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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.

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