Fauci Wants MLB to Wrap by October, Doesn't Foresee Second Lockdown

In separate interviews with The Daily Beast and The Los Angeles Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci offered his thoughts on how the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to affect the United States in the coming months and how best to prepare for what lies ahead.

While Fauci cautioned that the country is still experiencing the first wave of the coronavirus as infection rates are on the rise in certain states in the South and Southwest, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he doesn’t believe there will be a need for a second lockdown in cities that have begun to reopen.

He also said he didn’t see another outbreak like the one that crippled New York City in April in the cards.

“New York, unfortunately, really got hit by surprise, because they had activity coming into this city from Europe when everybody was focusing on China. They all of a sudden found that they had a massive outbreak,” he told The Daily Beast. “I don’t think that could happen under today’s circumstances of our full awareness of the potential of this virus, which is highly transmissible.”

Despite that slightly optimistic overall outlook, Fauci was more pessimistic when discussing MLB’s plan to extend the 2020 baseball season, which has yet to begin and may never actually start, as late as November.

Even though he is a baseball fan, Fauci told The LA Times it would be less risky to play in July than it would be to play in October and that MLB would be wise to wrap up the postseason in September.

“If the question is time, I would try to keep it in the core summer months and end it not with the way we play the World Series, until the end of October when it’s cold,” Fauci said. “I would avoid that.”

The 79-year-old doctor also said he would not want to attend the large-scale rallies that his boss, President Trump, plans to start holding in the near future in cities that are experiencing outbreaks such as Tulsa and Phoenix.

“I’m in a high-risk category,” he said. “Personally, I would not. Of course not.”

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