Sports across the globe have been halted indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, and many leagues have been formulating plans for a potential return to action should health officials give a clearance to play. It seems unlikely that fans will return en masse to stadiums before a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available, and some officials are questioning whether it’d be safe for teams to return to action even in isolation.
Ohio State AD Gene Smith argued that if it’s unsafe for fans to gather, it’s unsafe for players to do the same, but Major League Baseball is exploring the idea of holding the entire 2020 season in Arizona. Just this week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis was criticized for suggesting that NASCAR stage a race in the state without fans in attendance.
According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, though, such schemes to restart seasons may not be so harebrained after all. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, endorsed the idea of isolating athletes and having them finish seasons in empty stadiums in an interview with Peter Hamby.
Hamby: “Do you think those sports seasons are in jeopardy? Are we going to have college football this fall?”
Fauci: “There’s a way of doing that – nobody comes to the stadium. Put them in big hotels, you know, wherever you want to play. Keep them very well surveilled and have them tested, like every week, and make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family and just let them play the season out.
I mean people say, you know, ‘well you can’t play without spectators.’ Well, I think you probably get enough buy-in from people who are dying to see a baseball game – particularly me! I’m living in Washington, we have the world champion Washington Nationals. I want to see them play again.”
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