Tag: Anthony Fauci

Steph Curry hosts Dr. Anthony Fauci for latest ‘State of Inspiration’ interview series

In his latest video for “State of Inspiration,” Stephen Curry is joined by Dr. Anthony Fauci to discuss the coronavirus pandemic.

In the latest interview for Stephen Curry’s “State of Inspiration” YouTube series, the two-time Most Valuable Player brought back a familiar face. For the second time, Curry hosted an interview with infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In March, Curry linked with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Instagram for a question and answer segment about COVID-19. During Curry’s first meeting with Fauci, President Barack Obama, Andre Iguodala, Common and Justin Bieber were some of the viewers who tuned in on his live Instagram story.

Fast forward six months, Fauci joined the six-time All-Star for another conversation about the coronavirus pandemic. During the informative interview, Curry asked Fauci about what the United States got right and wrong about the pandemic, along with questions about slowing the spread of COVID-19 and the development of possible vaccines for the virus.

The Golden State Warriors point guard also asked Fauci about his game on the basketball court.

Watch Curry’s full conversation with Fauci via YouTube:

The interview with Fauci was the third installment of Curry’s State of the Inspiration video series. Prior to Fauci, the three-time NBA champion released episodes featuring voting rights activist Stacey Abrams and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

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Gators News: July 28, 2020

It has not been a great first week for the league and if things don’t shape up soon, we could very well see baseball shut back down again. 

As we wade deeper into another week the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic are becoming murkier and murkier as Major League Baseball battles through the first significant test of its restarted season.

The news coming out of the weekend was that multiple members of the Miami Marlins baseball squad, including both players and staff, tested positive for the novel coronavirus yet still took the field against the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday, only to have its next two games canceled.

The good news is that so far, no member of the Phillies’ club has tested positive… yet. The bad news is that there has not been a sufficient incubation period for the virus to show up for contact over the past couple of days, making the results a bit less encouraging. Additionally, four more Marlins tested positive over the past 24 hours, bringing the grand total to 17 among Miami’s baseball personnel.

The word from the nation’s top infection disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci? This outbreak could spell doom for the MLB season, but does not necessarily mean the games must be stopped now.

“This could put it in danger. I don’t believe they need to stop, but we just need to follow this and see what happens with other teams on a day-by-day basis.”

It has not been a great first week for the league and if things don’t shape up soon, we could very well see baseball shut back down again.

Around the Swamp

It’s great to be a Florida Gator!

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Dr. Fauci has a good explanation for why his MLB first pitch was so bad

This makes sense!

Dr. Anthony Fauci made headlines for his terrible first pitch (insert all your “juuust a bit outside!” jokes here) last week before the Washington Nationals and New York Yankees started the 2020 MLB season, but he’s got an automatic good excuse baked in, since he’s been busy helping fight a global pandemic.

But he still has a good explanation beyond that, as he told the Wall Street Journal.

Fauci says two nights before he was scheduled to toss the first pitch, he went to a local school to throw for the first time in “decades,” which is pretty wild.

When he awoke, however?

“My arm was hanging down around my shoes,” he told the publication’s Ben Cohen. And when he made the pitch, he was still in pain. There was also this:

“He thought he’d practiced from 60 feet and 6 inches — until he got to the mound an realized he must have miscalculated.

Fauci threw from about 50 feet. The ball made it 40 feet,

“When I saw (the catcher) was so far away, I said I better try to throw a bullet,” Fauci said. “And that was a mistake.”

It happens! Just ask a bunch of other famous people.

The fun news is that a card made by Topps to commemorate his first pitch set an all-time record with the company — in 24 hours, the $9.99 card sold 51,512 copies:

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Cousy went to the White House last …

Cousy went to the White House last summer and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award, from President Trump. He is one of three Holy Cross grads to receive the honor. One of the others is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is currently in Trump’s doghouse. “Dr. Fauci is my hero,” said Cousy. “I had dinner with him when he gave a speech for one of my teammates many years ago and I have been bragging on him since then. I’ve noticed that our president has turned on him. That was inevitable. Tony has taken the cautious approach all along, but I think he’s a hell of a guy. He’s an honorable man and he’s conducted himself honorably. He’s simply told the truth as he sees it.”

Donald Trump dismisses Anthony Fauci’s bubble recommendation for NFL

Dr. Fauci warned that it may not be possible to have a 2020 NFL season.

The NFL’s chief medical officer and Dr. Anthony Fauci are at odds over the league’s plan for the 2020 NFL season, but after Fauci warned that a football season may not be possible, the NFL’s plan received a social media endorsement from President Donald Trump on Friday.

Earlier this week, NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said that the league does not plan to replicate the NBA’s bubble environment, explaining that it wouldn’t be practical for the league. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded to the NFL’s plan in an interview with Sanjay Gupta, saying that “unless players are essentially in a bubble – insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day – it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall.”

On Thursday, Sills acknowledged Fauci’s concerns in a statement, but reiterated that the league is devising a plan “based on the collective guidance of public health officials, including the White House task force, the CDC, infectious disease experts and other sports leagues.”

Trump sounded off on the subject in a tweet, writing that “Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football.” Trump also repeated his claim that he will not watch the NFL later this year if players protest during the national anthem – as several stars have already pledged to do.

 

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Dr. Anthony Fauci cautions the NFL season ‘may not happen’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Dr. Anthony Fauci cautions the NFL season ‘may not happen’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic

While other professional sports leagues, including the NBA and MLS, are moving forward operating in a “bubble” environment for the players, coaches, staffers and officials, the NFL is going its own way. So far, the NFL is sticking firm with playing games in normal stadiums on a normal travel schedule with nods to local regulations surrounding COVID-19.

Dr .Anthony Fauci, the recognizable director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, thinks the NFL needs to be more like the other sports. Fauci spoke about the NFL’s plan on CNN and frowned on the concept of the players not being in an isolated bubble situation.

“Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci said.

Fauci also believes that any second wave of infections during the NFL’s season would be a death knell for the 2020 season.

“If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year,” Fauci said.

The NFL and NFLPA continue to work out the logistics and planning for the upcoming season. Nothing is yet set in stone. Fauci’s admonition is a sign that it might require more flexibility and be more of a struggle than the NFL would like it to be.

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Anthony Fauci: ‘Football may not happen’ in 2020

National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases director Anthony Fauci is not optimistic that the NFL will play ball in 2020.

NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills is optimistic that pro football will kickoff Sept. 10, but Anthony Fauci has a much more tempered assessment.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases joined CNN on Thursday morning and expressed his doubts that football will be played in the fall.

“Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci said via the Houston Chronicle. “If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”

Teams are expected to report to training camp in late July. However, there have been COVID-19 positive cases over the past week, including a couple Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans players.

Though the NFL has codified policies on how to handle social distancing and ultra sanitary practices in the wake of COVID-19, each team will have its own challenges. The Texans will have complications refitting NRG Stadium, which they don’t own outright and are co-tenants, for the NFL’s COVID-19 mandates.

The NFL has never had to suspend a season, as the NHL did in 2004-05, or suspend operations that resulted in an incomplete season, as what happened to the MLB in 1994 with the player’s strike. The NFL has had two strikes since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger disrupt play — 1982 and 1987 — but they have never halted operations that led to a cancelled season.

Individual teams have suspended operations though. During World War II, when players left the game to serve their country, the Cleveland Rams bowed out of the 1943 season. The Pittsburgh Steelers merged with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1943 and the Chicago Cardinals in 1944.

If the NFL is adamant that their schedule will be play as planned, they may need to come up with more measures and allowances.

Dr. Anthony Fauci likes what he sees from NBA’s return plan

“It’s something that I think is a sound plan,” Fauci said. “I was very pleased to see that the intent was not reckless at all.”

Though final details are still being negotiated between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), Dr. Anthony Fauci likes what he’s seen so far from the league’s restart plans.

Fauci, who is director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a White House health advisor, told Stadium why he endorses the 22-team restart plan at a “bubble” site near Orlando.

“I think they might very well be quite successful with it,” Fauci said. “They really wanted to make sure that the safety of the players was paramount.”

Fauci continued:

I actually have looked at that plan. … What they are really trying to do is to create a situation where it is as safe as it possibly could be for the players by creating this bubble. Essentially testing everybody, make sure that you start with a baseline of everybody being negative and trying to make sure that there is no influx into that cohort of individuals and do a tournament-type play.

The plan calls for games to be played at a neutral complex near Orlando and without fans, aimed at reducing exposure risks to COVID-19. Eight regular-season games will be played starting July 30, and the subsequent 2020 NBA playoffs will run as late as Oct. 13.

Team training camps in home markets are expected to begin around June 30, while July 7 appears to be the target date for teams to begin reporting to the neutral Disney complex in Florida.

While final health and safety details are still being negotiated with the NBPA union, Fauci says it looks like a “sound plan” so far. He explains:

It’s not the classic basketball season, but certainly for the people who are thirsting for basketball (and) who love basketball the way I do, it’s something that I think is a sound plan. I was very pleased to see that the intent was not reckless at all. They really wanted to make sure that the safety of the players and the people associated with the players was paramount. So I think that you might be able to do something like that with basketball.

Could you extrapolate that to some of the other sports, possibly? I think they should look at that model, see how it works, and then take it from there. Maybe modifications of that for some of the other sports.

According to ESPN, COVID-19 testing for players and staff taking part in the restart will begin June 23 and take place every other day. Anyone who tests positive will have to isolate for at least 10 days and test negative twice before being allowed to rejoin their team, per The Ringer.

The same requirement of a 10-day quarantine and two negative tests would apply to anyone who leaves the NBA’s Disney campus after arrival, since that would effectively be breaking the “bubble” concept.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci endorses NBA’s ‘creative’ plan for return during pandemic

Dr. Anthony Fauci gives his thoughts on the NBA’s return plan.

The NBA season is tentatively scheduled to return at the end of July, but a growing number of players have been voicing their concerns over a number of issues, from the health risks associated with playing in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, to the difficulties of being isolated within a bubble at Disney World, to the current social and racial issues under the spotlight amid worldwide protests against injustice.

Nets superstar Kyrie Irving has emerged as a leading voice against the planned restart, but given the health concerns and the financial ramifications of not playing, the entire situation is extremely complicated.

From a health and safety perspective, at least, the NBA’s plan for 22 teams to compete within a bubble is “sound,” according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In an interview with Stadium’s Michael Kim, Fauci commended the NBA for devising a “creative” plan that prioritized the safety of players and team staffers.

“I actually have looked at that plan and it is really quite creative. What they are really trying to do, and I think they might very well be quite successful with it, is to create a situation where it is as safe as it possibly could be for the players by creating this bubble. Essentially testing everybody, [making] sure you start with a baseline of everybody being negative and trying to make sure there is no influx into that cohort of individuals and do a tournament-type play.

It’s not the classic basketball season, but certainly for the people who are thirsting for basketball, who love basketball the way I do, it’s something I think is a sound plan. I was very pleased to see that the intent was not reckless at all. They really wanted to make sure that the safety of the players and the people associated with the players was paramount.”

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“I think they might very well be quite …

“I think they might very well be quite successful with it,” Fauci told Stadium. “They really wanted to make sure that the safety of the players was paramount. “I actually have looked at that plan. … What they are really trying to do is to create a situation where it is as safe as it possibly could be for the players by creating this bubble. Essentially testing everybody, make sure that you start with a baseline of everybody being negative and trying to make sure that there is no influx into that cohort of individuals and do a tournament-type play.”