President Trumps announcement on Friday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus has raised many questions about what the infection could mean for the health of Americas top leader.
In a statement, the presidents physician said Mr. Trump, who is 74, was well but did not say whether he was experiencing symptoms. He said the president would stay isolated in the White House for now.
Here is what we know about how the virus could affect people with his general profile.
Older men are up to twice as likely to die from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, as women of the same age are, according to an analysis by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Another study, published in Nature in August, found that this was because men produce a weaker immune response than do women.
The potential for needing hospitalization rises after the age of 50, said Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Obesity poses another risk factor for dying particularly among men, according to an analysis of thousands of patients treated at a Southern California health system.
If you dont know anything about Donald Trump, just knowing that hes a male, over 70, and appears to be overweight, right away, you can say hes in the high-risk group, said Michael Baker, a professor with the department of global health at the University of Otago in Wellington who is an adviser to the New Zealand government.
Even though the risk of severe illness from Covid-19 increases with age, most people who contract it get well quickly with minimal symptoms.
The good news is that even people who have a number of risk factors, on average, do well, Professor Baker said. Only a minority have illness and severe consequences.
A lot of people his age who get Covid are actually fine, said Benjamin Cowling, head of the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong.
The outcome could be complicated if Mr. Trump has certain underlying health conditions, which researchers widely agree pose a risk of serious illness.
Mr. Trump, White House officials and his doctor have maintained in recent months that the president was in good health. But Mr. Trump loves cheeseburgers and does not exercise much, aside from playing golf. In June, Mr. Trumps doctor said the president weighed 244 pounds, which makes him slightly obese.
If he doesnt have diabetes, high blood pressure or any long-term illness, then the outcome probably wont be severe, said David Hui, the director of the Stanley Ho Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Experts agree that the next week will be critical in determining the course of Mr. Trumps illness.
If Mr. Trump does not develop symptoms, antibodies will appear 10 days after the onset of illness and he will recover, according to Dr. Hui at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that the good news about Covid-19 is that about 40 percent of those who get infected never develop symptoms.
Current estimates suggest that symptoms, if they appear, could do so as soon as two days or as long as 14 days after exposure to the virus.
If Mr. Trump develops mild symptoms such as a cough, fever or shortness of breath, it could take him a week to recover. A severe illness, which could mean developing lung lesions and pneumonia, could require hospitalization, possible ventilation and months of treatment.
You couldnt put a specific time on it, said Dominic Dwyer, a medical virologist at the University of Sydney. Irrespective of what one thinks about politics, you wouldnt wish this on anyone.
Experts agree that Mr. Trumps treatment regimen will depend on whether he develops symptoms in the coming days.
As long as he has no symptoms, or limited symptoms, maintaining a comfortable environment in which he can be isolated for 14 days and be regularly assessed by doctors would suffice.
There is, of course, no cure yet for Covid-19. But if Mr. Trump develops pneumonia and respiratory failure and other signs of a more serious condition, a number of treatments that have been used widely by doctors and nurses would be available to him.
Remdesivir, an antiviral drug designed to treat both hepatitis and a common respiratory virus, has shown to be useful for treating severely ill patients. A steroid called dexamethasone has also reduced mortality in such patients, according to scientists at the University of Oxford.
Elsie Chen contributed reporting.
Daily briefing: US President Donald Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus Nature.com
A temperature check is conducted at a Trump campaign rally last month in Toledo, Ohio. Stephen Zenner/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption
A temperature check is conducted at a Trump campaign rally last month in Toledo, Ohio.
Each week we answer some of your pressing questions about the coronavirus and how to stay safe. Email us your questions at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line "Weekly Coronavirus Questions."
More and more places want to take my temperature before letting me in, with some kind of device they aim at my head. What are the benefits and drawbacks?
If you go out and about during this pandemic, you're probably going to get your temperature taken. Often.
At the dentist's office, at a gym or exercise class, even at some restaurants and grocery stores, a staffer will use a non-contact infrared thermometer (aka a no-touch temperature gun) to see if you are feverish a symptom that could be a sign of infection with the coronavirus. The device, which looks like a laser gun, is pointed at your forehead and registers body temperature in a matter of a few seconds.
And increasingly, those scans are becoming the norm in airports, hospitals and workplaces around the globe, from the U.S. to India.
At the presidential debate Tuesday in Cleveland, authorities temperature-checked all attendees, according to NPR correspondent Scott Detrow, who attended the event. "There was a big sensor pointing at us, and you could see there was a video camera that put a thermal temperature bubble over everybody," he says. "The sensor picked up people's temperatures, then displayed them on two large screens."
The reason for this surge in temperature taking is clear. If people are running a fever, they're turned away at the door. Fever can be (but isn't always) a sign of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
But what can the results of a temperature scan really tell us?
Sonali Advani, an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University, distills the issue into two main questions.
The first is fundamental: Do infrared temperature guns get an accurate temperature read?
In broad terms, research points to yes.
"In general, they've shown to work reasonably well," Advani says,
Harvard Medical School physician Abraar Karan explains that studies have shown that the readings on infrared thermometers are comparable to digital thermometers. In one paper that looked at temperature scans of newborns with normal and touchless infrared thermometers, for instance, the two often had close concordance in readings.
That said, infrared thermometer guns can be a bit hard to use and the scan results can be susceptible to outside influence.
The reason: "Infrared thermometers look at skin temperature, which can vary from core temperature," Karan says. "And skin temperature can be affected by humidity, sweat [or other weather conditions], interrupting the interface between the device and skin."
In other words, if you were to run to the gym for a pre-workout burn, your results might be affected by the sweat you pick up on the way. Plus, for infrared thermometers to capture accurate readings, they've got to be properly calibrated and used in a consistent manner, Advani says. Things can go wrong, for instance, if the temperature taker is standing too far or close to the patient. And no thermometer can account for the impact of fever-reducing medicine.
That said, Karan thinks "infrared thermometers have a net benefit." They're contactless and super-fast. That, plus the fact that they're reasonably accurate, despite the potential for false positives, makes them particularly attractive for pandemic use.
But that's only half the story, Advani says, pointing to a second, broader consideration: Namely, do such temperature readings really help minimize the chances that an undiagnosed patient will infect others? Here, medical professionals agree: Temperature screenings alone are an insufficient way to suss out and minimize COVID-19 risk.
"When we talk about temperature checks, we need to know what we are getting and what we are not getting," Karan says.
What we are getting, per Karan, is another layer of precaution. But it's certainly not foolproof, and alone, it's certainly not enough.
That's because of the nature of the virus: Roughly half of infections don't present with fever, Advani says. Plus, the virus can be contagious even in its presymptomatic phase that is, before an infected person even shows signs of being sick. A nonfeverish yet contagious person could sail through a temperature check.
So despite the benefits of temperature checks it can't hurt to turn away someone who's feverish there is cause for skepticism. Infectious disease specialist Mark Kortepeter explains that infrared temperature screenings can contribute to a misguided sense of security, encouraging people to participate in activities that aren't altogether that safe.
Karan agrees.
"It can give people a sense of reassurance to have someone at the door scanning your head, which gives the illusion of safety," he says. "But it's not in any way guaranteeing your safety, and it's not guaranteeing you're not infectious."
Instead, temperature checks must just be one measure in an arsenal of risk prevention measures, our sources stress including a thorough interview, asking people who they've been exposed to, if they're experiencing any of symptoms and where they've been traveling.
The take-home lesson: Individuals still need to take protective measures due to possible lapses in temperature screening. "Everything we do must be linked that's the keystone of this," Advani says. "We want universal masking. And once you're in the business, you need to start looking at occupancy, ventilation, hand hygiene."
In stores, Kortepeter says it's a good idea to see what steps are being taken to minimize crowding. And at restaurants, Karan says you should consider points such as: Has indoor dining been moved outdoors, where the risk of transmission is lessened by air flow?
Finally, it's important to think about your own risk factors.
The elderly have a lower threshold for fever (while a 99-degree temperature may be within the normal range for the average individual, it may be cause for worry in an elderly person), Advani notes, so it's important for them to be more judicious than younger people.
Meanwhile, you might also wonder: Should I buy a no-touch thermometer for home use?
It's probably easier to use a digital thermometer or an infrared thermometer that goes in your ear, especially since thermometer guns may be hard for the untrained to administer properly. The one exception, Advani says, is for parents of young kids: Traditional thermometers can be challenging to use on a fidgety or sensitive kids. In these cases, the no-touch device may prove useful.
Pranav Baskar is a freelance journalist.
LONDON Some pointed to the irony of it. Others offered well wishes. More than a few said it was just deserts.
From London to Rome to Nairobi, the revelation on Friday that President Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus was met with a mix of surprise and unease, even as some saw it as a comeuppance.
Many pointed out that Mr. Trump had contracted the virus after disregarding health protocols and downplaying the pandemic while it ran rampant in the United States. Others noted his dismissal of scientific advice about the pandemic, which has been core to his messaging around the virus.
I am sorry, but he deserved it, said Vincenzo Altobelli, 27, an engineer from Milan who was visiting his brother in central Rome. His brother, Cuono Altobelli, a financial analyst who joined him for an after-breakfast walk, agreed.
He kept sending the message that coronavirus was not a serious thing, he said. If you sow wind, you can only reap a tempest.
The French newspaper Le Monde published a cartoon depicting President Trump sitting in a corner of a boxing ring, unmasked, with his opponent in the opposite corner the coronavirus. Outside the ring, his Democratic challenger in the presidential campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was wearing a mask with arms folded.
Many Twitter users around the world made a point of mocking President Trumps suggestion in April that injecting or ingesting a disinfectant might aid in combating the virus.
Others were more sympathetic to the presidents plight.
In Berlin, Frank Wortmann, 49, said he was surprised about the result and wished the president well.
It goes to show you it can get anyone, from the president of the United States on down, he said.
In Kenya as in much of the world, the hashtag #TrumpHasCovid was the top trending topic on Twitter.
Patrick Gathara, 48, a Kenyan political commentator, said that while there was an immediate reaction from many that the president was somehow deserving of the virus, he wanted to focus on a more humane response.
Trump will get a bit of lashing and some people might even celebrate, he said. I dont think it should be celebrated, but he would be deserving if people came out and reminded him that he brought this unto himself, that he ignored science and scientists.
He said he hoped the president and his advisers would learn from the ordeal.
Does this mean the U.S. changes how it handles the virus? he asked. What do they do to learn from this? Or does it become another thing that happened, and they dont learn much from it?
Danielle Van Elewyck, a 62-year-old pharmacist in Brussels, said it was hard for her as a European to understand Trumps mentality, especially taking into account the lack of universal health care in the United States.
Oct. 3, 2020, 4:21 p.m. ET
I dont think it is normal. But this is why the situations in Europe and the United States are incomparable, she said. Maybe people there have a different approach to those things.
Some worried that the presidents infection might sow fear in the American public and upend the campaign ahead of an already fraught presidential election campaign.
Thats not what we needed right now, said Giulio Livoni, a 53 year-old-lawyer in central Rome. He has a campaign to do, and we really need the United States to be in good shape at the moment.
In Brussels, Marie-Pierre Chapuis, a 45-year-old researcher for a company that produced face masks, also said she felt it could be a learning experience for Mr. Trump.
If he has light symptoms, he will probably continue saying that this virus is nothing. If he gets seriously ill which of course I dont wish for anyone maybe he will change his views and realize Covid-19 is not a joke, said Ms. Chapuis as she was strolling down a street in the Belgian capital.
Yet Ms. Fen said she doubted Mr. Trumps infection would make him change his response to the coronavirus, because his pride is just too big for that, she said.
Good luck to him, still, she added.
Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin, Emma Bubola from Rome, Abdi Latif Dahir from Nairobi, Anna Joyce from Kilkenny, Ireland, Elian Peltier from London, Monika Pronczuk from Brussels, Kareem Chehayeb from Beirut, Lebanon, and Antonella Francini and Constant Mheut from Paris.
President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, have contracted the coronavirus, White House officials said, after months in which he has played down a pandemic that has killed more than 205,000 Americans and sickened millions more.
Trump, 74, was diagnosed hours after it became publicly known that Hope Hicks, a top Trump aide who traveled with him on Air Force One and Marine One this week, tested positive Thursday morning.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for the coronavirus, the president tweeted just before 1 a.m. Eastern time. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
The presidents physician, Sean P. Conley, wrote later that Trump and his wife are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence.
An aide who saw Trump late Thursday said he seemed normal and did not show any symptoms, though he was aware of Hicks and her condition. Hicks is showing symptoms, officials said. Aides said all of his political events will be canceled for the foreseeable future.
After White House officials learned of Hicks symptoms, Trump and his entourage flew to New Jersey, where he attended a fundraiser and delivered a speech. Trump was in close contact with dozens of other people, including campaign supporters at a roundtable event.
Late Thursday, Trump tweeted that he and the first lady, who traveled with Hicks and the president Tuesday, were in quarantine.
Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for the coronavirus 19. Terrible! The first lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process! he said.
Trumps announcement was an extraordinary turn for the first family, coming little more than a month before Election Day and as Trump has escalated his campaign pace in an effort to catch Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who leads in national and key state polls. He trails largely, aides and voters say, due to his handling of the virus, which has dominated voters attention along with the economic collapse caused by pandemic shutdowns.
Even as the virus exploded around the nation, Trump has continued to hold large events featuring mostly maskless crowds of people who squeezed together to greet the president. Trump has regularly appeared in public and in private without a mask, and has mocked Biden for wearing one and for curbing his campaign events. Many of Trumps aides also have eschewed masks, both in the West Wing presidential offices and on trips.
Hicks is among Trumps closest staffers and regularly enters the Oval Office multiple times a day, meeting with White House and campaign aides.
She has been spotted on multiple occasions without a mask, along with other top aides. She tested positive after showing symptoms at a rally Wednesday.
Hicks, 31, served as Trumps 2016 campaign spokesperson from the beginning of his candidacy and then as White House communications director before leaving in March 2018 for a job at Fox News. She returned to the White House in February in the role of counselor to the president.
Trump told Fox Newss Sean Hannity during a live interview Thursday night that he and the first lady were tested after they learned about Hicks and were awaiting the results.
She tested positive and I just went out with a test ... so whether we quarantine or whether we have it, I dont know, Trump said. So I just went for a test and well see what happens. Who knows? ... We spend a lot of time with Hope, so well see what happens.
Trump later tweeted that he and the first lady In the meantime ... will begin our quarantine process.
Trump suggested Hicks could have contracted it from members of the military or law enforcement.
It is very, very hard when you are with people from the military, or from law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them, the president said. You get close, and things happen. I was surprised to hear with Hope, but she is a very warm person with them. She knows theres a risk, but she is young.
Hicks traveled with the president to Pennsylvania for a rally Saturday, to Cleveland for the first presidential debate Tuesday and to Minnesota for another campaign rally Wednesday.
She was photographed without a mask at the Pennsylvania rally clapping to the Village Peoples YMCA with other Trump aides and in Cleveland on the tarmac deplaning Air Force One.
A person familiar with the situation said Hicks was quarantined on the plane trip back from Minnesota on Wednesday night after showing mild symptoms. She tested positive Thursday morning.
After Hicks diagnosis, White House spokesperson said the president was taking the matter seriously.
The President takes the health and safety of himself and everyone who works in support of him and the American people very seriously, said Judd Deere, a White House spokesperson. White House Operations collaborates with the Physician to the President and the White House Military Office to ensure all plans and procedures incorporate current CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance and best practices for limiting COVID-19 exposure to the greatest extent possible both on complex and when the President is traveling.
Hicks is the most senior White House aide known to have tested positive. Vice President Pences spokesperson, Katie Miller, caught the virus in May, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump campaign finance chair and girlfriend of the presidents son Donald Trump Jr., contracted the virus in July. Before Hicks, the most senior White House official to test positive was national security adviser Robert OBrien in late July.
The White House administers daily coronavirus tests to aides, reporters and others who come into contact with the president. But public health experts warn they are not foolproof and that masks and social distancing are still the best protection against the virus.
At Tuesdays presidential debate in Cleveland, Trump was pressed on his insistence on having huge campaign rallies where no one is required to wear facial coverings or to socially distance.
Weve had no negative effect, and weve had, 35 [thousand] to 40,000 people at some of these rallies, Trump said.
Biden shot back: Hes been totally irresponsible the way in which he has handled the social distancing and people wearing masks, basically encouraged them not to, Biden said. Hes a fool on this.
If you could get the crowds, you would have done the same thing, Trump said. But you cant. Nobody cares.
For months, public health experts have been eagerly watching the companies developing spit tests for the coronavirus that could be used at home, producing results in a matter of minutes.
If these rapid saliva tests worked, as many news articles have pointed out, they could greatly expand the number of people getting tested. Some experts have even said they could perform as well as a vaccine in curbing the spread of the coronavirus and paving a path back to normalcy.
But so far, the technology is not panning out as some have hoped.
E25Bio and OraSure, two companies pursuing rapid at-home coronavirus tests, have abandoned efforts to use saliva in their products. Their tests, which detect pieces of coronavirus proteins called antigens, will for now rely on shallow nose swabs instead.
If I was placing a bet which I am, because Im leading an antigen-based testing company I would say its going to be very difficult for antigen-based testing to work on saliva samples, said Bobby Brooke Herrera, an E25Bio founder and its chief executive. The notion that the virus sets up shop in the mouth and produces enough antigen to be picked up by todays technology, he said, is far-fetched.
The two companies pursued saliva (or oral fluids, in the case of OraSure) for months in the hopes of their tests being more comfortable than swabs, some of which go painfully deep into the nose, and less reliant on sputtering supply chains that have caused long delays for laboratory tests.
Theres nothing more convenient than spitting in a tube, said Dr. Valerie Fitzhugh, a pathologist at Rutgers University.
But as they continued to tinker with their tests, researchers at both E25Bio and OraSure found salivas performance to be more lackluster than anticipated, and were forced to pivot.
This was a result of optimization studies, said Stephen Tang, OraSures president and chief executive officer. A saliva antigen test is still theoretically possible, Dr. Tang added. But after comparing the amount of coronavirus antigen found in the nostrils and throat, as well as different parts of the mouth, including the cheeks, gums and tongue, we decided to optimize around the nasal cavity, he said.
Spit also differs vastly among people, and can even change over the course of a single day. Weve all noticed that there is variable performance, said Sarah Jung, scientific director of clinical microbiology at Childrens Hospital Colorado.
Both E25Bio and OraSure plan to seek authorization from the F.D.A. to sell at-home antigen tests using nose swabs instead of spit, a technique similar to the one used by the much-talked-about Abbott antigen test that takes about 15 minutes. The E25Bio test would require people to swab their nose, stir the sample into a chemical soup, apply the mixture to a paper strip and wait up to half an hour for bands to appear. E25Bios test picks up on about 80 percent of the infections that ultrasensitive laboratory tests detect the F.D.A.s bare minimum for a regulatory greenlight. OraSure declined to give any details about its tests methodology or accuracy.
Saliva does seem to be working when used in laboratory tests known as P.C.R., which look for bits of the viruss genetic material, or RNA, rather than antigens. P.C.R. tests detect minute amounts of coronavirus RNA, making them far more sensitive than antigen tests. Research teams at Rutgers and Yale have been granted emergency authorization for these spit P.C.R. tests.
At the University of Illinois, some 10,000 of the institutions in-house P.C.R. tests are performed each day on saliva from students, faculty and staff members roughly 1 percent of the nations daily tests.
Standard P.C.R. tests, however, take hours to run and are subject to shortages of laboratory supplies, such as pipettes and chemicals, often leading to delays in getting results.
Other scientists, like Dr. Zev Williams of Columbia University, are working on variants of rapid saliva tests that, like P.C.R., detect RNA, but dont require expensive laboratory machines.
His teams prototype takes just 45 minutes. It uses an array of portable equipment, including two tissue-box-size heaters.
Thats too bulky and expensive for at-home testing. But he said the test could be deployed in places where crowds gather, like schools, offices and travel hubs, granting safe passage to those who test negative while sending the infected back home.
His team has submitted an application for emergency approval from the F.D.A. In the meantime, theyve partnered with Sorrento Therapeutics, a San Diego-based company, to scale up production.
The Columbia saliva test relies on a technique called LAMP thats generally faster but a bit less accurate than P.C.R. The spit sample is briefly boiled and mixed into a cocktail of chemicals that then gets incubated at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour. If the tubes contents turn from red to yellow, the test is positive.
The latest data shows the Columbia test performs as well as a laboratory deep-nose swab test more than 96 percent of the time, even when using saliva from sick patients who gave messy samples.
Even if there was food or blood, we took it, Dr. Williams said. That wouldnt fly with most other saliva tests in use, he said, which ban eating, tooth-brushing and even gum chewing in the hour or so before depositing drool.
Another saliva LAMP test is being tested by David OConnor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their technique bears many similarities to the Columbia test, including a color-based readout, but takes slightly longer and involves a couple of extra steps. Early trials of the test on volunteers in Wisconsin have gone well, Dr. OConnor said, and one school district in Illinois is using the test to screen about 1,400 students and teachers on a weekly basis.
But saliva LAMP tests face their own hurdles. Saliva tends to clump and stick, and can be a difficult substance to handle and transfer from tube to tube, said Jennifer Dien Bard, director of the clinical microbiology and virology laboratory at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, where her team is working to roll out saliva-based testing for coronavirus RNA. And although color-based results are simple, interpreting them can get messy if a rainbow of hues comes out the other end.
To me, Dr. Dien Bard said, something like this might still belong in a lab.
Heres what you need to know:President Trump initially dismissed the threat of the virus by likening it to the common flu.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times
President Trump said early Friday that he and the first lady had tested positive for the coronavirus, throwing the nations leadership into uncertainty and escalating the crisis posed by a pandemic that has already killed more than 207,000 Americans and devastated the economy.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
The presidents result came after he spent months playing down the severity of the outbreak that has killed more than 207,000 in the United States and hours after insisting that the end of the pandemic is in sight.
It could pose immediate difficulties for the future of his campaign against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger, with just 33 days before the election on Nov. 3. Even if Mr. Trump, 74, remains asymptomatic, he will have to withdraw from the campaign trail and stay isolated in the White House for an unknown period. If he becomes sick, it could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all.
Even if he does not become seriously ill, the positive test could prove devastating to his political fortunes given his months of diminishing the seriousness of the pandemic even as the virus was still ravaging the country and killing about 1,000 more Americans every day. He has repeatedly predicted the virus is going to disappear, asserted that it was under control and insisted that the country was rounding the corner to the end of the crisis. He has scorned scientists, saying they were mistaken on the severity of the situation.
Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, received his test result after one of his closest advisers, Hope Hicks, became infected, bringing the virus into his inner circle and underscoring the difficulty of containing it even with the resources of a president.
Global financial markets immediately fell on the news. Futures markets were predicting that Wall Street would open 1.7 percent lower. European futures fell too, as did yields on U.S. Treasury bonds.
Pfizers chief executive pushed back Thursday against President Trumps estimates for when a vaccine would be ready, saying in a note to employees that the company would never succumb to political pressure and expressing disappointment that we find ourselves in the crucible of the U.S. presidential election.
In doing so, the chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, appeared to be distancing himself from the rosy predictions of Mr. Trump, who identified Pfizer by name at the presidential debate on Tuesday and said that a vaccine was weeks away.
I enjoy a robust policy debate, but Im not a politician, Dr. Bourla wrote. The amplified political rhetoric around vaccine development, timing and political credit is undercutting public confidence.
Pfizer is one of four companies testing coronavirus vaccines in large clinical trials in the United States, but it is the only one that has said it could have an answer about its product as early as this month, before the election on Nov. 3. Other companies, such as Moderna, have said they may know whether their vaccines work before the end of the year.
Even if a vaccine shows early positive signs, most Americans will probably not receive one until well into next year.
Pfizers ambitious timeline which even federal health officials have said is unlikely has put the company in a precarious spot. On the one hand, its predictions that an answer could come in October have attracted praise from Mr. Trump, who has described Dr. Bourla as a great guy. But if the company is perceived to be rushing a vaccine for political reasons, its scientific reputation and bottom line could take a big hit.
During the debate, Mr. Trump suggested that the companies had told him that they could move more quickly, but that they were not because it was a political thing.
Ive spoken to Pfizer, Ive spoken to all of the people that you have to speak to, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and others, Mr. Trump said. They can go faster than that by a lot.
Last month, in an attempt to reassure the public that its vetting process would not be influenced by politics, F.D.A. scientists drafted new, stricter guidelines about how they would decide whether to grant an emergency authorization to a new vaccine. Those guidelines, which recommended that clinical trial data be reviewed by an independent panel of experts before any decision, have not yet been released.
In his letter, Dr. Bourla said his company is driven only by the speed of science.
With a virus this ferocious, time is our enemy, he said.
transcript
transcript
Right now, were at the table discussing how we go forward with a possible Covid bill. Again, at that table, it reflected some of the differences that you saw in the debate. For example, were hopeful that we can reach agreement because the needs of the American people are so great. But there has to be a recognition that it takes money to do that. And it takes the right language to make sure it is done right. So again, we have concerns about a sufficient amount of money to address unemployment insurance needs of the American people. We have concerns about, for example how about this as a stark example of a difference, not just of dollars but of values.
House Democrats on Thursday pushed through a $2.2 trillion stimulus plan that would provide aid to families, schools, restaurants, businesses and airline workers, advancing a wish list with little chance of becoming law.
The pandemic relief measure passed the House on a tight 214 to 207 vote, with at least 17 Democrats joining Republicans in opposing it. The handful of moderate Democrats who bucked their party argued that with negotiations still taking place with the administration, the chamber should vote on a bipartisan deal.
Republicans had already panned the relief bill as too large.
The decision to put it to a vote on Thursday evening anyway reflected mounting anxiety among some rank-and-file Democrats at the prospect of facing voters without being able to point to some action to provide relief. There was also a desire among some party members to formalize their latest offer.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted there was still a chance that the talks will produce a deal, but the vote shined a light on the continued failure of Congress and the White House to come together on a new package, and the dwindling chances that they can do so before lawmakers scatter to campaign for re-election.
The dysfunction has left Americans for months without aid payments or the enhanced unemployment benefits they relied on early in the pandemic, and has allowed help for struggling businesses to lapse at a critical time in a shaky recovery.
Earlier in the day, Ms. Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke for about 50 minutes. Ms. Pelosi told reporters that she did not expect a resolution on a stimulus package to emerge Thursday. But she said she was reviewing documents sent by the Treasury Department and said, Were going back and forth with our paper and conversation.
Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia was among the Democrats who voted against the measure.
Even as we cast this vote, negotiations are continuing on a separate package that could actually yield bipartisan agreement, she said in a statement. My focus remains on working with Democrats and Republicans to get relief to my district immediately, and partisan gamesmanship will not do it.
House Republicans and White House officials said that Ms. Pelosi was unwilling to compromise, and that she had put forward a measure that remained too expensive and stuffed with unrelated items. The American people need us to legislate for them, not posture, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, declared on Thursday.
At the White House, Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, blamed the speaker for looming layoffs in the airline industry.
When it comes to the negotiations, Nancy Pelosi is not being serious, Ms. McEnany said.
The federal prison system will resume allowing family members to visit inmates after a six-month hiatus, despite fears that visiting could accelerate the spread of the coronavirus inside and outside prisons.
The shift, which goes into effect Saturday, comes as a nonpartisan commission is raising concern about the pandemics impact on the criminal justice system as a whole, urging measures including mask mandates, mass testing and releasing more inmates from jails and prisons.
The Bureau of Prisons halted family visits in March to try to head off transmission of the virus in the 122 prisons of the federal system, the largest in the country. When the virus has gotten into a jail or prison setting, it has often spread explosively inside and spilled out into the surrounding community.
Despite the ban on visits and other measures in the federal system, infections and deaths in jails and prisons around the country have steadily increased. At least 1,202 prisoners and 125 prison staff members have died from the virus so far around the country, according to a New York Times database; the federal system specifically has had 134 deaths among inmates and guards.
The National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice, which was created in July and is led by two former attorneys general, Loretta Lynch, a Democrat, and Alberto Gonzales, a Republican, on Thursday issued a set of recommendations. These included diverting people who commit minor violations from jail, limiting bail for people awaiting trial and relying on technology to limit in-person jury trials.
Thomas Abt, director of the commission, said it recommended limiting visits, as well as transfers, until protocols such as mask wearing, widespread testing and ensuring free access to soap and hand sanitizer are in place.
New federal rules mean that no physical contact will be allowed between inmates and visitors, and guards will check visitors temperatures. Both inmates and visitors will be required to wear face coverings and maintain a six-foot distance. In some facilities, plastic partitions will be installed.
Christy Balsiger, whose husband Thomas Balsiger is in a federal prison in Texas, said that though she was concerned about the virus, family visits were vital for the psychological well-being of inmates.
Their miserable circumstances need some relief, she said.
But Aaron McGlothin, a warehouse foreman for the prison system, predicted that the resumption of visits would lead to more illness and death.
I lost my mind when they said that, Mr. McGlothin said of the announcement. I was just like, Are you kidding me?
Almost 20,000 Amazon employees in the United States have had confirmed or presumed coronavirus infections, the company said Thursday.
The e-commerce giant said that it had employed 1,372,000 frontline workers at Amazon and its Whole Foods grocery stores since the start of March, and that by its calculations, the infection rate among employees was on average 42 percent lower than in the surrounding communities, adjusted for the age of its work force.
Amazon has seen a surge in demand during the pandemic as people have bought more products online to avoid shopping in stores.
The company faced criticism from its workers and from lawmakers about its safety protocols, particularly in the spring, as the country locked down but Amazon remained open as an essential business. Amazon said it did its best to introduce safety measures while serving a critical need for customers.
The company also said Thursday that it planned to expand its in-house program to test workers for the virus, from a few thousand a day under its current pilot program to 50,000 a day by November.
transcript
transcript
We did it. We did it. You did it. New York City did it. This is an absolutely amazing moment. Fighting back this pandemic, and this morning. 1,600 New York City public schools open. Kids coming to school for the first time since March. And it was a joyous moment. Sixteen hundred public schools open, over 1,000 community-based pre-K in three case sites open all receiving kids today. In the course this week, as many as half a million kids will go through the door of a New York City public school program. Now lets get on with moving forward. And one of the things we need to do to move forward is make sure that we have rigorous and consistent testing for the coronavirus in our schools every month. So a reminder to all parents, please fill out the forms authorizing the tests at the school for your kids on a monthly basis. This is going to allow us to keep a constant eye on whats happening in each school. 10 ZIP codes where we have a clear problem. We have a group of other ZIP codes where we have concern, again against the backdrop of 146 ZIP codes total in the city. And overwhelmingly the rest of the city is doing very, very well. And the numbers show it.
A day after indoor dining returned, New York City reached another major milestone in its recovery as a one-time center of the coronavirus pandemic: It has reopened all its public schools.
Not long after sunrise, middle and high school principals welcomed students back into their buildings for the first time since March. Elementary school children had started earlier this week.
About half a million students, from 3-year-olds in pre-K programs to high school seniors, have now returned to school in the city, which has by far the nations largest school system.
Roughly 480,000 other students have opted to start the school year remotely, an indication of how wary many New Yorkers remain. A day earlier, as indoor dining returned at 25 percent capacity, the delight among restaurant owners was marked by trepidation over whether customers would feel safe enough to return, and whether the state-imposed limits would hurt profits.
While Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that the virus was under control in most neighborhoods in the city, the reopening of public schools came as officials continued to warn about a troubling uptick in 11 neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. The city on Thursday reported that the seven-day average rate of positive test results rose to 1.59 percent, slightly higher than the rate reported on Wednesday, in part because of the clusters in the 11 areas. The mayor has said he will require all students to take all their classes remotely if the seven-day rolling average reaches 3 percent.
City employees were handing out masks and conducting outreach in those neighborhoods, as well as stepping up testing, Mr. de Blasio said. The daily positivity rate was 1.52 percent, compared to the rate of .94 percent he reported on Wednesday.
We want to bring this concerted focus to those areas to prevent further spread across the city, Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, the citys health commissioner, said on Thursday.
Shortly afterward, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said 20 ZIP codes across the state, including in New York City and Orange and Rockland Counties, were continuing to drive up the states positivity rate, and again called for local governments to step up enforcement. The daily rate was 1.27 percent, he said, but without the hot spot ZIP codes, the number would be .98 percent. He added that there were 612 hospitalizations across the state. On Sept. 20, the state reported 468 hospitalizations, and the number has been steadily creeping up.
A cluster today can become community spread tomorrow, he said. These ZIP codes are not hermetically sealed. People from those ZIP codes go to the surrounding communities, thats how you have community spread.
Considerable political opposition to reopening and significant planning problems forced Mr. de Blasio to twice delay the start of in-person classes.
Some other big school districts are not far behind, though they have faced their own challenges. Schools in Miami-Dade are set to reopen on Monday, at the order of the Florida state education commissioner, despite the strong opposition of the teachers union. And school leaders in Houston, San Diego, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., are planning on bringing at least some students back into classrooms later this month.
A new report released Thursday by New York States comptroller laid bare the devastation that the pandemic had on New York Citys restaurant industry. Beforehand, more than 315,000 people were employed in the sector. At the height of the outbreak, restaurant employment dropped to 91,000 jobs, according to the report. As of August, it had only reached 55 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
The moment had been tinged with such uncertainty that when it finally came, no one seemed to know how to feel.
After half a year away from the classroom, students in the New York City school system, the nations largest, were back. Some 500,000 public school students, from preschoolers to high school seniors, streamed into classrooms as the city began putting to the test its pandemic-tailored hybrid school model.
Given the multiple delays in starting the school year as the city tried to address the concerns of parents and teachers, no one had been taking anything for granted, especially with officials voicing concerns about localized virus upticks.
We were very skeptical, one mother, Gwen Leifer, said.
But on Thursday, her 11-year-old son did in fact find himself starting his first day of middle school, in Queens.
Ms. Leifer said her son is in a special education class to help with his speech and motor disabilities, and at-home learning was a struggle. Now they are worried.
Can we gain the ground that we lost in the seven months without school? Ms. Leifer said.
Many families were just happy to have their children back in brick-and-mortar schoolhouses.
In Brooklyn, Myisha Sawyer said her 14-year-old daughter, a student at Bedford Academy High School, was looking forward to going back. She wanted to get back to the old feeling of school, sitting in the classroom, Ms. Sawyer said. She missed her friends, just being around kids.
Some students believe the school system is still not doing enough, and a few dozen cut classes to demand changes.
At a protest, some students wore yellow sashes that said, We wont die for D.O.E. There were chants of What do we want? Safe schools. And one sign read, The DOE deserves an D in their reopening plan.
The students called for more school nurses, better ventilation systems and improvements to the remote learning curriculum, which some 480,000 students have opted to keep using.
Farzana Pritte, a junior at the Boerum Hill School who attended the protest at Washington Square Park, said many students did not realize that returning to school was not safe.
Were pushing for schools to go remote until all schools are safe and equitable, she said.
With the Tennessee Titans roiled by a coronavirus outbreak that has infected multiple players and team personnel, the N.F.L. said it would reschedule their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers to later in the season. It is the first N.F.L. game to be pushed back because of the health crisis.
The announcement came after two more members of the Titans a player and a team employee tested positive for the virus on Thursday, bringing the teams total known infections to 11.
The league had considered pushing the game back one or two days from its scheduled start on Sunday, but will now slot the game for a date later in the season.
The decision to postpone the game was made to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and game day personnel, the league said in a statement. The Titans facility will remain closed and the team will continue to have no in-person activities until further notice.
The Titans halted in-person activities on Tuesday after learning that eight members of the organization three players and five employees had tested positive.
In separate testing, a fourth player, outside linebacker Kamalei Correa, was found to have contracted the virus. The outside linebackers coach, Shane Bowen, did not accompany the team to Minnesota for Sundays game against the Vikings.
The Minnesota Vikings, who hosted Tennessee on Sunday, have not received any positive results as of Wednesday, the team said, and after a two-day hiatus are hopeful of re-entering their facility Thursday. Their game Sunday at Houston has not been changed.
Well assess day by day, Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, said Wednesday. We might be in a position tomorrow where its more widespread and have to say, Lets go to Tuesday. And we might have to go to a scenario where we cant play Monday or Tuesday. Were not going to put the health of the players in jeopardy. Everything is subject to change and were being flexible and adaptable.
Local health officials in Wisconsin are overwhelmed. Hospital beds are filling up. And as coronavirus cases and deaths surge to fearsome new levels in the state, officials worry that the worst could be yet to come.
We have to get this virus under control, and we cannot do that if folks continue to go about their lives as usual, Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday on Twitter, when 26 new deaths were announced statewide, a single-day record.
We need Wisconsinites to wear a mask if they have to go out, Mr. Evers added, but right now, the bottom line is that we need folks to stay home.
The governor issued an emergency order on Thursday to make it easier for out-of-state health care workers and those in Wisconsin who have recently retired or let their licenses lapse to pitch in and help.
Though national case numbers have remained relatively steady, averaging between 40,000 and 45,000 a day, Wisconsins have been soaring, part of a troubling outbreak in the Upper Midwest. New case reports have set daily state records recently in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, as well as in some counties on Michigans Upper Peninsula. On Thursday, officials in South Dakota reported 747 new cases and 13 new deaths, both single-day state records.
In Wisconsin, an important battleground state in the upcoming presidential election, the pandemics seven highest single-day case totals have all come since Sept. 18. The state is now averaging more than 2,400 new cases each day, more than triple the average at the start of September.
Though thousands of cases have emerged on the states college campuses, major outbreaks have also taken hold in areas where there is no obvious link to a college. In Door County in the states hard-hit northeast, health officials said this week that they were so overworked that it was taking days to inform people about positive test results. The officials said they could no longer call close contacts of people who were infected.
We have seen exponential growth of cases the past few weeks, Door County officials said in a news release. The number of new cases continues to accelerate upwards, and is exceeding the ability of testing and case investigation to control the spread of illness.
The city of Tulsa, Okla., changed its mask mandate on Thursday now anyone age 10 and up must wear a mask in public spaces, including schools, stores and anywhere social distancing is not possible. Previously, the mandate, signed toward the end of July, applied to those 18 or older.
A shift in the state recommendation as to who should wear a mask comes as coronavirus cases are up 11 percent in Oklahoma in the last two weeks, according to a New York Times database. There have been at least 88,369 cases and 1,035 deaths in the state since the beginning of the pandemic.
Our local health data indicate that the fastest rate of growth for COVID-19 cases is currently occurring among children in the 5-17 age group, Dr. Bruce Dart, executive director of the Tulsa Health Department, said in a news release.
The mask mandate will expire on Jan. 31.
Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and internet falsehoods about the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: President Trump.
Wisconsin continued Friday as one of thenation's coronavirus hotspots, with the recent explosion of cases alarming health officials and straining hospitals in the Fox Valley, Green Bayand Wausau areas.
Before Sept. 17, the state had never recorded a day with more than 2,000 new cases. Over the last seven days, however, ithas reported an average of nearly 2,500 new coronavirus cases each day. Those aren't just the highest numbers of the pandemic, they'rethree times higher than a month ago.
What began with outbreaks on Wisconsin's college campuses has now spread rapidly throughout the state.
"We're entering a dangerous time of new cases here in Wisconsin," Veronica Scott-Fulton, chief nursing officer for SSM Health, said Fridayat a news conference in Madison.
The 2,745 new cases and five deaths reported Friday by the state Department of Health Services came asthe Oshkosh and Neenah area grappled with one of the worst outbreaks in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of case counts.
At one point Friday, the Green Bay and Appleton metro areas joined Oshkosh in the top three spots of the nationwide leaderboard for most new cases in the last two weeks, adjusting for population.
Wisconsin also reported 10,850 negative tests Friday. The death toll rose to 1,353.
Track COVID-19 in Wisconsin: See the latest numbers and trends
How to interpret COVID-19 data: What experts say about positive cases, deaths and hospitalizations
As of Fridaythere were 663 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, with 181 of themin an intensive care unit, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association. On Sept. 1, the number hospitalized was 295, and the number in an ICU was 100.
Health care officials said a number of factors could be at play in the recent spike, but it's likely the result of people not paying attention to basic prevention. It's no secret thatbars and restaurants especiallyin northern and rural parts of the state are often packed, with masks and social distancing often ignored.
Despite the surge, there's a growing effort to strike down Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers' statewide mask mandate.
Republican legislative leaders went to court Friday to show support for aconservative legal firm's lawsuit againstthe mandate. The move came the same day President Donald Trump, who does not wear face masks regularly, canceled weekend rallies planned for Wisconsin after hetested positive for the coronavirus.
Health officials outside northeast Wisconsinwarned the outbreak could return quickly to former hotspots such as Madison and Milwaukee.
"We are perilously close to a time back in April when we had our highest level of hospitalizations in the city (of Madison), and we do not want to get back to that point," said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at UW Health.
More than 1.4 million people have been tested statewide for the virus. Of the 105,932 Wisconsinites who have tested positive:
Aspirus Health Care again tightenedvisitor restrictions at its hospitals, nursing homes and health care facilities in northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Visitors will no longer be allowed at Aspirus facilities. There aresome exceptions, such as for end-of-life situations, labor and delivery,surgery patients, patients with specific caregiving needs or pediatric patients. Those using outpatient treatment centers, such as for dialysis and oncology, may also have a support person.
Earlier this week, Aspirus warned that the recent surge in coronavirus cases and patients was straining its facilities. Matthew Heywood, president and CEO of the system, acknowledge that its Wausau hospital has resorted to at-timesputting patients on await list. He stressed that the number of people on the wait listfluctuates, as do wait times, which he said ranged from a couple of hours to 24 hours or longer.
Andrew Mollica and Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Contact Mary Spicuzzaat (414) 224-2324 ormary.spicuzza@jrn.com. Followheron Twitter at @MSpicuzzaMJS.
Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.
Read or Share this story: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/10/02/wisconsin-coronavirus-spike-continues-2-700-new-cases-friday/3591450001/
Marine One, the presidential helicopter, arrives at the South Lawn of the White House on Friday to transport President Trump to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The White House says Trump will spend a few days at the military hospital after contracting COVID-19.
(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
The Tennessee Titans' COVID-19 outbreak is not the end of the NFL's 2020 season. It is the beginning of the most important part of it.
This week's developments are shocking only to those who had settled comfortably into the familiar rhythms of football season and forgotten the potentially impossible circumstances under which this one is being played. The NFL knew this was coming -- a week in which the coronavirus infected one of its teams to the point where it had to consider postponing a game. It knows it'll happen again. The NFL isn't in charge of whether and in what order its games get played this season. The virus is. So the league will adjust the best it can, even if the solutions aren't perfect or universally satisfactory.
But equity concerns aren't as worrisome as existential ones, which is why this week has to be a wake-up call -- a reminder to those who might have forgotten what's going on in the wider world that there's no way to shield the ever-insular NFL from it. As smoothly as training camp and the first few weeks of the season went, this is no time to relax, and that time isn't coming soon.
2 Related
"Our job simply isn't done. It's to remain vigilant," NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said in an interview Thursday on CNN. "But I'm happy with what's been done, I'm happy with the protocols that have been in place, and we'll find out exactly what happened."
Far more important than the rescheduling of the Week 4 game between the Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers is that the NFL and the NFLPA stay on top of the outbreak in Tennessee. The league issued a memo Thursday reminding teams, "There is one simple rule to remember: act as if every person you come into contact with has a COVID infection and take appropriate protocols." The memo establishes new rules for teams, such as the Titans, that have outbreaks, or the Minnesota Vikings, who come into contact with teams that have outbreaks. These include increased testing, mask and glove requirements during practice and virtual-only meetings among other things.
The league continues to test Titans players and personnel daily, isolate those who test positive -- six players and seven personnel members tested positive this week -- and trace their close contacts to try to monitor and prevent further spread. It continues to test the players and personnel of the Vikings, who played the Titans on Sunday. So far no one has tested positive in Minnesota, and if that continues for another day or two, the league can start to feel confident the coronavirus wasn't transmitted from team to team during a game.
But the NFL and the NFLPA have to find out how the virus got into the Titans' building. They have to make sure everyone else in the league knows what they find out. They have to take some sort of disciplinary action if -- if! -- they find out it was the result of someone's negligence. And while they're at it, they might want to do something about the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Raiders are under league investigation for letting an unauthorized individual into their locker room after a game. Coach Jon Gruden was fined $100,000 and the team $250,000 for Gruden's insufficient use of the league-mandated face covering on the sideline during a game. (Four other coaches and teams have been fined, as well, for the same violations.) And then this week, video surfaced of Raiders players attending an indoor charity event and mingling and posing for pictures with guests while not wearing masks.
Gruden and quarterback Derek Carr can give all the news conferences they want about how they've "done a good job" and they "weren't trying to be careless and reckless," but actions speak louder than words. The Raiders' actions are not those of a team taking this thing seriously, and the fact that they're flying under the radar is not a good thing for the NFL's chances of getting a full season played.
What Carr, Jason Witten, Darren Waller and the other Raiders who were at that event did was incredibly stupid. The coronavirus protocols negotiated between the NFL and the NFLPA permit the team (but not the league) to fine them for it. What makes their actions even dumber is that those same protocols allow their team, should they contract COVID-19 as a result of attending a prohibited event (this one violated state and local regulations, and the country club that hosted it has been fined by the state), to classify their illness as a non-football injury. If a player is on the non-football injury list, his team doesn't have to pay him.
Hopefully, it doesn't come to that. Hopefully, the chickens of the Raiders' careless stupidity don't come home to roost. But until we've seen five to seven days of negative tests in Vegas, we have to count this week's Buffalo Bills-Raiders game as potentially in peril along with Vikings-Houston Texans. If a Titans player transmitted the virus to a Vikings player during last week's game, or if an unmasked guest at Waller's charity event transmitted it to an unmasked Raider, then we could be looking at three postponed games this week instead of just the one.
"I don't want to say it is what it is, but that is why the plan was put in place to have guys, to be prepared and why so many people ... are being diligent and not going out and being reckless and being careful," Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said Wednesday. "I'm homeschooling my kids. We're not having guests over at the house. You have to do those things if you want to play the games on Sunday."
Everything you need this week: Full schedule | Standings Depth charts for every team Transactions | Injuries Football Power Index rankings More NFL coverage
This is the point the NFL has been trying to drive home -- and get its coaches to drive home -- for the past couple of months. This whole thing is a powder keg. I heard Carr stand up there and say, "We had a few moments where we slipped up," and all that tells me is that the guy either doesn't get it or doesn't care. One moment in which you slip up is enough to let the virus in. Major League Baseball found this out during a Miami Marlins outbreak in August that infected 18 players and threw the schedules of several teams into chaos for weeks.
There are people in our society who don't buy any of this -- who think the virus is a hoax or overblown. So it stands to reason that there are going to be people in the NFL who think the same way. There are surely players and coaches and front-office people who roll their eyes at the protocols and the constant reminders that they have to follow them. And no matter how seriously anyone is taking the virus, everybody wishes they could snap their fingers and just get back to normal. But the NFL's position, built on a mountain of advice from the medical community, is that it can't. The league has worked hard to make sure its players, coaches and other personnel act in a way that respects that position. Coaches who don't wear masks during games will continue to be fined, and this week, the league has told them they also could end up suspended or docked draft picks if the fines don't work. If that doesn't get their attention, it's hard to imagine what will.
So, yes, the NFL and the NFLPA will conduct their inquiry into what happened in Tennessee. If the result of that inquiry is the discovery of a hole in the testing and tracing protocols, they'll work to patch it. Does that mean testing on game-day mornings, currently the only day of the week on which the NFL is not testing? It could. Does it mean the next time a coach's test comes back positive on a Saturday morning, as Titans outside linebackers coach Shane Bowen's did last week, that his close contacts can't get on the plane, either? Got to at least consider it. The situation is without precedent, which means the COVID-19 protocols must be malleable.
2:23
Adam Schefter reports that there were two more positive tests from the Titans, including one player, which led to the NFL postponing Tennessee's game against Pittsburgh.
But as reliable and effective as the protocols have been at identifying cases and limiting spread, there's no way to get them to 100% effective. There will be more cases. There will be more outbreaks, facility closures, game postponements. It is inevitable. The key to pulling off this NFL season is the behavior of the people on the ground. The ability of players, coaches and team personnel to make the personal sacrifices necessary to keep the virus away as much as possible. And if players and coaches are starting to let their guard down, the NFL has to loudly, publicly and strenuously make sure they get it back up.
We won't know whether the NFL can complete this season until it has. The external challenges are and will remain significant. They might prove impossible to overcome. But failure to stamp out internal challenges will only make things more difficult. This week has been a reminder that those exist, and that they must be kept to a minimum if this football season is to succeed.
