On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, told CNN that “football season may not happen this year.”
As the National Football League makes plans to begin the season on time, Dr. Fauci suggested that unless players are “insulated from the community” and “tested nearly every day,” Fauci says “it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall."
NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills told ESPN on Thursday that the league is “developing a comprehensive and rapid-result testing program and rigorous protocols that call for a shared responsibility from everyone inside our football ecosystem.”
“We will be flexible and adaptable in this environment to adjust to the virus as needed,” Sills added. The NFL has made no changes to its regular season schedule.
According to the Houston Chronicle, both Major League Soccer and the National Basketball Association also plan to resume their seasons in July.
Interestingly enough, according to the Washington Examiner, Dr. Fauci said in a podcast on Wednesday that, “One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are … inconceivable and not understandable, they just don't believe science, and they don't believe authority.”
Fauci then says, “So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who's talking about science, that there are some people who just don't believe that, and that's unfortunate because, you know, science is truth.”