1
U(D54G1D)y+=!%!=!$!" With no N.C.A.A. tournaments to watch this month, some of the best coaches reflect on great past games and high- lights worth seeking out online. PAGE D1 SPORTSMONDAY D1-6 College Basketball Redux Millennials and Generation Z can wield electoral clout. But many feel more disillusioned than empowered. PAGE A16 NATIONAL A16-17, 20 Who Will Speak to the Young? Danai Gurira, who stars on “The Walk- ing Dead,” is walking, or maybe lurch- ing, away from the show. PAGE C1 Leaving Zombies Behind Celeste Ng, Ann Patchett, Min Jin Lee and other authors discuss the books that bring them comfort. PAGE C2 ARTS C1-8 Reading as a Refuge Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A19 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19 PRESSURE Workers at UPS and FedEx feel they have no choice but to keep showing up, even with coronavirus-like symptoms. PAGE B1 Terrifying though the coro- navirus may be, it can be turned back. China, South Korea, Singa- pore and Taiwan have demon- strated that, with furious efforts, the contagion can be brought to heel. Whether they can keep it sup- pressed remains to be seen. But for the United States to repeat their successes will take extraor- dinary levels of coordination and money from the country’s leaders, and extraordinary levels of trust and cooperation from citizens. It will also require international partnerships in an interconnected world. There is a chance to stop the co- ronavirus. This contagion has a weakness. Although there are incidents of rampant spread, as happened on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, the coronavirus more often infects clusters of family members, friends and work colleagues, said Dr. David L. Heymann, who chairs an expert panel advising the World Health Organization on emergencies. No one is certain why the virus travels in this way, but experts see an opening nonetheless. “You can contain clusters,” Dr. Heymann said. “You need to identify and stop discrete outbreaks, and then do rigorous contact tracing.” But doing so takes intelligent, rapidly adaptive work by health officials, and near-total coopera- tion from the populace. Contain- ment becomes realistic only when Americans realize that working together is the only way to protect themselves and their loved ones. In interviews with a dozen of the world’s leading experts on fighting epidemics, there was wide agreement on the steps that must be taken immediately. Those experts included interna- tional public health officials who have fought AIDS, malaria, tuber- culosis, flu and Ebola; scientists and epidemiologists; and former health officials who led major American global health programs in both Republican and Democrat- ic administrations. Americans must be persuaded to stay home, they said, and a sys- tem put in place to isolate the in- fected and care for them outside the home. Travel restrictions should be extended, they said; productions of masks and ventila- tors must be accelerated, and test- ing problems must be resolved. But tactics like forced isolation, school closings and pervasive GPS tracking of patients brought more divided reactions. Halting Virus Will Require Harsh Steps, Experts Say Near-Total Cooperation From Public Is Key to Isolating Clusters of Infections By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. The National Guard at a drive- through test site in New Jersey. BRYAN ANSELM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A11 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Down on earth, the coronavirus outbreak was felling lives, livelihoods and normalcy. A nation-spanning blessing seemed called for. So up went a priest in a small airplane, rumbling overhead at an epidemi- ologically safe distance from the troubles below, wielding a sacred golden vessel from a cockpit- turned-pulpit. Before the Rev. Majdi Allawi’s boarded his flight over Lebanon, a soldier at an airport checkpoint asked if he had a mask and hand sanitizer. “Jesus is my protection,” said Father Allawi, who belongs to the Maronite Catholic Church. “He is my sanitizer.” Religion is the solace of first re- sort for billions of people grap- pling with a pandemic for which scientists, presidents and the sec- ular world seem, so far, to have few answers. With both sanitizer and leadership in short supply, dread over the coronavirus has driven the globe’s faithful even closer to religion and ritual. But what is good for the soul may not always be good for the body. Believers worldwide are run- ning afoul of public health authori- ties’ warnings that communal gatherings, crucial to so much re- ligious practice, must be limited to combat the virus’s spread. In some cases, religious fervor has led people toward cures that have no grounding in science; in oth- ers, it has drawn them to sacred places or rites that could increase the risk of infection. In Myanmar, a prominent Bud- dhist monk announced that a dose of one lime and three palm seeds — no more, no less — would confer immunity. In Iran, a few pilgrims were filmed licking Shiite Muslim shrines to ward off infection. And in Texas, the preacher Kenneth Seeking a Balm for the Soul But Imperiling Earthly Health By VIVIAN YEE Workers disinfecting a mosque in Istanbul earlier this month. Coronavirus infections in Turkey have risen to nearly 1,000. CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES Continued on Page A7 Three weeks after its first coro- navirus infection was discovered, the New York City region reached an alarming milestone on Sun- day: It now accounts for roughly 5 percent of the world’s confirmed cases, making it an epicenter of the global pandemic and increas- ing pressure on officials to take more drastic measures. Moving to stem the crisis on multiple fronts, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York pleaded with federal officials to nationalize the manufacturing of medical sup- plies and ordered New York City to crack down on people congre- gating in public. He suggested some streets could be closed, al- lowing pedestrians more space. The governor on Sunday an- nounced measures intended to prepare for a wave of patients, in- cluding setting up temporary hos- pitals in three New York City sub- urbs and erecting a massive medi- cal bivouac in the Jacob Javits Center on Manhattan’s West Side. Already, hospitals across the New York region are reporting a surge of coronavirus patients and a looming shortage of critical sup- plies like ventilators and masks. A rapid increase in testing has revealed the extent of the out- break: Community spread of the highly contagious virus now ap- pears commonplace. All told, more than 15,000 peo- ple in New York State have tested positive, with the vast majority in the New York City region. That is about half of the cases in the United States. Worldwide, the pandemic has sickened more than 314,700 people, according to offi- cial counts. About one in eight patients in New York State has been hospital- ized, and 114 people had died by Sunday morning, state officials said, though the toll in New York City rose rapidly during the Officials Race to Stem Outbreak As New York Becomes Epicenter By JESSE McKINLEY Continued on Page A6 WASHINGTON — With the economy faltering and the politi- cal landscape unsettled as the coronavirus death toll climbs, a stark and unavoidable question now confronts Presi- dent Trump and his advisers: Can he save his campaign for re-election when so much is suddenly going so wrong? After three years of Republi- cans’ championing signs of finan- cial prosperity that were to be Mr. Trump’s chief re-election argument, the president has never needed a new message to voters as he does now, not to mention luck. At this point, the president has one clear option for how to proceed politically, and is hoping that an array of factors will break his way. The option, which he has bra- zenly pushed in recent days, is to cast himself as a “wartime presi- dent” who looks in charge of a nation under siege while his likely Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., is largely out of sight hunkered down in Delaware. Trump Shifts Image: Leader For ‘Wartime’ This article is by Annie Karni, Maggie Haberman and Reid J. Ep- stein. NEWS ANALYSIS Continued on Page A17 Her name was Loretta, but they called her Lettie. She stood 4 feet 10 inches. She was outrageously friendly, the kind of person liable to invite the sales clerk at T-Mo- bile to join the family for dinner. This made her children cringe but was also something they loved. Pure Lettie. She was tough. At work, she could stare down colleagues who were hairy, blustery and taller than her by a foot or two. And it was true of her husband, Roddy. He could not say no to her. Roddy had not wanted to go on their February trip to the Phil- ippines. He was watching the early news about the coronavirus, and worried it would put his wife, a cancer survivor, in danger. But she was adamant. There was something she needed to finish. On March 11, Loretta Dionisio became a data point. At the news conference where her death the day before was an- nounced, the public health direc- tor in Los Angeles County did not name her, in accordance with fed- eral privacy regulations. The public health director re- ferred only to a woman in her 60s with “underlying health condi- tions” who was stopping briefly in California after travels in Asia, adding that “shortly after being hospitalized, she unfortunately passed.” In the continuing tally of fatalities associated with the coro- navirus, hers was the 37th death in the United States, the first in Los Angeles County. Nearly two weeks later, Ms. Dionisio’s family was still grap- pling with the bureaucracy that surrounds infectious disease. She died far from her home in Orlando, Fla., during a layover 2,500 miles away. Her son and daughter, on the East Coast, have been unable to see their father, who is in quar- antine in California after giving their mother cardiopulmonary re- suscitation. For days after her death, he barely spoke. And in the painful logistics of hygiene and quarantine, no fu- neral Mass has been said for her. “Through this whole ordeal, we didn’t want her to get lost in the story,” said her son, Rembert Dionisio. Janice Jenkins, a close friend of Ms. Dionisio’s, said that the days after her death had felt strange and disjointed, without the cere- Within the Bleakest Statistics, A Life That Was So Much More By ELLEN BARRY Continued on Page A9 Loretta Dionisio with her husband, Roddy, in a photograph from 2005. She died on March 10 after a trip to the Philippines. DEFIANT Many have ignored the urgent calls for social distancing. How much they are worsening the crisis may never be known. PAGE A5 TRACKING AN OUTBREAK OLYMPICS Faced with growing pressure to postpone the Tokyo Games, Olympic officials promised a decision within four weeks. PAGE D1 INFECTION CLUE Doctor groups are recommending testing and isola- tion for people who lose their ability to smell and taste. PAGE A4 In northwestern Syria, children forced from their homes cannot remember a normal life. Volunteer teachers are trying to give them one, despite a lack of desks, chairs and books. PAGE A14 INTERNATIONAL A14-15 When School Is in a Tent The U.S. Embassy in Kabul is working to broker peace between the men who have claimed the presidency. PAGE A15 Afghan Presidential Politics Opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Supreme Court to block what they called a power grab by the caretaker government. PAGE A15 Israeli Political Clash Intensifies Betty Williams shared the 1976 prize for starting a protest movement that de- manded the end of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland during the time known as the Troubles. She was 76. OBITUARIES D8 Winner of Nobel Peace Prize The most common questions can some- times stump people, but a little prepara- tion can quell anxiety and make a can- didate stand out. PAGE B7 BUSINESS B1-8 Decoding Job Interviews WASHINGTON Senate Democrats on Sunday blocked ac- tion on an emerging deal to prop up an economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, paralyz- ing the progress of a nearly $2 tril- lion government rescue package they said failed to adequately pro- tect workers or impose strict enough restrictions on bailed-out businesses. The party-line vote was a stun- ning setback after three days of fast-paced negotiations between senators and administration offi- cials to reach a bipartisan compro- mise on legislation that is ex- pected to be the largest economic stimulus package in American history — now expected to cost $1.8 trillion or more. In a 47-to-47 vote, the Senate fell short of the 60 votes that needed to advance the measure, even as talks continued behind the scenes between Demo- crats and the White House to sal- vage a compromise. The failure to move forward shook financial markets and threatened an ambitious timeline set by the Trump administration and leading Republicans to move Partisan Divide Threatens Deal On Rescue Bill This article is by Emily Cochrane, Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smi- alek. Continued on Page A8 The Democratic front-runner faces the challenge of staying visible as the race moves into the virtual realm. PAGE A17 Biden on the Digital Trail VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,641 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2020 Late Edition Today, cloudy, rain, chilly, high 46. Tonight, mostly cloudy, a few evening showers, low 40. Tomorrow, partly sunny, a milder afternoon, high 57. Weather map, Page A20. $3.00

Harsh Steps, Experts Say Halting Virus Will Require · Who Will Speak to the Young? Danai Gurira, who stars on The Walk-ing Dead, is walking, or maybe lurch-ing, away from the show

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Page 1: Harsh Steps, Experts Say Halting Virus Will Require · Who Will Speak to the Young? Danai Gurira, who stars on The Walk-ing Dead, is walking, or maybe lurch-ing, away from the show

C M Y K Nxxx,2020-03-23,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

U(D54G1D)y+=!%!=!$!"

With no N.C.A.A. tournaments to watchthis month, some of the best coachesreflect on great past games and high-lights worth seeking out online. PAGE D1

SPORTSMONDAY D1-6

College Basketball ReduxMillennials and Generation Z can wieldelectoral clout. But many feel moredisillusioned than empowered. PAGE A16

NATIONAL A16-17, 20

Who Will Speak to the Young?Danai Gurira, who stars on “The Walk-ing Dead,” is walking, or maybe lurch-ing, away from the show. PAGE C1

Leaving Zombies Behind

Celeste Ng, Ann Patchett, Min Jin Leeand other authors discuss the booksthat bring them comfort. PAGE C2

ARTS C1-8

Reading as a Refuge

Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A19

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19

PRESSURE Workers at UPS and FedEx feel they have no choice but to keep showing up, even with coronavirus-like symptoms. PAGE B1

Terrifying though the coro-navirus may be, it can be turnedback. China, South Korea, Singa-pore and Taiwan have demon-strated that, with furious efforts,the contagion can be brought toheel.

Whether they can keep it sup-pressed remains to be seen. Butfor the United States to repeattheir successes will take extraor-dinary levels of coordination andmoney from the country’s leaders,and extraordinary levels of trustand cooperation from citizens. Itwill also require internationalpartnerships in an interconnectedworld.

There is a chance to stop the co-ronavirus. This contagion has aweakness.

Although there are incidents oframpant spread, as happened onthe cruise ship Diamond Princess,the coronavirus more often infectsclusters of family members,friends and work colleagues, saidDr. David L. Heymann, who chairsan expert panel advising theWorld Health Organization onemergencies.

No one is certain why the virustravels in this way, but experts seean opening nonetheless. “You cancontain clusters,” Dr. Heymannsaid. “You need to identify andstop discrete outbreaks, and thendo rigorous contact tracing.”

But doing so takes intelligent,rapidly adaptive work by healthofficials, and near-total coopera-tion from the populace. Contain-ment becomes realistic only whenAmericans realize that workingtogether is the only way to protectthemselves and their loved ones.

In interviews with a dozen ofthe world’s leading experts onfighting epidemics, there waswide agreement on the steps thatmust be taken immediately.

Those experts included interna-tional public health officials whohave fought AIDS, malaria, tuber-culosis, flu and Ebola; scientistsand epidemiologists; and formerhealth officials who led majorAmerican global health programsin both Republican and Democrat-ic administrations.

Americans must be persuadedto stay home, they said, and a sys-tem put in place to isolate the in-fected and care for them outsidethe home. Travel restrictionsshould be extended, they said;productions of masks and ventila-tors must be accelerated, and test-ing problems must be resolved.

But tactics like forced isolation,school closings and pervasiveGPS tracking of patients broughtmore divided reactions.

Halting Virus Will RequireHarsh Steps, Experts Say

Near-Total Cooperation From Public Is Keyto Isolating Clusters of Infections

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The National Guard at a drive-through test site in New Jersey.

BRYAN ANSELM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A11

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Down onearth, the coronavirus outbreakwas felling lives, livelihoods andnormalcy. A nation-spanningblessing seemed called for. So upwent a priest in a small airplane,rumbling overhead at an epidemi-ologically safe distance from thetroubles below, wielding a sacredgolden vessel from a cockpit-turned-pulpit.

Before the Rev. Majdi Allawi’sboarded his flight over Lebanon, asoldier at an airport checkpointasked if he had a mask and handsanitizer.

“Jesus is my protection,” saidFather Allawi, who belongs to theMaronite Catholic Church. “He ismy sanitizer.”

Religion is the solace of first re-sort for billions of people grap-pling with a pandemic for whichscientists, presidents and the sec-ular world seem, so far, to havefew answers. With both sanitizerand leadership in short supply,

dread over the coronavirus hasdriven the globe’s faithful evencloser to religion and ritual.

But what is good for the soulmay not always be good for thebody.

Believers worldwide are run-ning afoul of public health authori-ties’ warnings that communalgatherings, crucial to so much re-ligious practice, must be limited tocombat the virus’s spread. Insome cases, religious fervor hasled people toward cures that haveno grounding in science; in oth-ers, it has drawn them to sacredplaces or rites that could increasethe risk of infection.

In Myanmar, a prominent Bud-dhist monk announced that a doseof one lime and three palm seeds— no more, no less — would conferimmunity. In Iran, a few pilgrimswere filmed licking Shiite Muslimshrines to ward off infection. Andin Texas, the preacher Kenneth

Seeking a Balm for the SoulBut Imperiling Earthly Health

By VIVIAN YEE

Workers disinfecting a mosque in Istanbul earlier this month. Coronavirus infections in Turkey have risen to nearly 1,000.CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES

Continued on Page A7

Three weeks after its first coro-navirus infection was discovered,the New York City region reachedan alarming milestone on Sun-day: It now accounts for roughly 5percent of the world’s confirmedcases, making it an epicenter ofthe global pandemic and increas-ing pressure on officials to takemore drastic measures.

Moving to stem the crisis onmultiple fronts, Gov. Andrew M.Cuomo of New York pleaded withfederal officials to nationalize themanufacturing of medical sup-plies and ordered New York Cityto crack down on people congre-gating in public. He suggestedsome streets could be closed, al-lowing pedestrians more space.

The governor on Sunday an-nounced measures intended toprepare for a wave of patients, in-cluding setting up temporary hos-pitals in three New York City sub-urbs and erecting a massive medi-cal bivouac in the Jacob Javits

Center on Manhattan’s West Side.Already, hospitals across the

New York region are reporting asurge of coronavirus patients anda looming shortage of critical sup-plies like ventilators and masks.

A rapid increase in testing hasrevealed the extent of the out-break: Community spread of thehighly contagious virus now ap-pears commonplace.

All told, more than 15,000 peo-ple in New York State have testedpositive, with the vast majority inthe New York City region. That isabout half of the cases in theUnited States. Worldwide, thepandemic has sickened more than314,700 people, according to offi-cial counts.

About one in eight patients inNew York State has been hospital-ized, and 114 people had died bySunday morning, state officialssaid, though the toll in New YorkCity rose rapidly during the

Officials Race to Stem OutbreakAs New York Becomes Epicenter

By JESSE McKINLEY

Continued on Page A6

WASHINGTON — With theeconomy faltering and the politi-cal landscape unsettled as thecoronavirus death toll climbs, astark and unavoidable question

now confronts Presi-dent Trump and hisadvisers: Can hesave his campaign

for re-election when so much issuddenly going so wrong?

After three years of Republi-cans’ championing signs of finan-cial prosperity that were to beMr. Trump’s chief re-electionargument, the president hasnever needed a new message tovoters as he does now, not tomention luck. At this point, thepresident has one clear optionfor how to proceed politically,and is hoping that an array offactors will break his way.

The option, which he has bra-zenly pushed in recent days, is tocast himself as a “wartime presi-dent” who looks in charge of anation under siege while hislikely Democratic opponent,former Vice President Joseph R.Biden Jr., is largely out of sighthunkered down in Delaware.

Trump ShiftsImage: LeaderFor ‘Wartime’

This article is by Annie Karni,Maggie Haberman and Reid J. Ep-stein.

NEWSANALYSIS

Continued on Page A17

Her name was Loretta, but theycalled her Lettie. She stood 4 feet10 inches. She was outrageouslyfriendly, the kind of person liableto invite the sales clerk at T-Mo-bile to join the family for dinner.This made her children cringe butwas also something they loved.Pure Lettie.

She was tough. At work, shecould stare down colleagues whowere hairy, blustery and tallerthan her by a foot or two. And itwas true of her husband, Roddy.He could not say no to her.

Roddy had not wanted to go ontheir February trip to the Phil-ippines. He was watching theearly news about the coronavirus,and worried it would put his wife,a cancer survivor, in danger. Butshe was adamant. There wassomething she needed to finish.

On March 11, Loretta Dionisiobecame a data point.

At the news conference whereher death the day before was an-nounced, the public health direc-tor in Los Angeles County did notname her, in accordance with fed-eral privacy regulations.

The public health director re-ferred only to a woman in her 60swith “underlying health condi-

tions” who was stopping briefly inCalifornia after travels in Asia,adding that “shortly after beinghospitalized, she unfortunatelypassed.” In the continuing tally offatalities associated with the coro-navirus, hers was the 37th deathin the United States, the first inLos Angeles County.

Nearly two weeks later, Ms.Dionisio’s family was still grap-pling with the bureaucracy thatsurrounds infectious disease. Shedied far from her home in Orlando,Fla., during a layover 2,500 milesaway. Her son and daughter, onthe East Coast, have been unableto see their father, who is in quar-antine in California after givingtheir mother cardiopulmonary re-suscitation. For days after herdeath, he barely spoke.

And in the painful logistics ofhygiene and quarantine, no fu-neral Mass has been said for her.

“Through this whole ordeal, wedidn’t want her to get lost in thestory,” said her son, RembertDionisio.

Janice Jenkins, a close friend ofMs. Dionisio’s, said that the daysafter her death had felt strangeand disjointed, without the cere-

Within the Bleakest Statistics,A Life That Was So Much More

By ELLEN BARRY

Continued on Page A9Loretta Dionisio with her husband, Roddy, in a photograph from2005. She died on March 10 after a trip to the Philippines.

DEFIANT Many have ignored the urgent calls for social distancing. Howmuch they are worsening the crisis may never be known. PAGE A5

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK

OLYMPICS Faced with growing pressure to postpone the Tokyo Games,Olympic officials promised a decision within four weeks. PAGE D1

INFECTION CLUE Doctor groups are recommending testing and isola-tion for people who lose their ability to smell and taste. PAGE A4

In northwestern Syria, children forcedfrom their homes cannot remember anormal life. Volunteer teachers aretrying to give them one, despite a lackof desks, chairs and books. PAGE A14

INTERNATIONAL A14-15

When School Is in a Tent

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul is workingto broker peace between the men whohave claimed the presidency. PAGE A15

Afghan Presidential Politics

Opponents of Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu asked the Supreme Court toblock what they called a power grab bythe caretaker government. PAGE A15

Israeli Political Clash Intensifies

Betty Williams shared the 1976 prize forstarting a protest movement that de-manded the end of sectarian violence inNorthern Ireland during the timeknown as the Troubles. She was 76.

OBITUARIES D8

Winner of Nobel Peace Prize

The most common questions can some-times stump people, but a little prepara-tion can quell anxiety and make a can-didate stand out. PAGE B7

BUSINESS B1-8

Decoding Job Interviews

WASHINGTON — SenateDemocrats on Sunday blocked ac-tion on an emerging deal to propup an economy devastated by thecoronavirus pandemic, paralyz-ing the progress of a nearly $2 tril-lion government rescue packagethey said failed to adequately pro-tect workers or impose strictenough restrictions on bailed-outbusinesses.

The party-line vote was a stun-ning setback after three days offast-paced negotiations betweensenators and administration offi-cials to reach a bipartisan compro-mise on legislation that is ex-pected to be the largest economicstimulus package in Americanhistory — now expected to cost$1.8 trillion or more. In a 47-to-47vote, the Senate fell short of the 60votes that needed to advance themeasure, even as talks continuedbehind the scenes between Demo-crats and the White House to sal-vage a compromise.

The failure to move forwardshook financial markets andthreatened an ambitious timelineset by the Trump administrationand leading Republicans to move

Partisan DivideThreatens Deal

On Rescue BillThis article is by Emily Cochrane,

Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smi-alek.

Continued on Page A8

The Democratic front-runner faces thechallenge of staying visible as the racemoves into the virtual realm. PAGE A17

Biden on the Digital Trail

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,641 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2020

Late EditionToday, cloudy, rain, chilly, high 46.Tonight, mostly cloudy, a fewevening showers, low 40. Tomorrow,partly sunny, a milder afternoon,high 57. Weather map, Page A20.

$3.00