s going to depend. Like, right now, if you fast forward, and it is now September. The season starts. I say you can’t have a season — it’s impossible. There’s too much infection out there. It doesn’t matter what you do. But I would hope that by the time you get to September it’s not gonna be the way it is right now.”

Fauci is confident that access to widespread testing should be available in this country in the coming months. Still that’s no guarantee that things will return to business as usual. If another outbreak occurs, it is inconceivable to Fauci that the NFL would be able to ignore such a crisis.

“As for the football season and what the fall is going to be: It will be entirely dependent on the effectiveness with which we as a society respond to the inevitable outbreak that will occur. So what are the options? If we let it just go, and we don’t have a good response, you can have an outbreak somewhat similar. Probably not as bad, because we got hit really with a 1-2 punch, particularly in New York City and New Orleans and Chicago. But we can expect an outbreak that would be serious. That’s if we do nothing. So it’s inconceivable that we would do nothing. What we’re saying is what is going to be the effectiveness of our response?

“Now, even if the virus goes down dramatically in June and July and August, as the virus starts returning in the fall, it would be in my mind, shame on us if we don’t have in place all of the mechanisms to prevent it from blowing up again. In other words, enough testing to test everybody that needs to be tested. Enough testing so that when someone gets infected, you could immediately do contact tracing and isolation to prevent the infection from going to a couple of infections to hundreds of infections. That’s how you control an outbreak.

“So, practically speaking, the success or failure, the ability or not, to actually have a football season is going to depend on just on what I said … but what I’m really saying is it’s unpredictable depending upon how we respond in the fall.”

What’s more, even if the season does start on time, an outbreak within one team could lead to a league-wide shutdown.

You got a problem there,” Fauci said when asked what would happen if four people tested positive on one team. “You know why? Because it is likely that if four of them are positive and they’ve been hanging around together, that the other ones that are negative are really positive. So I mean, if you have one outlier [only one player testing positive], I think you might get away. But once you wind up having a situation where it looks like it’s spread within a team, you got a real problem. You gotta shut it down.”