NBC Sports’ Peter King had the rare opportunity to interview the country’s leading expert on the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci. King was looking to get his thoughts on whether or not NFL football would be played this season.
“The virus,” Fauci said, “Will make the decision for us.”
King posed Fauci a hypothetical, curious as to what would happen should a plyer test positive before gameday.
“Suppose,” King asked, “You test a team of 53 players on a Saturday night and four are positive. Is there a level at which . . .”
Fauci was quick to interrupt.
“You got a problem there,” he said. “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, 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,” Fauci continued. “You gotta shut it down.”
The NFL is carefully monitoring the pandemic but has already revealed its schedule for the 2020 season. Hopefully, the league continues to listen to the scientific experts before any major decisions are to be made.
