Dr. Anthony Fauci joins Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski to talk coronavirus: 'We're not even to halftime'
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been everywhere in recent weeks, doing his best to inform the public about the latest updates regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in every way possible.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, even sat down with Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry last week to talk about the coronavirus, and drew nearly 50,000 viewers on Curry’s Instagram Live stream.
[ Coronavirus: How the sports world is responding to the pandemic ]
Fauci entered the basketball world again on Thursday, joining Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on his weekly SiriusXM Radio show to discuss the latest about the virus.
And he put the global crisis into very clear sports terms.
“Right now we have a team that’s a very powerful team, and that’s the virus,” Fauci said. “What we need to do is we’ve got to play a full court press. We can’t let them get the ball on the ground to dribble. We’ve just got to be all over them … That’s the only tool we have right now.
“We’re not even at halftime, Coach K. We’re just fighting it out.”
There were more than 234,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States as of Thursday afternoon, according to The New York Times, more than double that of any other nation. New York had more than 92,000 confirmed cases alone, the most in the country, though several other states are nearing the 10,000-case mark.
The pandemic has brought the sports world to a screeching halt, too, with nearly every league across the globe having canceled events and suspended operations indefinitely.
Fauci touched on a number of topics with Krzyzewski, including what he does on a daily basis with government officials to combat the outbreak, briefing political leaders and other officials, lack of testing, how we can help medical workers and more.
He also delivered a strong message to listeners, and particularly to young people — one that sports figures have been echoing for quite some time now: Stay home.
“The only way we’re going to get through this is we’ve got to pull together as a society and realize as inconvenient and disruptive as this hunkering down and not interacting and keeping six feet apart and not going in a crowd of 10 people and essentially not going out to dinner and to shows and to ballgames, it’s the reality of what we have to face,” Fauci said. “Because otherwise, we’re going to have a worse situation than we already have.”
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