As the sports world remains on pause due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the NFL forges ahead, hoping to hold a normal season come fall.
The NFL released the schedule for the 2020 season last week. There will be no international games played this upcoming season and the NFL is working on a number of contingency plans for the fall. The question remains: What will the NFL season look like in 2020?
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, spoke with NBC's Peter King about the hurdles the NFL faces. Fauci explained to King that everything will be dependent on the state of the virus in the fall.
"The virus," Fauci said, "will make the decision for us."
While having players who test negative play in empty stadiums is an option, Fauci can't say that will be the only option. If the level of infection stays the same, however, Fauci doesn't think there can be a season.
"I think it's feasible that negative testing players could play to an empty stadium," Fauci told King. "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."
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Testing will be a major factor in getting the NFL season underway. To test all the players, coaches and personnel each week, that would be somewhere around 200,000 tests. A number that's currently not feasible, but Fauci is optimistic the United States can get to that number of tests.
"Right now, it would be overwhelmingly piggish," Fauci told King of using all those tests for the NFL. "But by the end of August, we should have in place Antigen testings .. You could test millions of people, millions of people. But again, we have to make sure that the companies that are doing these tests actually produce them. Which given the country that we have, such a rich country, I would be very surprised if we can't do that."
Fauci has been clear the coronavirus won't just go away as some have suggested. There will be a second wave during the fall flu season. To him, the potential for a football season will come down to how we as a society are able to handle the second wave.
"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, b
"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.
"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."
In Fauci's eyes, the NFL will have to test multiple times per week and if multiple players or personnel on a team are infected, they must shut it down and quarantine that team for two weeks.
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."
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As things stand, the 49ers are set to open their season at home against the Arizona Cardinals on Sept. 10. But California Governor Gavin Newsom has been open about the fact that he doesn't know if sports will be played in California in 2020. The 49ers are looking at options outside of the state for training camp and might be forced to play their home games elsewhere if the state deems it too big a risk to hold games with or without fans.
As of Monday, there have been more than 1.3 million cases in the United States and over 80,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and NBC News reporting.
