What Is the Likelihood of Basketball Returning in the Fall?

With regard to team sports with contact - like basketball, you have to deal with this practical problem: What happens when one teammate comes down with covid?
With our current knowledge of this virus, that would pretty much shut down the team....

I'm desperately hoping for some kind of miracle on the medical front, but, if you are a person whose understanding of the physical universe if guided by evidence, reason and science, right now it's hard to know what would justify team contact sports before January, 2021.

Hopefully, we will see a breakthrough of some kind.....
GO BEAVS !!

At first I  also thought this was an overreaction but as time went on and I learned more about it I'm not so sure now.  

The COVID-19 crisis is a world history issue, not just a U.S. one.

How many total deaths will it take for people to believe that perhaps the social distancing measures have been a good idea? I think that as 2k+ people in this country continue to die each day from the virus with social distancing measures in place, thoughts of overreaction aren't on my mind. Today (April 25), the U.S. death total went past 53k. We can check back in a week and the total will likely be above 70k.

beaver fever writes: "Better just eliminate fan attendance at athletic events from now on. Family get-togethers should also be permanently banned. Too big a risk."

Beaverfever - your pithy, terse comments are kinda fun when you're just trying to stir the pot, or create a reaction.

When you deliver them in the attempt to cast insight into a meaningful and profound topic they simply sound juvenile and illiterate.
If you have a coherent message concerning covid, spell it out. I'd enjoy reading it.
GO BEAVS !!

No one anywhere has advocated that on a permanent basis. Not even close. Makes a nice strawman, though.

More than 50,000 Americans have died of the virus in less than two months. Prevention efforts have not been an overreaction. But by all means, just keep drinking the Clorox. 

As pessimistic as many people are, they may not be pessimistic enough.  Hope for resumption of university life, university sports, and "life as usual" really rests on the discovery of an effective vaccine or treatment.  Looking specifically at the vaccine possibility, how well do vaccines work for the flu?  In the 2017-18 flu season, there were about 45 million cases in the USA, 810000 hospitalizations, and 61000 deaths.  And that's WITH a lot of people having gotten vaccinated against the flu.  How effective was the vaccine?  The CDC estimates the vaccine prevented 6.2 million cases, 91000 hospitalizations, and 5700 deaths.  What?  It reduced cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by only about 10%?  And yeah, we have vaccines against the flu, but it keeps coming back every single year.

So we should be at least cognizant of the distinct possibility that any vaccine may be only minimally effective, like the flu vaccine.  Using NYC as a model, they estimate 21% or about 1.8 million people have been infected and that 17000 have died.   That's about a 1% death rate, and that estimate is probably low given that deaths lag infections.  This death rate is much higher than the death rate from the flu.  If 200 million in the US get this virus because we decide to drop social distancing and always-on face masks, that's 2 million dead.

And have you noticed how our experts are saying that this new virus could keep coming back year, after year, just like the flu?  I think they know the real chances of normal life returning, but they dare not come out and lay it all out in plain language, because the truth is not what anyone wants to hear:  The changes being forced on us by this virus may be permanent.

As infectious as this virus is, herd immunity will require that 80% of the population become immune.  So that's only going to happen if we let millions die.  Maybe every single year if we don't keep doing social distancing and if we don't have a vaccine that's many times more effective than the flu vaccine.

Some vaccines are long-lasting, and some clearly are not.  No one has yet found a vaccine for the common cold, which is another coronavirus, so coronavirus vaccines may not have the same long-lasting effect as those for the common illnesses like smallpox, polio, and mumps.  I've seen one expert who actually said there may be no viable vaccine for this virus.  We can hope that the level of effort going into a vaccine for this coronavirus will lead to great innovations in vaccination.  But it might not happen.

I guess it doesn't hurt to be optimistic, but reality may bite.