Sports and Business News: Thursday, June 10th

Dr. Fauci Weighs in on Sports' Return

TheStreet's Katherine Ross sat down with Dr. Anthony Fauci to discuss how sports can safely return to action without a spike in coronavirus cases among players and team employees. Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Ross the best way to prevent an outbreak is to get granular on the local level.

Here's some of his responses from the interview with TheStreet:

"The issue is that the United States is a very large country. And it's a heterogeneous country. It is not uni-dimensional. So it's difficult to make statements about the United States as a whole. Because when you look at things, you make decisions regarding exposure, or potential exposure to the virus, based on the dynamics and the extent of the virus in any given location. And when I say location, I say, region, state, city, town, county, or what have you,"

"So you can't look at the United States just in a unit-dimensional way. It's very different if you're in an area like New York City, where you have a lot of people and you'd been hit very badly. Right now, they're doing much, much better. But if you were in a situation where you had a high degree of activity, versus a county, somewhere in Wyoming, with this very little infection, you've got to look at what's going on now. We know that, right now, there are several areas where there are upticks in infection. We've seen that places like California, places like Arizona, places like North Carolina, and others. And there are more than those states that are doing that. You have to be extra special careful."

"So therefore, when you talk about sports, you got to be talking about what's the level of infection. And people are going to be doing things that are going to be creative. They're not my models. I believe the executives of the various sports are in good faith, trying to figure out a way how they can get the sports back up without endangering the health and the welfare of the American public. And that could be anything from not having a season. Which nobody wants. Everybody would like to see some sports," 

PGA Returns with the Charles Schwab Challenge

For the first time in three months, the pro golfers are back on the course for a PGA event. The Charles Schwab Challenge, which started today, is the first PGA event since the Tour was put on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.

15 out of 20 of the world’s top-ranked golfers are competing in the event with 148 golfers in total. The tournament is taking place at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth Texas. There’s a purse of $7.5 million with the winner earning $1.3 million. Justin Rose is the current leader after Day 1.

Info on how to watch the Charles Schwab Classic. 

Daily Coronavirus Update

There are 7.4 million cases of the virus worldwide, with over 412,000 deaths. The U.S. has over 2 million cases of the coronavirus, with over 113,000 deaths. The markets, in intraday trading, are sinking on Thursday. The Dow is down over 1,500 points or around 5%, the S&P 500 is down around 4.5% and the Nasdaq is down around 3.7%. At this pace, the Dow is on track for its biggest one-day decline since March. 

Focusing on the coronavirus, TheStreet’s Katherine Ross talked to Dr. Fauci this morning for about 30 minutes on a variety of topics--from his thoughts on Texas to whether or not a vaccine will be out by the end of this year. Fauci told Ross that there’s no guarantee of a vaccine by the end of this year, but that they’re saying, “We're saying we have a good feeling, and good data, to believe that we're on the right track.”When Ross asked about the increase in Texas and in other states, Fauci said, “The critical issue is how you respond to them. If you can't respond to them adequately, and little upticks then become major outbreaks, then you have a real problem. So those are the kinds of things. First of all, you got to be careful and prudent in how you open up. And when you do, you've got to be able to respond to what will be the inevitable upticks that we will see.”

TheStreet's Katherine Ross contributed to this report.