How Stephen Curry Is Using His Platform To Tackle The Coronavirus Pandemic

The Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry entered the 2019/20 NBA season set up to have one of the most dominant seasons in his career. With the Warriors missing his backcourt partner Klay Thompson, and having turned over much of their roster in the offseason, Curry may not have been in prime position to add to his collection of three championships, but with the load the Warriors needed him to carry a third MVP trophy wasn’t out of the question. Then there was the prospect of securing the glittering prize of his first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo.

Life doesn’t always work out how you planned, however. Just four games into the season, Curry crashed into Aron Baynes on a drive to the basket, and Baynes fell onto him. The result, a badly broken hand and 58 games lost. The Warriors may have changed trajectory that night, but Curry worked his way back to finally return four months later. Even if the season was lost, Olympic gold remained a prospect.  

Curry made it onto the floor for one more game in the 2019/20 season. Then the coronavirus crisis hit, sweeping the globe and taking the Olympics down with it. Curry, like everyone else, has had to change up and put his normal life on hold. 

Typically though, he’s proving as much of a leader off the floor as he is on it. Thanks to the creativity which allows him to whip a behind-the-back pass through the narrowest of spaces, and the boldness with which he launches from 30-feet away, Curry has come up with a host of new ways to have an enormous impact on the world around him.

 Curry is using his charity and connections to help the community

Curry was quick off the blocks in taking part in the Warriors’ efforts to help arena workers losing out because Chase Center was forced to close, donating to the $1M fund run by the Warriors Community Foundation.

At the same time, through the Eat.Learn.Play Foundation he and his wife, Ayesha, set up in the summer, the Curry family has galvanized supporters to help feed local kids who were missing out on free meals after Oakland schools closed. Over one million meals have been donated to the Alameda County Food Bank by the charity. 

That’s been delivered in part by a new partnership he’s struck with food distribution company, Lineage Logistics. As Forbes reported last week, “Curry began marshaling his contacts to enlist hundreds of sidelined workers from NBA arenas around the country, while Lineage started supplying warehouse space to store and distribute millions of meals that Curry plans to donate in and around Oakland.”

Curry is using his platform to spread knowledge

Yesterday, Curry did something even more unique. He used his platform on Instagram Live, with nearly 30 million followers, to host a Q&A with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director and Central White House Coronavirus Task Force Member, Dr Anthony Fauci. 50,000 people tuned in to hear an informative, enlightening discussion with perhaps the most recognizable figure associated with stopping the spread of coronavirus in the United States. That audience included former President Barack Obama.

It couldn’t have come at a more important time. According to figures from John Hopkins University, the United States now has more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other country, with 85,991 positive tests, overtaking China with 81,782 cases and Italy with 80,589. “This is serious business. We are not overreacting” Fauci said.

Curry using his platform in this way is one of the most powerful acts of public service broadcasting seen by a celebrity yet. Tackling misinformation is one of the most important factors in fighting this pandemic. Curry pinpointed, in particular, that he wanted to get the facts out to a younger demographic. “This why I wanted to have this Q&A, to reach a different demographic because you see people at the beach and at the park and public gatherings not adhering to the social distancing, and there’s a sense of urgency— that can continue to increase the spread of the virus.”

Some key messages from Dr Fauci

The session gave Dr Fauci the opportunity to speak to this different demographic unfiltered. Myths were busted, such as what’s the difference with flu? “It’s very, very much more transmissible than flu,” Dr Fauci explained, “more importantly, it’s significantly more serious.”

Scientific unknowns were explored, such as the chances of catching the virus a second time. “We haven’t done the specific testing to determine that, but if this acts like every virus similar to it that we know, the chances are overwhelming that if you get infected and recover from infection, then you are not going to get infected from the virus”, said Dr Fauci, before going on to outline the concept of herd immunity, which will help life get back to normal. “Which means you can safely go out into the community and feel immune, so you can not only protect yourself and get back to work, get back to your job, but you’ll be able to have what you refer to as herd immunity. Enough people would recover in the community; that gives the virus very little chance to spread rapidly.”

Curry also asked Fauci whether there’s a chance that societies would need to go back into lockdown once restrictions are lifted because of a secondary outbreak. Fauci admitted “it’s a possibility,” but added that he hoped “we will get enough experience so when it does come back we’ll be able to immediately identify, isolate and contact trace. If you do that effectively, you don’t have an outbreak. You contain it at a very low level. Which would mean we won’t have to lock down again.”

And of course, Curry asked the all-important question that so many people, not just sports fans, want to know the answer too. “What needs to happen in terms of the numbers to be able to then determine that large gatherings, sporting events etc. are okay to revisit?”

“That’s what we deal with on a daily basis, what we sit down in the Situation Room at the White House every day to go over that,” Fauci replied. “What you need to see is the trajectory of the curve start to come down. We’ve seen that in China. They went up and down. They’re starting to get back to some normal life. They’ve 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.”

Curry’s impact is what matters now

Just as Curry’s appearance on the court belies his true impact, so too do his actions off it. This two-pronged approach – helping on the ground, and using his voice to amplify the key messages to a broader audience – is what underpins the strategy of the Curry family’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation. Curry’s season may have started with big dreams on the court, but it’s finishing with something far more important.