Stephen Curry Hosts Coronavirus Q&A With Dr. Anthony Fauci

Stephen Curry hosted a COVID-19 Q&A on Thursday with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the face of America’s fight against the coronavirus.

Curry continues to use his celebrity to bring more awareness to the global pandemic, and everyone’s role in combating the lethal disease.

Dr. Fauci told Curry that a vaccine is in the works.

Per the Golden State Warriors’ team website:

Curry: “What metric are you looking at to be able to determine when large gatherings and sporting events are OK to revisit as not a threat to continue spreading the virus?”

Dr. Fauci: “What you need to see is the trajectory of the curve start to come down. We seen that in China they went up and down, they’re starting to get back to some normal life. They got to be careful they don’t reintroduce the virus into China, but they’re on the other end of the curve. Korea is doing that, they’re starting to come back down. Europe, particularly Italy, is in a terrible situation: they’re still going way up. The United States is a big country. We have so many different regions like New York City right now which is having a terrible time, and yet there are place in the country that are doing quite well… we could start thinking about getting back to some degree of normality when the country as a whole has turned that corner and started coming down.”

Curry: “I know there’s a timeline for developing a vaccine. I heard it’s a 12 to 18-month timeline to be able to roll that out. What does that process look like and what is the likelihood we get to success in that time?”

Dr. Fauci: “We have started on the development of a vaccine faster than ever in the history of any virus, from the time it was discovered to the time we actually made it and put it into a trial. But when you test the vaccine it takes multiple phases. The first thing you got to do is make sure it’s safe. We started that a couple of weeks ago… Phase two is pretrial to determine if it works. That’s the thing that’s going to take an additional eight months or so. So when you add up the three or four months for phase one plus the seven or eight months, you get about a year to a year and a half.

“If we really push, we hope that we will know by the time we get into next winter whether or not we have something that works. A vaccine is going to be totally relevant if it cycles into another season, which Steph quite frankly, I think it’s going to do because this virus is very, very transmissible… I cannot imagine it’s just going to disappear. So vaccines are going to be important the next time around, not for what we’re dealing with now.”

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