This years college football season is shaping up to be vastly different than any other in history. While games are being played, crowds are exceptionally limited or nonexistent. Furthermore, there are simply fewer gamesand there is no guarantee of a complete season for any school. The combination of these factors is costing universities tens of millions of dollars and upending the underlying business model of college sports. Universities across the country have already responded by ending many low-revenue sports. This has led to widespread lamentations about the decreased opportunities for intercollegiate athletes who play sports that cannot support themselves financially.
However, if we are serious about caring for intercollegiate athletes, we should begin by reconsidering the corrupt bargain at the heart of modern college sportsone that has been magnified by the pandemic. In a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper that we co-authored with Jordan Keener and Nicole Ozminkowski, we empirically investigate the economic business model of college sports. We find that the prevailing model rests on taking the money generated by athletes who are more likely to be Black and come from low-income neighborhoods and transferring it to sports played by athletes who are more likely to be white and from higher-income neighborhoods. The money is also transferred to coaches and used for the construction of lavish (and perhaps overly lavish) athletic facilities. With COVID-19 shutting off the money spigot, schools are being forced to publicly acknowledge that their athletic departments depend on regressively transferring money from athletes who grew up poor to those who grew up in richer households and to wealthy coaches.
This has led a variety of policy proposals ranging from paying players directly to allowing players to profit off their name and image, breaking a longtime requirement of amateurism in university athletics. Three states have passed legislation that would allow athletes to participate in a range of activities ranging from endorsements to autograph signings. In response to these widespread policy initiatives, the NCAA this week introduced a set of far more limited proposals that would allow college athletes to earn revenue from third parties. But it remains to be seen exactly how these policies would be implemented, and to what extent it would resolve issues of financial inequities for student athletes. Furthermore, these efforts fall short of the athletes bill of rights that was recently proposed by members of the U.S. Senate.
We begin by documenting that college sports operates under two distinct business models. These are documented in Figure 1, which shows the relationship between a schools athletic department revenue and the percentage of that revenue that comes from the university. In the upper-left corner is a set of Division 1 schools that largely resemble the idealistic images of amateur student-athletes competing for school pride. These schools earn relatively low revenues overall, and a large amount of their financial support comes from the university.
A second set of schoolsthose in the lower-right cornerhave exceptionally high revenues and nearly all of those funds are generated by athletic endeavors, activities such as ticket sales, television contracts, and merchandise sales. These schools are all members of the Power Five athletic conferences, a set of schools that have traditionally fielded high-quality athletic programs. From 2006 to 2016, athletic departments at these schools saw their revenue nearly double, rising from $3.5 billion to $6.7 billion.
This difference in business models suggests that optimal policy in this area should distinguish between these two distinct sets of schools when considering how athletes are compensated for their time and efforts. To that end, our subsequent analysis concentrates on the economics of the schools in these Power Five conferences. The athletic departments in these schools resemble commercial enterprises that are generating meaningful economic rents. However, the revenues are largely generated by a small set of athletes. We document that football and mens basketball generate six times more revenue than all other sports combined. These sports, however, enjoy only 1.3 times more spending than other sports at the same school.
This difference between revenues and expenditures demonstrates how the funds generated by football and mens basketball players fund all of the remaining intercollegiate sports at each school. We estimate that the money generated by football and mens basketball causes: increased spending on money-losing sports; higher salaries for coaches and administrators; and increased spending on athletic facilities. Today, the average school in a Power Five conference supports 20 sports, but only two sports consistently pay for themselves, and the revenue generated by these two sports supports the seemingly ever-increasing salaries for coaches and athletic department employees.
Consider the teams playing the greatest college football rivalry gamethe University of Michigan and Ohio State University. (Editors note: This fact is debatable. Authors note: No, it is not.) When these teams met in 2008, their coaching staffs earned $6 million and $5.7 million, respectively. Just 10 years later, these salaries grew to $15.5 million and $17.3 milliona roughly 300% increase. Even the strength and conditioning coaches for each team earned $600,000 and $735,000 a year, respectively. Conversely, the athletes on the field received no salaries for their efforts.
While we support opposite sides of this rivalry, we are united in agreement that this salary growth reflects a system that maximizes profits by limiting intercollegiate athletes compensation to no more than the cost of attending school. The schools share these excess profits with coaches, administrators, and money-losing sports.
Supporters of the current system offer several arguments in favor of the status quo. Some say it is the deal the athletes signed, without acknowledging that collusion among schools through the NCAA limits the options of young athletes. Others claim that supporting other sports, particularly those played by female athletes, has broader societal benefits. Some argue that college athletics is uniquely attractive to fans because of the disingenuous belief that the competitors are just like the other students. Finally, some argue the athletes are already paid because they receive athletic scholarships, as if paying someone any positive amount is sufficient.
These arguments overlook the fundamental injustice created by transferring revenue generated from two sports played disproportionately by Black athletes from poorer neighborhoods to sports where athletes are disproportionately white and from wealthier neighborhoods and to high-income coaches. To approximate the money at stake, we consider as a benchmark a hypothetical situation where athletes could collectively bargain to the same degree as their professional counterparts.
If players in football and mens basketball received a similar share of revenue as NFL and NBA playersroughly 50% of sports-related revenuethen each scholarship football player would earn $360,000 per year and each scholarship basketball player would earn $500,000 per year. If wages by position reflected the relative earnings by position observed in professional sports, the starting quarterbacks would earn $2.4 million per year on average. Even the lowest-paid football players would receive $140,000 per year.
Such a system would create winners and losers. We would expect slower growth in coaches salaries and facilities spending, for example. After all, intercollegiate athletes are currently paid in part with ludicrously lavish athletic facilities, containing features such as lazy rivers and laser tag. Additionally, it may be difficult to continue to abide by Title IX regulations, which require schools to provide equal opportunities for male and female athletes.
Title IX has had numerous positive effects and addressed many clear, historical, gender-based inequities in scholastic athletics. This is true at both the college and the secondary school level. However, optimal policy must consider that equity is a multifaceted concern that involves not just gender, but also important issues such as race and income. When viewed in this light, we believe our estimates demonstrate that, even after one considers the positive benefits for female athletes, the equity of Title IX when applied to an athletic department primarily supported by the efforts for poorer Black athletes is questionable at best. Any effort to reform the NCAA must consider a more nuanced regulatory approach that acknowledges the regressivity and racial injustice that is central to modern college sports.
However, allowing some intercollegiate athletes to share in the fruits of the labor does not stand in the way of continuing to provide meaningful athletic opportunities for athletes participating in sports that currently generate negative net incomes. To illustrate this point, consider that much of the growth in athletic department revenues since 2005 is driven by the increasingly valuable media rights for football and mens basketball. This includes both contracts with traditional networks like ESPN as well as the development of conference-owned channels, such as the Big Ten and SEC networks. This revenue growth is largely unrelated to the athletic success of other sports.
In Figure 2, we show a comparison between the average actual spending on womens sports (the solid line) and estimated spending if the costs of these sports had only grown with inflation (the dashed line) for each school in a Power Five conference. This inflation-adjusted spending is an estimate of the resources necessary for a school to both provide athletic opportunities for female athletes, as well as increase revenue sharing for the athletes necessary to continue providing athletic opportunities for womens sports at the 2006 quality level. For the average school, the difference in this spending amounts to approximately $76,000 per scholarship athlete in football or mens basketball. This thought experiment demonstrates that there is ample revenue to both continue offering non-revenue sports at some level while compensating those responsible for the large growth in funds available to athletic departments.
The pandemic has pulled back the curtain on the ugly business of college sports. Its leaders would like to pretend it remains an amateur endeavor, but they only want to apply those cherished principles of amateurism to the athletes risking their health to generate profits, and not the coaches and administrators who financially benefit from the current system. Addressing this question is even more important as we ask college football players to risk their health to generate the money necessary to perpetuate this fundamentally inequitable system.
Videos containing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation will be removed from YouTube, the platform announced today. Content about a vaccine that contradicts information from health experts or the World Health Organization wont be permitted.
A COVID-19 vaccine may be imminent, therefore were ensuring we have the right policies in place to be able to remove misinformation related to a COVID-19 vaccine, Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesman, said in an email. That could include false claims that vaccines implant microchips in peoples bodies, for example, or that they cause infertility. Both rumors are untrue.
The new guidelines are an expansion of YouTubes existing COVID-19 Medical Misinformation Policy, which doesnt allow videos that falsely suggest the coronavirus doesnt exist, that discourage mainstream medical care for the disease, or that say the virus is not contagious. The highly contagious virus does exist, and alternative, unproven remedies can be dangerous.
YouTube demonetized videos that promoted anti-vaccination information in 2019.
On Tuesday, Facebook announced its own crackdown on anti-vaccination content: its not allowing ads that discourage vaccination. We dont want these ads on our platform, the company said. Ads are as far as the policy goes, though, and organic posts from anti-vaccine groups will still be permitted.
The platforms policies come as clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines inch closer to completion. Public trust in those vaccines is low. President Donald Trump has made public statements pushing for a vaccine by Election Day, and many people in the US think that the development process is political, not scientific. Anti-vaccine groups are feeding off of that mistrust.
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Hospitals in some parts of the state are filling with coronavirus patients, alarming health officials who say Texas could be on the brink of another surge after a relative plateau in September.
The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients has swung upward in parts of the state including West Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Panhandle and El Paso, where hospitalizations have reached an all-time high and the mayor warned of an unprecedented number of new cases.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins this week upped the areas coronavirus threat level to red the highest risk as more patients are being admitted to hospitals with COVID-19 and as infections have climbed, including among school-aged children.
Unfortunately, we are currently going in the wrong direction, Jenkins said.
Experts blame social events like birthday parties and game day gatherings for the recent upticks, and they say there is widespread fatigue for following stringent guidelines to wear masks, practice social distancing and avoid crowded indoor spaces. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited small family gatherings as an increasing threat this week.
A wave of infections and hospitalizations swept Texas this summer, overwhelming hospitals along the U.S.-Mexico border. Officials worry another flare-up could loom just as Texans prepare to celebrate the holidays.
We dont have any identified hot spots or large outbreaks. We just have lots and lots of community transmission, said Casie Stoughton, director of Amarillo Public Health, which also upgraded its local threat level to red this week.
There were at least 4,263 COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals Thursday, according to the Department of State Health Services, which is still far short of the more than 10,000 Texans who were hospitalized for the virus in July.
As Texans enter the eighth month since cases first appeared in the state, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has allowed areas where less than 15% of hospitalized patients have the coronavirus to reopen bars at half their capacity, if local officials allow it, and to have more patrons in establishments like amusement parks and movie theaters.
So far, major counties like Dallas, Harris and Travis have been reluctant to loosen restrictions meant to tamp down the spread of a virus that has claimed more than 16,800 lives in Texas and sent unemployment claims skyrocketing.
McLennan County Judge Scott Felton allowed bars to reopen this week over the advice of the local health authority, who said the area remained a hot spot and that a bar is the worst situation imaginable when considering transmission.
Not all parts of the state are seeing an increase in hospitalized coronavirus patients. The most recent upticks are generally concentrated in regions that avoided the worst of the pandemic this summer.
Places that had not gone through their big summer wave are now experiencing waves. Thats one pattern were seeing, said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious disease with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.
One reason is pandemic fatigue, leading fewer people to wear masks or practice social distancing, he said. Theyre not seeing people get sick around them, and theyre just starting to be a little bit more permissive, Ostrosky said.
Lubbock has more COVID-19 hospitalizations than its ever had, and at least one hospital is full. North-central Texas has seen coronavirus hospitalizations increase by about 30% since September, said Stephen Love, president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council.
When Dr. Robert Hancock, president of the Texas College of Emergency Physicians, recently tried to transfer a patient out of an Oklahoma hospital for specialized care, he could not find a facility in North Texas that had an open ICU bed with staff to support it. The patient ultimately had to stay at the Oklahoma hospital with doctors and nurses left to do the best we can, said Hancock, an emergency room physician practicing in Oklahoma, Amarillo and in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
While hospitals might have open beds or be able to quickly double their intensive care unit capacity, he is concerned they may not have the staff needed to contend with a surge.
Many of the hospitalized patients are older and sicker, and are potentially being inadvertently infected by younger family members who have resumed school or social activities, according to health officials and doctors.
Hancock, for example, said he put a lady on a vent the other night that hadnt left her house since [the pandemic] started.
But her family members all come over to see her. So undoubtedly it was one of the family members that brought it to her, he said.
I honestly expect it to get a lot worse, he said.
In Lubbock home to Texas Tech University and Lubbock Christian University health officials say the increase in hospitalizations of mostly older residents has lagged a few weeks behind when they saw an uptick in infections among teenagers and young adults.
That mirrors what happened earlier this summer, when there was a spike in cases associated with bars reopening, said Katherine Wells, the citys director of public health.
That moved a little bit to the older population, then things went down again, she said. The resumption of classes has caused another increase larger than this summer that officials are now seeing move to the older population, she said.
She worries about the climbing infections and hospitalizations going into flu season which could further strain hospitals and how they could limit the ability of Lubbock hospitals to act as a regional hub for patients in tiny community hospitals between Albuquerque and Dallas that need specialized or more advanced care.
Dr. Ron Cook, the city of Lubbocks health authority and a professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, said people are tired of being cooped up and less fearful of the virus than they might have been in its early months. Theres been an increasingly lackadaisical approach to safety precautions, there are people who refuse to wear masks and he thinks some assume were three-fourths of the way over this because businesses can open at 75% capacity. Health experts say wearing a mask can help prevent the spread of the virus.
Not to have a Game of Thrones theme, but winter is coming, he said, evoking a well-known line from the television show. I'm concerned about that because it pushes people indoors and then our spread is worse.
Compared with the spring, more health workers have been sickened by the virus, Cook said.
Two hours north, in Amarillo, representatives from the citys two major hospitals told officials this week that their facilities were stressed by a high rate of viral spread in the community.
The Northwest Texas Healthcare System had 50 employees quarantined Wednesday because they had contracted the virus or had likely exposure, said Dr. Brian Weis, the hospitals chief medical officer.
Every morning this week, we have had patients waiting in our emergency room for a bed, meaning that we do not have the immediate capacity to get them into an inpatient bed, Weis told city leaders this week.
Another 69 employees from nearby BSA Hospital were also quarantining, said Dr. Michael Lamanteer, its chief medical officer.
Our folks are less at risk of getting COVID-19 in the hospital than they are in the community at this point, Lamanteer said. Nearly 30% of his hospitals patients were admitted with COVID-19, he said.
Disclosure: The Texas College of Emergency Physicians and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
More than 700 Americans die each day of COVID-19. If case counts continue to rise into the winter, that number could nearly triple, one forecast projects. Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
More than 700 Americans die each day of COVID-19. If case counts continue to rise into the winter, that number could nearly triple, one forecast projects.
Coronavirus cases are rising rapidly in many states as the U.S. heads into the winter months. And forecasters predict staggering growth in infections and deaths if current trends continue.
It's exactly the kind of scenario that public health experts have long warned could be in store for the country, if it did not aggressively tamp down on infections over the summer.
"We were really hoping to crater the cases in preparation for a bad winter," says Tara Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University. "We've done basically the opposite."
After hitting an all-time high in July, cases did drop significantly, but the U.S. never reached a level where the public health system could truly get a handle on the outbreak.
Now infections are on the rise again.
The U.S. is averaging more than 52,000 new cases a day (the highest it's been since mid-August), driven by ballooning outbreaks across the country's interior, especially in the Midwest, the Great Plains and the West
Contributing to this rise is the return of students to campus, resistance to mandates on social distancing and mask wearing, and more people spending time in restaurants and other indoor settings, Smith says.
Dr. Michael Mina, a professor at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, compares the situation to a growing forest fire with small sparks all over the U.S. that will gain strength as the weather turns colder.
"We are likely to see massive explosions of cases and outbreaks that could potentially make what we've seen so far look like it hasn't been that much," says Mina.
Nearly 400,000 deaths by February?
A forecast from one of the country's leading coronavirus modeling groups projects more than 170,000 people could die from COVID-19 between now and Feb. 1, bringing the pandemic's overall death toll to nearly 390,000.
"Unfortunately, in the United States, it's still the first wave of the outbreak," says Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which developed the model.
The model forecasts three different scenarios to reflect the potential impact of policies and people's behavior on outcomes. The worst assumes social distancing mandates continue to be rolled back and projects nearly 483,000 cumulative deaths by Feb. 1. The rosiest scenario assumes communities reimpose such mandates when deaths reach a certain level per capita and that nearly everyone wears masks. In that case, cumulative deaths could still reach nearly 315,000.
Currently the U.S. averages over 700 deaths a day. IHME projects it could rise to more than 2,000 a day by mid-January, rivaling the most fatal days in the spring.
So far, Mokdad says the data clearly show the U.S. is stuck in a reactive cycle: when cases spike in their community, people change their behavior significantly they stay home more and wear masks, even in places where it's not required.
Once the situation improves, people return to their previous behavior.
"We are on like a roller coaster in every location in the United States," says Mokdad. "We bring cases down, then we let down our guard. But this is a deadly virus you cannot give it a chance to circulate."
And cold weather could play a role. In the Southern hemisphere, countries saw a rise in cases in the recent cold months, even with a lot of social distancing and many people wearing masks, says Mokdad, which indicates that "there is a seasonality factor" with COVID-19 that mimics pneumonia.
High levels of circulating virus
Even places that have already come back from devastating outbreaks remain vulnerable to a resurgence over the winter, says Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin who directs the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.
Outbreaks can be seeded when people cluster in bars, such as this one in Sturgis, S.D., during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images hide caption
Meyers notes that even in Texas a state where a summer surge helped drive the cumulative death toll to more than 17,000 the virus is much more widespread than it was during the spring. This is true in many parts of the country.
"Even though things look sort of flat from the perspective of which way the trends are going, the level at which we're flat is still an awful lot of virus circulating in our communities," she says, although the hope is those communities may be more responsive now to taking precautions if cases spike.
Her group's model currently projects a cumulative 234,684 deaths by Nov. 9, but does not look any further ahead.
"We understand so much about how this virus spreads," says Meyers. "What we don't know is what behaviors will be and what decisions people will make in the coming months."
That projection is similar to what researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst predict in the COVID-19 ForecastHub, an "ensemble model" merging more than 30 different COVID-19 models.
It predicts about 234,633 total deaths by Nov 7.
"There are sort of opposing forces that are acting on what we might see," says University of Massachusetts, Amherst professor Nicholas Reich, whose lab runs the ensemble model.
"On the one hand, we know that people will be spending more time inside and that has the potential to increase transmission," he says. "On the flip side, people are in general being more careful."
But Reich says there are just too many uncertainties to forecast beyond a month: "In my mind, that's sort of the limit of reliable predictability," he says.
The choice
While the U.S. outbreak can be described as having different "waves" one in the spring, another in the summer public health experts say that does not fully capture how the pandemic has washed unevenly over the country throughout the year.
"A better way of thinking about it is a wave that went into a pool and in that pool it's sloshing around," says Dr. Roger Shapiro, a professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. "Wherever it hasn't been yet, it's going to go, and the place where it has already been it could go back."
Estimates vary, but the vast majority of the U.S. population has not been infected, which means most communities are still at risk of big outbreaks, he says.
Strict adherence to mask wearing and decreasing indoor gatherings could help avert the worst wintertime COVID-19 scenarios. But it's not certain that community leaders have the political will to impose such restrictions.
Mina says he anticipates states will continue to open up just as transmissibility of the virus increases and more people spend time inside, creating "a perfect storm."
"Will it be that we close down again fully?" Mina asks. "Or will it be that we choose a lot of infections? If that's the case, we still haven't done a really good job at figuring out how to keep vulnerable people safe."
But COVID-19 modeler Nicholas Reich notes the dire predictions are only that our best guess. He says the winter could look very different if Americans take precautions seriously.
"The optimism that we can take from this is that human behavior can change this," he says. "We can bend and flatten the curve."
The model, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine, forecasts there will most likely be about 389,087 deaths -- or 78% more fatalities -- by February 1.
The model's best-case scenario projects 314,000 deaths by then if all Americans use masks. There could be more than 477,000 deaths if mask mandates are eased, it projects.
The data show the pandemic increasing in younger populations -- and thus fewer deaths than a previous forecast. That model, released five days ago, projected about 395,000 deaths by February 1.
"We expect deaths to stop declining and begin increasing in the next one to two weeks," researchers with the institute said. "The winter surge appears to have begun somewhat later than the surge in Europe. Daily deaths will reach over 2,000 a day in January even with many states reimposing mandates before the end of the year."
21 states reach record 7-day average of new cases
As of Thursday, the nation is averaging 52,345 new cases a day, up 16% from the previous week, a trend that concerns health experts as we head into the cooler months.
"This is a very ominous sign. I think we're in for a pretty bad fall and winter," said Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine.
"This is the time when we could be entering one of the worst periods of our epidemic and one of our worst periods in modern American public health," he said. "I'm very worried for the nation."
Thirty-five states are showing increases in new Covid-19 cases greater than 10% over the last week compared to the prior week. In seven states, cases are up less than 10%.
Only eight states -- Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Texas and Vermont -- are showing decreases in new cases compared to the previous week.
Since Sunday, 21 states have hit their peak 7-day average of new cases since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins data, those being Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
That kind of spread is "quite concerning," Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"The issue is that as we enter, as we are now, in the cooler season of the fall, and ultimately the colder season of the winter, you don't want to be in that compromised position where your baseline daily infection is high and you are increasing as opposed to going in the other direction," Fauci said.
"We need to think about what we need to do as individuals," she said, "and how each of the decisions that we make can actually contribute to bringing this pandemic to an end."
Herd immunity is not the way out of pandemic, experts say
Wisconsin reported 3,747 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday -- a daily record, according to the state's Department of Health Services. That prompted Gov. Tony Evers to urge residents to help get the spread under control by staying home and wearing face coverings when out.
"The longer it takes for everyone to take this virus seriously, the longer it will take to get our economy and our communities back on track," Evers said at a news conference.
Arkansas, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio also reported their highest single-day totals on Thursday, though Michigan's data included a backlog of cases.
And Florida reported 3,356 cases on Thursday, the 11th day this month that the state Department of Health reported at least 2,200 new cases in a single day, according to CNN's tally.
Vaccine is the best weapon, expert says
Frieden was responding to recent efforts to promote herd immunity as an answer to Covid-19. The idea is being pushed by those eager to stop the economic damage the pandemic has caused.
White House senior administration officials, in a call with reporters Monday, discussed a controversial declaration written by scientists that advocates such an approach.
But the idea is "a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence" that risks "significant morbidity and mortality across the whole population," 80 scientists from around the world wrote in an open letter.
"Any infection anywhere is potentially a threat somewhere else because even if you feel fine and get over it with no problems, no long-term consequences, you might spread it to someone who dies from it. And that's what we're seeing all over the country," Frieden said.
It is impossible to keep only the vulnerable protected from the spread, Frieden said. And letting the virus run rampant would likely lead to recurring epidemics because there is no evidence that people are protected long-term after they have been infected, according to the letter.
The best way to achieve widespread immunity, Frieden said, will be through a vaccine.
"The concept (of herd immunity) really comes from vaccines," Frieden said. "When you vaccinate enough people, the disease stops spreading, and that might be 60%, 80%, 90% for different diseases."
Frieden's comments were echoed Thursday by the WHO's Van Kerkhove, who said that allowing the virus to spread for the sake of herd immunity would lead to "unnecessary cases" and "unnecessary deaths."
"This is not a strategy for this virus," she said, "because there is so much that we can do."
CNN's Maggie Fox, Amanda Watts, Shelby Lin Erdman, Christina Maxouris Raja Razek, Lauren Mascarenhas, Jennifer Henderson, Rebekah Riess and Gisela Crespo contributed to this report.
This weeks spike in new cases was spread across the country, rather than being concentrated in a few states, as we saw in the Northeast in the spring, in the Sun Belt in early June, and in the Midwest over the past few weeks. Seventeen states posted peak new-case days in the past week, including nine of 12 states in the Midwest and six of 11 states in the West.
Single-day case numbers have limited value because some states dont report consistently or build up backlogs, then dump several days worth of test and case data in a single day. Nevertheless, when a state sets a new record for daily reported cases, its usually a bad sign. Of all the states that reported record highs this week, only Washingtons appears to be the result of reporting irregularities; the other 16 states all showed alarming overall case and hospital trends in the past week.
Read: How the pandemic defeated America
Cases in the Northeast, where the spread of COVID-19 slowed considerably during the summer after a dismal spring, are now rising: The seven-day average case count in the region has more than doubled in the past month. The Midwest has seen an 81 percent increase in COVID-19 cases in the same period.
The Dakotas continue to have the most cases per capita, with South Dakota recording 990 cases per 1 million people and North Dakota reporting 921 cases per 1 million, based on seven-day averages.
The other states reporting the largest number of cases per capita were Wisconsin, Montana, and Missouri. Note, though, that this might not reflect the reality on the ground in Missouri, as a database error led to what the state called an incorrectly inflated count of cases for October 10. Missouri officials have not yet explained whether any case numbers were actually wrong, or were simply allocated to the wrong date. We will correct our count once the state updates its figures.
Montana posted a week-over-week decline in cases, but the states hospitalization count continues to rise. Unfortunately, rising hospitalizations are the rule rather than the exception in states around the country this week.
Last week, 41 states saw increases in hospitalizations, and this week the numbers increased in 42 states. Every single state in the Midwest save North Dakota reported more hospitalizations this week than they did on October 8, and only the West had more than two states record drops in hospitalization figures in that period.
Weve seen two previous hospitalization peaks in the national data, each with its own characteristics. From mid-March to mid-June, COVID-19 hospitalizations rose abruptly from zero to 60,000 and gradually declined to a low of just under 30,000 people hospitalized. Although outbreaks across the country contributed to the national numbers, these spring and early-summer hospitalizations were mostly concentrated in the Northeast. On June 21, national hospitalizations began increasing again as rising numbers in the South and West countered falling hospitalizations in the Northeast. As the case surge concentrated in the Sun Belt states came under control, hospitalizations gradually fell again to just under 30,000 people in mid-September, when the third surge began showing up in the hospital data.
CHICAGO It appears a second surge of coronavirus is beginning in Chicago, the citys top doctor said Thursday.
Officials have long said they were worried about the potential for a second spike of COVID-19 in the fall. It appears Chicago could be in the early stages of such a spike, as the city is seeing sharp increases in new cases and its positivity rate.
The numbers are of grave concern, said Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Arwady said Chicagoans need to get serious again about preventing COVID-19 spread and should wear masks, social distance and return to only seeing people in their immediate household or coronavirus bubble.
I am worried that this could be the beginning of this second surge that everybody has been talking about, Arwady said during a Thursday livestream. This could be what folks have been concerned about. And now is the time to double down on the things that have helped keep this in control, broadly, to date.
The surge isnt limited to Chicago: Illinois as a whole has seen bumps in its positivity rate and daily new cases.
The state reported a record 4,015 new cases Thursday, its highest one-day case total yet. That brought the total number of confirmed cases in Illinois to 331,620.
The state also reported 53 deaths during the past day, including 11 people in Cook County. At least 9,127 people have died from COVID-19 in Illinois.
Similarly, Chicagos numbers are rising sharply. An average of 442 cases are being reported in the city per day a 32 percent increase from just one week ago.
While part of the uptick in new cases is due to increased testing, officials have said that doesnt explain everything and the numbers do show increased spread of coronavirus.
For example, Chicagos positivity rate has risen to 4.5 percent, a .3 percentage point increase since last week but the positivity rate should have fallen as more testing was done, not gone up, Arwady said.
And daily new cases in the city are up 32 percent from one week ago, but testing has only increased 16 percent, Arwady said.
The problem here is that yes, we are doing more testing and that is good and that is progress but, nevertheless, we are seeing real increases here, Arwady said during a Thursday livestream.
Similarly, Illinois seven-day positivity rate has risen to 4.9 percent, an increase of 1.2 percentage points from one week ago.
These numbers are indicating a concerning direction, Gov. JB Pritzker said during a Wednesday news conference.
And though the state reported about 7.5 percent fewer tests Thursday 67,086 compared to 72,491 one week ago new cases were up 31.2 percent compared to one week ago.
In Chicago, the spike has known no boundaries: New cases are being reported in every ZIP code, and there have been significant increases in all racial/ethnic and age groups, Arwady said.
Arwady said it appears to be peoples actions that are driving the surge. People feel comfortable around small groups of family and friends, for example, so they let down their guard but a significant amount of spread is happening in those small gatherings.
But in places where people feel less safe, theyre being more cautious and there hasnt been significant spread, Arwady said: For example, theres been no significant spread attributed to the CTA because people feel more nervous on it, so theyre better about social distancing and masking.
It appears people who were sick are also letting down their guard, she said. An estimated 15-20 percent of Chicagoans have had coronavirus by now, Arwady said, but even those who have been sick need to keep following safety guidelines since they could become re-infected.
I think people are getting COVID fatigue, Arwady said. I think this is real, that people are feeling like theyre tired of wearing their masks, theyre tired of social distancing and theyre often letting their guard down.
The doctor urged people even those who have already had coronavirus to keep taking safety precautions, like keeping 6 feet from others and wearing a mask. People should not gather or, if they do, they should keep taking safety steps like masking.
Its getting to be a more dangerous time for COVID, which means its not the time to be relaxing those behaviors, Arwady said. And particularly if you have somebody in your household or somebody in your bubble who has an underlying condition or is older, is over 60, you need to be especially careful. This is not the year to have your traditional, large Thanksgiving gathering nor to travel.
If there are interactions that youre having with folks that are not in your household, in your close bubble already, now is a good time to be dialing back on some of those activities.
Despite the growing spread of coronavirus, it doesnt appears deaths or COVID-19-related hospitalizations are up yet in the city, Arwady said. An average of two Chicagoans are dying per day from coronavirus, which is about what the city has seen for months.
But hospital admissions have risen in most other parts of Illinois, Pritzker said Wednesday.
And Arwady said shes worried a surge in cases here will lead to deaths once again going up. At the peak of the virus in Chicago, in April and May, nearly 50 people were dying per day from COVID-19.
Im very concerned about what this has the potential to lead to related to some of the more severe outcomes, Arwady said. I am hopeful that well be able to keep our levels of hospitalizations and deaths down.
Arwady said she has real concern about Illinois as a whole.
Chicago is doing a little better than downstate Illinois, Arwady said. But, broadly, COVID is not going well, is the bottom line. The news is not good.
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After receiving a heavy infusion of monoclonal antibodies to treat his bout of Covid-19, President Trump has declared that he is immune to the virus that causes it and talked privately about wearing a Superman T-shirt under his dress shirt when he left the hospital.
Even as the president has exulted in his supposed imperviousness to the coronavirus that is resurging across parts of the country, he has delighted in portraying former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as vulnerable and cloistered, wearing masks every time you see him.
But even if the president were now immune to the coronavirus, he may not remain so, scientists warn. The presidents unique treatment may have prevented his body from making the antibodies necessary for long-term protection.
The monoclonal antibodies he received were produced by the drug company Regeneron and will wane in a matter of weeks, as the synthetic molecules are known to do. Without replenishment, this decline may leave Mr. Trump even more susceptible to the virus than most patients who have recovered from Covid-19, several experts warned.
Moreover, the steroid treatment the president received early in the course of his illness suppresses the bodys natural immune response, including its propensity to make antibodies of its own.
He may be not protected the second time around, especially because he didnt develop his own antibodies, said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.
Most people who are infected with the coronavirus produce antibodies to the virus that should protect them from a second infection. Its unclear how long this immunity lasts; based on research into other coronaviruses, immunity may persist for up to a year, experts have said.
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But Mr. Trumps case is unique.
He announced his diagnosis early on Oct. 2, and a test did not pick up any antibodies in his blood, according to a report released by his physician, Dr. Sean Conley.
The lack of antibodies that early in the course of illness is not unusual. It can take from 10 days to three weeks for powerful antibodies to surface.
If he had tested positive, then we would know for sure that he has his own antibodies, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Since he was antibody-negative, it is less likely but not ruled out, he added. He could have been in the early stage of generating his own antibodies. (Dr. Barouch is an investigator for Regenerons trial of the cocktail for preventing coronavirus infections.)
On Oct. 2, Mr. Trump received eight grams of a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies made by Regeneron. These antibodies are infused into people like those of Mr. Trumps age, sex and weight who may struggle to produce an immune response of their own.
A test on Oct. 5 confirmed the presence of the antibodies, according to Dr. Conley.
But Dr. Barouch noted that the antibodies detected in the bloodstream are not his antibodies. Theyre antibodies that were administered. Those antibodies will wane over time.
Oct. 16, 2020, 3:48 p.m. ET
The monoclonal antibodies may have quickly suppressed the level of virus in Mr. Trumps body. While this may have protected the president from severe symptoms, it may also have prevented his immune system from making its own antibodies.
If you get the antibodies early on, and you either prevent or rapidly treat infections, Dr. Barouch said, then you probably will actually inhibit the generation of your own bodys antibodies.
Mr. Trump was also treated with dexamethasone, a steroid that is known to suppress the immune system. And he received it much earlier in the course of his illness than usual.
That also may suppress a patients antibody response, said Kartik Chandran, a virologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.
Older people and men are already less likely to generate it, he added, referring to antibodies. You add dexamethasone to the mix and God knows.
Mr. Trump received a huge dose of the antibodies, but blood levels are expected to fall by half between 21 to 25 days from infusion. Values in this range are sufficient to support monthly dosing, according to information provided by Regeneron.
The White House did not respond to questions about whether Mr. Trump intends to take monthly doses of the cocktail.
Regeneron has said that it has 50,000 doses of the cocktail in hand, and that it would need to begin rationing the therapy if the drug were to be widely distributed.
In a clinical trial, the drug maker is evaluating whether people given the cocktail make their own antibodies, but has not yet completed the analysis, according to a spokeswoman.
Monoclonal antibodies are generally considered to be safe and effective, but Regenerons cocktail has not yet been rigorously tested in clinical trials. A trial of a monoclonal antibody made by Eli Lilly was paused on Tuesday because of a safety concern.
Mr. Trump has endorsed both treatments and repeatedly declared his immunity to the coronavirus.
Im immune I could come down and start kissing everybody, he said at a rally on Tuesday in Jonesboro, Pa. Ill kiss every guy. Man and woman. Look at that guy, how handsome he is. Ill kiss him. Not with a lot of enjoyment, but thats OK.
CHICAGO The city is facing a spike in coronavirus cases, and the citys top doctor thinks its being fueled by COVID fatigue.
Some of the increase in new cases is due to increased testing, but not all of it, said Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Instead, it appears the virus is seeing more spread again, in part because people are not taking safety precautions like social distancing because theyre tired of the pandemic and its restrictions, she said.
I think people are getting COVID fatigue, Arwady said Thursday. I think this is real, that people are feeling like theyre tired of wearing their masks, theyre tired of social distancing, and theyre often letting their guard down.
But the virus is still spreading, Arwady said, and the vast majority of new cases are coming from events and places where people feel safe, so they dont follow safety precautions.
RELATED: Coronavirus Is Beginning To Surge Again In Chicago, And Illinois Reported The Most Cases In 1 Day
For example, people arent wearing masks or social distancing when theyre gathering in small groups with family and friends because they think everyone is safe, Arwady said but thats exactly where most new cases are occurring.
The increased spread can be seen all around Chicago. There are new cases in every ZIP code, and every racial/ethnic group and almost every age group is seeing an increase in new cases, Arwady said.
In Chicago, the average number of new coronavirus cases is up to 475 per day, a 43 percent increase from just one week ago. The citys positivity rate has also risen .6 percentage points.
Arwady urged people to continue following safety guidelines, like staying 6 feet away from others, wearing masks when with people who arent part of your household and washing your hands frequently. Those actions can prevent coronavirus from spreading, experts have said.
The virus doesnt care if youre sick of following the rules, Arwady said it only cares about finding new people to infect.
I know people are tired of COVID, Arwady said. Weve been talking about COVID fatigue this wishing that we didnt have to do the things we know work. Wishing that we didnt have to wear masks. Wishing that we could do all the normal ways of interacting that let us be close to each other .
But right now, we need people more than ever to do the things that we know work.
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The Cyber Guy Kurt Knutsson on the massive hack on prominent Twitter accounts and whether users should be concerned.
Microsoftco-founder Bill Gates on Wednesday warned that the coronaviruspandemic could make the fall "worse than the summer."
The billionairehas been outspoken in his thoughts and advice regarding COVID-19, as well as his criticismof the government's handling of the virus. He predicted in 2015 that the world was not prepared for a pandemic.
"The fall is going to be worse than the summer," Gates said in an interviewwith Politico Playbook when asked what the government should do to "right the course" of COVID-19. "All the numbers are ticking up, and that was always a very good chance that as people go indoors and it's colder, that we would see more transmission."
Co-Founder and Technology Adviser of Microsoft Bill Gates answers questions during an interview on October 18, 2018.(Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)
He continued to say that until the U.S. has developed and starts actively distributing antibodies and a vaccine, likely by the first half of2021, "all we have is our behavior," including masks and social distancing.
"Unfortunately, we've got a lot of fatigue and a lot of bad messages about these things," he said, adding that "U.S. mask compliance is actually pretty poor."
BILL GATES SAYS TRUMP'S CORONAVIRUS TREATMENT WON'T WORK FOR EVERYONE, SHOULDN'T BE CALLED 'CURE'
A number of states,particularly in the Midwest and the South, have reported recordhighs in COVID-19 cases and some have reported new high death counts since the spring and summer months.
States that have seen the most positive virus cases per 100,000 people within the last week, according to a New York Times analysis, include North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, Utah, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, and Wyoming.
RICH COUNTRIES COULD BE CLOSE TO NORMAL BY LATE 2021 IF VACCINE WORKS, BILL GATES SAYS
States that have recorded the most deaths per 100,000 people within the last week include North Dakota, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota, Florida, Montana, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee, according to the Times.
Des Moines Public Schools custodian Cynthia Adams cleans a desk in a classroom at Brubaker Elementary School, July 8, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Gates also told Playbook that, historically, there has been dangerous skepticism regarding vaccines, and communities often look to leaders they trust to determine whether or not they will receive a vaccine for a specific virus.
"Here, what you'd want to see is, where are we not getting the compliance? And who are the leaders they look to? Political leaders, religious leaders, scientific leaders -- and have that message get out," he said.
The United States is looking at six potential vaccines -- two of which have entered Phase 3 trials.
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Vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., has repeatedlysaidthat she would not trust President Trump if he encouraged people to get a vaccine, but that she would trust experts likeNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Gates went on to praise the government for the "timely" stimulus plan that was passed in March to ensure "the bottom didn't fall out of the economy," as well as the money that was given to researchers to study the virus and create a vaccine and antibodies.
He continued: "I clearly think there should be a [second]stimulus bill. I'm not an expert on all the aspects of that, but it is a little unfortunate when you have even the Fed chief who's not that political talking about the economic need."
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