Disease experts suggest that the possibility feared most in the sports world — no major events for the rest of the year — may be more real than many believe and that putting a timeline on their return is not yet feasible.

“My crystal ball is not just cloudy,” Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, said this week. “It’s black.”…

“Unfortunately, I think perhaps if anything, having large spectator sports open back up may even have to be delayed a little bit longer than relaxing some of the other things,” said Dean Winslow, an infectious-disease doctor at Stanford. “I hate to say that because I’m a big sports fan.

“There’s also the scenario a lot of people worry about, including my friend Dr. Fauci, that if you relax the control measures too soon, you could potentially induce a second wave of transmission to susceptible people,” Winslow added when asked about professional and college football starting on time. “It’s a little too soon to make that prediction. I certainly don’t think it’s impossible that we’ll be able to start resuming things such as sporting events by the early fall.”