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The big man then made a point to touch every single microphone from each reporter in attendance. It wasn’t a very good idea, and you likely remember what happened next. But it was (somehow) nearly three years ago already, and these were strange and uncertain times. So here is a refresher: Days later, Gobert was ruled questionable with an illness. Right before tipoff on March 11, the Jazz-Thunder game was called off. We learned Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, and the NBA season was suspended indefinitely. That is why it was particularly surprising to see that he “liked” a tweet from Twitter CEO Elon Musk critical of the chief medical advisor to the president, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Dr. Anthony Fauci responds to NBA stars and others who are hesitant about vaccines during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt: DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Although I do respect people’s individual rights to make their decisions, there is also a part of it, Hugh, that is what I refer to as societal responsibility. And although there are individual choices that people can make, when you’re dealing with a deadly pandemic, you’ve got to also understand your responsibility to the society within which you live. So I wouldn’t want to be pointing a finger at this young man, but I would hope to be able to get him to understand that by allowing the virus to infect you, even though as an individual you say I’ll take my own chances, I don’t care, I’m young, I’m healthy, the likelihood that I’m going to get a serious disease is low, which is true. You can’t deny that. But what happens is that when you do get infected, it’s very well likely that you might pass that infection on to someone who would suffer very terribly from that virus. So you don’t want to be a vehicle for the propagation of an outbreak that unequivocally has devastated society. That’s what I would appeal to, his feeling of…
But Dr., he does more than that. Kyrie and some other NBA stars put stuff online that suggest that the vaccine is dangerous… AF: Yeah. HH: …that it could hurt you, that, so you need to speak to them directly. It’s not pleasant. What do you say to basketball stars? AF: Well, you know, you tell them that it’s untrue. I mean, the fact is these are people, they’re not stupid people. And yet, they are somehow or other, been convinced of things that are just not factual, Hugh. I mean, you look at the data. The data are overwhelming that these are highly effective and safe. And if you look at the track record of vaccines in general, what they’ve done for society and the benefit/risk ratio overwhelmingly weighs in favor of the benefit. And it’s just factual. I mean, it’s, sometimes it’s inexplicable that people can look at data and just say it doesn’t exist. I mean, it does.
Steph Curry is in good company. The Warriors point guard cracked the top five of Dr. Anthony Fauci's list of his favorite athletes. Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Cousy and Baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle came in ahead of Curry, while Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer and two-time World Cup winner Mia Hamm were just behind the two-time NBA MVP.
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"Steph Curry is amazing," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said Thursday morning on ESPN's "First Take." "His ability to shoot that basketball at 3-point range -- I mean, I was at a game right here in Washington, DC when they were playing the Wizards, and it was unbelievable. He was taking shots from a couple of feet past halfcourt. And he missed, like, one out of 15. It was amazing, so I've gotta go with Steph. He's one of the most exciting players ever."
Bob Cousy, who won six NBA titles with the Boston Celtics, is old friends with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the preeminent scientist in the nation's fight against COVID-19. About two hours before getting the news about the vaccine, Cousy had spoken to Fauci on the phone. When asked if Fauci played a part in getting him the vaccine, Cousy was his usual straight-talking, self-effacing self: “Tony is busy saving the freakin’ world every day," Cousy told The Palm Beach Post. "I can’t imagine."
Cousy, who has lived in West Palm Beach for 35 years but this winter remained at his home in Worcester, Mass., said the only time the vaccine came up in their conversation was when Fauci asked if he had received it. Cousy told him he had not but he was not worried about it and his daughter was working on it. “I wasn't concerned but I simply answered his question and that was the extent of it,” Cousy said. “He didn’t say anything further."
“For the last 30 years, on a few occasions when I was being interviewed, sometimes people would say, ‘Who are your heroes?’ ” Cousy said. “I would say Dr. Anthony Fauci and they’d look at me like, ‘what the hell is a Dr. Anthony Fauci?’ Well, now the whole world knows who Dr. Anthony Fauci is."
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“Please be careful stepping out of the house every single day,” said Towns. “Follow all the protocols and rules and advice that Dr. Fauci, who’s the best of the best in the world at this…take his advice and understand that it’s coming from a place of wellbeing for everyone in this country.”
When asked about the possibility of full, 20,000-seat NBA arenas in July, when the postseason is scheduled to conclude, Fauci said: “Ah, I think that'll be cutting it close.” The return of tightly-packed crowds will depend on a variety of factors, public health experts say, from human behavior to uptake of soon-to-be-approved COVID-19 vaccines. “We're gonna be vaccinating the highest-priority people [from] the end of December through January, February, March,” Fauci said. “By the time you get to the general public, the people who'll be going to the basketball games, who don't have any underlying conditions, that's gonna be starting the end of April, May, June. So it probably will be well into the end of the summer before you can really feel comfortable [with full sports stadiums] – if a lot of people get vaccinated. I don't think we're going to be that normal in July. I think it probably would be by the end of the summer.”
“MASKS ARE REQUIRED TO ENTER,” read a piece of paper stuck to a pole near the entrance. “SOCIAL DISTANCING MEASURES MUST BE MAINTAINED.” A security guard stood outside the door, raising a digital thermometer to the forehead of anyone who entered. But stepping into the windowless room, it was clear it did not have the air of a post-coronavirus strip club that might pass the protective standards of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dancers were not neatly spaced apart. They did not wear surgical masks or nitrile gloves. No Plexiglass separated them from patrons.
Tom Petrini: “We’ve been all over the map in Texas, nobody knows what the hell is going on. We have a Lt. Gov. who decided he doesn’t want to listen to Fauci and those people anymore” Gregg Popovich shared some thoughts about state and federal leadership on coronavirus
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