Dr. Fauci talks to Stephen Curry about when we can all get back to “Normal”

Dr. Anthony Fauci recently sat down with NBA superstar Stephen Curry to “talk about what we’ve gotten right and what we’ve gotten wrong” as part of a three-part “State of Inspiration” interview series.

Dr. Fauci, who was the captain of his high school basketball team (he played Point Guard for Regis High School in NYC), admitted that his experience on the court has actually been instrumental in helping him lead, learn and grow. “I mean, everything from the fact that as good as you might be, or you think you are, the fact is, you’re a part of a team,” he said. “You can shine, but if you don’t get a good result and win the game, it’s almost like you know, being a hotshot investigator, but you never do anything worthwhile because you don’t do it in a collaborative way.”

Fauci added that when working in science and medicine, it is important to not be discouraged.“You’re trying to make discoveries that more often don’t work out the way you would like them to work out, you’ve got to be able to keep your game up even when it looks like you’re failing,” he said.

With winter quickly approaching and coronavirus cases still on the rise around the country, Fauci warned that the current baseline of 40,000 cases a day will make dealing with the rest of the year a challenge. “We’re gonna be spending more time indoors, which is gonna make it more problematic to prevent the spread and the acquisition of a respiratory virus,” he said. “You want the community spread level to be very low so that you could deal with little surges. You wanna go in with your best game into the winter.”

He also warned that young people are not immune to the virus and though some may not exhibit symptoms, they are still a danger to others. “Even though you get no symptoms when you’re infected, the fact is, you are inadvertently and innocently propagating the outbreak because by getting infected yourself, chances are, you’re gonna infect someone else, who will then infect someone else, someone’s father or mother, someone’s wife, who’s on chemotherapy for breast cancer, that when they get infected, unlike you, they may have a really serious problem. For now, you’re a part of a society that’s depending on you to not propagate the outbreak. You wanna be a part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Fauci explained.

While Fauci is optimistic about a vaccine being available soon, noting that it may be ready as early as December or January and would be available for the most vulnerable, as well as healthcare workers first, he shared that he hops it would be available few months later to the general public. However, he warned the pandemic would not be gone overnight. “So if you combine a good vaccine with adherence to public health measures we can put this behind us,” he said. “It may take well into 2021, towards the middle to end of the year, but gradually, you’ll be able to do more things that feel like normal as opposed to the constraints we have now.”

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