Getty Images

Guesstimates over exactly when sporting events and large gatherings have a reasonable chance of returning to daily life remain educated projections at best at this point. However, a Santa Clara County executive isn’t optimistic sports will return any time in the near future.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Jeffrey Smith told the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors that he thinks it will be well into the fall before he anticipates seeing sports return. Smith said he didn’t expect “any sports games until at least Thanksgiving, and we’d be lucky to have them by Thanksgiving. This is not something that’s going to be easy to do.”

While just about all prognostication regarding the resumption of sporting events and just general normality is educated conjecture, Smith’s opinion is of interest because he resides in a county home to an NFL football team in the San Francisco 49ers. Smith, who earned his medical degree at the University of Southern California, anticipated infections would rise again in California if distancing restrictions were loosened without the ability to inoculate the population.

“There will definitely be individuals who will get sick,” Smith said. “And because there are individuals who get sick, there will be individuals who die after the order is released, unless we come up with a foolproof immunization, which is highly unlikely.”

There are still too many unknowns to say definitively what will come to pass in the coming months. Washington and California have both started to see new infections slowly reduce due to their stay-at-home orders. However, if significant progress isn’t made to quell the transmission rates of the virus or the severity of its infections along with widespread testing, Smith’s projection could certainly be a reasonable outcome as a vaccine isn’t expected until next year at the earliest.