March 17, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET By It was their big debut. Then the pandemic hit. Noah Diaz’s play, “Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally,” was set to begin performances April 3, when it was canceled. Credit... Monica Jorge for The New York Times The mood was muted late Saturday afternoon at Ulterior Gallery, a narrow storefront space on the Lower East Side. It was meant to be the opening of Mamie Tinkler’s first solo show in New York, a joyous occasion that was canceled Friday morning. Most of New York’s culture system — and indeed the country’s — shut down all at once last week because of the coronavirus pandemic. For young and emerging artists whose openings were scheduled this week, some of which represented large scale debuts in their field, the personal disruption can feel profound. “I went from having the greatest accomplishment of my life to everything I have planned is gone,” said Katie Orphan, a Los Angeles author.

March 17, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET By Musicians are streaming free concerts for their fans at home. John Legend’s live performance streamed on Instagram earlier today. His wife, the model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, provided occasional commentary from atop the piano. To keep their fans at home entertained — and, crucially, indoors — some musicians are turning their homes into virtual concert halls. Chris Martin, the lead singer of the band Coldplay, hosted a live stream on Monday in which he played songs and answered fans’ questions. “I feel like the right thing to be doing is to be staying quiet, staying at home and not buying too much toilet paper maybe,” Mr. Martin said on Instagram Live, before singing the Coldplay hit “A Sky Full of Stars.” On Tuesday, John Legend followed suit, streaming an at-home concert on Instagram while seated at his piano in a bathrobe with his collection of Grammys on display in the background. John Legend encouraged his viewers to practice social distancing and stay home if they could, and to donate to food banks. (Both of the singers’ performances were part of a campaign by the World Health Organization and Global Citizen.) Their virtual concerts followed a week of many canceled and postponed tour dates and music festivals. Chrissy Teigen, a model and TV personality who is also John Legend’s wife, situated herself atop the piano and provided occasional commentary while her husband serenaded his Instagram followers. Celebrities including Shonda Rhimes, Yvette Noel-Schure (Beyoncé’s publicist, who has also worked with John Legend) and Katie Couric expressed their enthusiasm in the comments. Singing his song “Stay With You,” he changed the track’s closing lines to fit the mood: “Til the coronavirus declines, I’ll stay home with you.” A couple hours before hosting his first live stream performance on Tuesday, Ben Gibbard, the frontman of Death Cab for Cutie, said he was feeling “nervous and excited as if it was a real show.” Mr. Gibbard plans to host daily live performances from his home studio in Seattle for at least the next two weeks, he said in a phone interview. “This is the kind of things teenagers are doing all the time, so for me at 43, it’s the first time I’ve got a webcam up and guitar in my hand,” he said. “I feel in a couple hours I’ll be catching up with the rest of the YouTube world.” Read more

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March 17, 2020, 8:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 8:00 p.m. ET By New York bars and restaurants are delivering cocktails. A Benton’s old-fashioned at PDT, in Manhattan. Credit... Evan Sung for The New York Times On Monday, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut limited all restaurants and bars to takeout and delivery as part of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The New York State Liquor Authority threw some of those businesses a small lifeline in the form of “new off-premises privileges.” Translation: drinks to go. This allowance requires drinks to be ordered with a purchase of food. According to Bill Crowley, a spokesman for the Liquor Authority, a bag of chips as part of the order would satisfy the mandate. New York City bars that are already offering takeout cocktails, or plan to soon, include: PDT, Attaboy, Middle Branch and the NoMad in Manhattan; and Grand Army, Hunky Dory, Leyenda in Brooklyn. Most bars are working with food-delivery services like Caviar, but many cocktails can be ordered by phone or email for pickup. Jeff Bell, an owner of PDT, was one of the first. He began selling to-go drinks on Monday, including bar favorites like a mezcal mule and the Benton’s old-fashioned in sizes from individual, one-drink flasks ($12) to growlers that contain up to 12 drinks ($120). Each order comes with tater tots. Hunky Dory began its takeout service with Irish coffees, and will offer its most popular cocktail, a mezcal-turmeric drink called a smoky mountain songbird. Attaboy’s penicillin, a twist on a whiskey sour, will be available. Most bars will mix classic drinks like martinis and Negronis, all-spirit cocktails that have a long shelf life, but there is an opportunity to use perishable goods that would otherwise go to waste. Cocktail deliveries offer financial help for scrambling businesses and employees as customers practice social distancing. “This is a wonderful opportunity for us to get people hours and keep them employed,” said Nathan McCarley-O’Neill, the bar director at the NoMad. Some owners, however, hold no illusions that the allowance represents anything more than a stopgap. “We don’t think we’ll be allowed to do this very long,” said Sam Ross, an owner of Attaboy. “The impression we all get is this is just a Band-Aid on the wound right now. We feel a full shutdown is coming.” Read more

March 17, 2020, 7:45 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 7:45 p.m. ET By A major golf tournament is postponed. Spectators watching the final round of the P.G.A. Championship last May. This year’s event in San Francisco was postponed. Credit... Ben Solomon for The New York Times The P.G.A. Championship, one of golf’s four annual major tournaments that was scheduled to start on May 11 in San Francisco, was postponed late Tuesday. The tournament sponsor, the P.G.A. of America, said it hoped to hold the event, which dates to the early 1900s, this summer. The P.G.A. Championship became the second golf major this year to be affected by the spread of the novel coronavirus, joining the Masters Tournament, which was postponed last week. The Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters, also said it was hopeful the event would be held later this year. The remaining golf majors on the schedule are the United States Open in mid-June and the British Open in mid-July. The United States Golf Association, which conducts the United States Open, said in a statement Tuesday that it would “continue to hold the dates” for its tournament scheduled for June 18 to 21 at the Winged Foot Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y., as it monitors the recommendations of government authorities. The U.S.G.A. said it would do the same for this year’s United States Women’s Open, scheduled for June 4 to 7 in Texas. Last week, the L.P.G.A. postponed its first major of the season, the ANA Inspiration, which was to be held in Southern California from April 2 to 5. The L.P.G.A. has also canceled several other events. On Tuesday, the PGA Tour canceled four more events through May 10 — the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C., the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte and AT&T Byron Nelson in Dallas. The tour had already last week canceled its signature event, the Players Championship, as well as three other upcoming tournaments. The P.G.A. Championship was first contested in 1916 and has been held every year continuously since 1919, except for 1943 when the event was not played because of World War II. Read more

March 17, 2020, 7:30 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 7:30 p.m. ET By Yes, it’s OK to take a walk. Fresh air? A lone New Yorker waits to cross an uncrowded street. Credit... Elizabeth Bick for The New York Times In a bygone era — last week, in other words — the best way to cut through New York City stress was, for many, a stroll to the nearest restaurant, bar or maybe (for the virtuous or vain) the gym. Not anymore. With Mayor Bill de Blasio’s closure of the city’s restaurants (except for takeout and delivery), bars and gyms, which took effect today at 9 a.m., along with schools, movie theaters and any other place where people congregate, the stroll, it seems, is all that’s left. On Monday, seven counties around Silicon Valley announced a shelter-at-home order that would take effect on Tuesday. San Francisco’s mayor, London N. Breed, issued an order for city residents to stay at home except for “essential needs,” like medicine or food, but made an exemption for “engaging in outdoor activity, such as walking, hiking, or running provided that you maintain at least six feet of social distancing.” In New York, too, the mayor is weighing a shelter-in-place order, and it is uncertain how much exercise might be allowed under the plan. For now, however, New Yorkers are still relying on walks through the city as a form of mental cleansing. Authors like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and Alfred Kazin have long celebrated walks in New York as a tonic against despair or anxiety, said Stephen Miller, the author of the 2014 book, “Walking New York: Reflections of American Writers From Walt Whitman to Teju Cole.” In the current state of anxiety, even short walks make a giant difference. People looking to get out of the house for a jaunt should at least take extra steps to maintain their personal space cushion, said Carolyn C. Cannuscio, a social epidemiologist at the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. “We’re trying to avoid face-to-face contact with other people, so all of our decisions should be made with that in mind,” Ms. Cannuscio said. “I would suggest that people walk at times that streets are less busy, walk in locations where there are fewer people and there’s an opportunity to spread out, and don’t stop and talk with all your neighbors.” Before each stroll, she said, “scout it out. Peek out the window and see if there are lots of people on the street. If there are, then wait until later. For people who need to pick up their medication at the pharmacy, or need to get food, if you get to the store and it’s crowded, turn around and go home, then go back later.” Read more

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March 17, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET By Cardi B riffs on the coronavirus and an anthem is born. Cardi B admitted she’s scared of the coronavirus in a video posted to her Instagram last week. It got remixed into a hit song. Last Wednesday, Cardi B posted a short video letting her 60 million Instagram followers know how she felt about the Covid-19 outbreak. “Let me tell y’all something … I’m a little scared.” Clad in a transparent chain-link dress, she questioned the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic before letting out an ominous but oddly musical cry: “Coronavirus! Coronavirus!” I’m telling you, she said, using an expletive, stuff is getting real. Days later, a Brooklyn D.J. and producer who goes by DJ iMarkkeyz saw his fans tagging him in the video’s comments with a familiar request: “you know what to do.” (iMarkkeyz is known for “remixing” memes and viral clips.) And thus the uber-timely “Coronavirus Remix” was born. Seemingly overnight, it has gone vir — well, you know. Both artists said proceeds from the remix will be donated.

March 17, 2020, 6:30 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 6:30 p.m. ET By Trevor Noah and other stars remind young people: We’re ‘alone together.’ Amid a coordinated blitz of public service announcements about the coronavirus pandemic today from the White House, health officials and others, one set of messages focused on a demographic that has sometimes struggled to take the outbreak seriously: young people. We’re still part of a community even when we’re by ourselves. Stay home and stay positive. We're #AloneTogether pic.twitter.com/eBRBPBqIJw — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 16, 2020 Spearheaded by MTV and other ViacomCBS companies, the #AloneTogether campaign was conceived on Saturday as executives began to notice “pictures of kids on Bourbon Street, being let out of colleges, going to bars” and concluded that “there’s a crisis in terms of young people understanding their role in this,” said Jacqueline Parkes, the chief marketing officer for ViacomCBS entertainment & youth brands. A text chain with 10 people quickly expanded. ViacomCBS employees, who had been required to work from home since Thursday, used their laptops and phones to drum up TikTok and Instagram-ready designs for the campaign within six hours. The conceit was simple — bright colors and clean Helvetica font imploring young people to help slow the spread of the virus by staying home — but “the production quality is not nearly as important as the message right now,” Ms. Parkes said. Working with the nonprofit P.S.A. group Ad Council, ViacomCBS began pushing out the message on its channels and also on social media, where it was shared by Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show,” Catelynn Baltierra of “Teen Mom” and the accounts for “Jersey Shore,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Broad City.” Read more

March 17, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET By Adeel Hassan and Resort islands in the U.S. are barring outsiders. The North Haven Select Board in North Haven, Maine, voted to ban visitors and seasonal residents immediately to prevent the spread of the coronavirus to the island. Credit... Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Two famous island resorts in the Eastern United States are trying to seal themselves off by barring all visitors, taking the extraordinary measures in an effort to prevent the coronavirus from coming ashore. In Maine, community leaders on North Haven, 12 miles off the coast, voted this week to bar all outsiders. The island is known as the summer retreat for blue-blooded American dynasties including the Cabots, the Bushes, the Welds and the current governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont. It was a highly unusual step for the 375 year-round residents to take, considering their economic dependence on the wealthy summer traffic, but residents noted that the island has extremely limited medical facilities. And in North Carolina, officials in Dare County, which includes much of the Outer Banks, announced on Tuesday that they would be establishing checkpoints to the county and would turn away visitors. With its hundreds of miles of Atlantic beaches, the Outer Banks draw millions of tourists every year, breaking records summer after summer. “While there are currently no individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County, officials weighed the potential benefits for community health along with the tremendous impacts these restrictions have on our community,” the county said in a statement. Seventeen cases of the coronavirus have been reported in Maine, with none in North Haven. But residents expressed worry at an annual town meeting that seasonal residents and travelers could carry the virus to the island, which has a single clinic that is not licensed or operated as an emergency medical facility and a lone nurse practitioner. The barrier of water has often been considered insurance to stave off a disease, though some observers have expressed skepticism at the ability of islands to stop a rampantly spreading virus. Any seal is bound to be imperfect, they argue, and these measures are likely to only delay the inevitable. Read more

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March 17, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET By M.L.B. teams commit $30 million to support ballpark employees. The spring training complex for the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros was closed to the public on Tuesday. Credit... Julio Cortez/Associated Press Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday that each of its 30 teams would contribute $1 million to help ballpark employees affected by the delayed start of the season. Baseball has postponed opening day indefinitely in response to the coronavirus pandemic. “I am proud that our clubs came together so quickly and uniformly to support these individuals who provide so much to the game we love,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. Manfred raised the issue of pay for ballpark employees during a conference call with club owners on Monday, seeking a uniform, league-wide gesture by the teams beyond their individual plans. The issue is somewhat complicated because some game-day employees report to individual teams, and others to outside companies the teams hire. In a statement, Manfred said that the timing of teams’ specific plans would vary “to coordinate with state and local laws as well as collective bargaining obligations in an effort to maximize the benefits realized by each group of employees.” The league is still working with the players’ union on adjustments to service time, bonuses and other player-compensation issues. Once those issues are resolved, M.L.B. plans to work out details on payment for minor leaguers, who are not part of the union, during the shutdown. After pledging a combined $30 million to one displaced segment of the industry, it stands to reason that the league will make a good-faith effort to help minor leaguers, who are almost always notoriously underpaid. Read more

March 17, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET By Breastfeeding during conference calls: Parents work from home any way they can. Jaime Fitch working from home with her 10-month-old daughter, Elowen, strapped to her chest. Parents in Seattle found themselves suddenly without child care last week after schools closed because of the coronavirus. Credit... via Jamie Fitch First the schools closed. Then Jaime Fitch, 40, a manager at the University of Washington School of Medicine, woke up on Monday to learn that her children’s caretaker had some symptoms of Covid-19, but not enough to get tested. Running out of child-care options, Fitch and her husband did what a lot of parents are doing during the school closures: multitask, play jiu-jitsu with their schedules and hope for the best. “It is a nightmare out here,” Fitch said. “I’m losing sleep, and I’m dreaming about this.” During conference calls, Fitch breastfeeds her 10-month-old daughter, angling the camera upward or turning it off. Her daughter takes naps on her chest in a carrier while Fitch responds to emails and attends online meetings. Her 4-year-old son watches videos and plays games online. A whiteboard in the kitchen that used to feature recipes now lists the daily meetings she and her husband must attend. Fitch said the child care centers her children attend were closed, just like the public schools, but she and her husband were still responsible for paying $1,800 a month to keep their youngest enrolled in day care. They’re now awaiting word about their 4-year-old’s $1,500 preschool tuition. Read more

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March 17, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET By People who’ve long planned for disasters urge Americans to take a more measured approach. Some of the items that Anna Maria Bounds, a professor and urban sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York, finds important to have in a safety kit: Masks, hand wipes, gloves, a headlamp, sanitizer, a medical kit, and maps. Credit... Miranda Barnes for The New York Times For weeks, millions of people have faced a new, dread-inducing question: How do you prepare a home to get through a pandemic? But the question is not so new to preppers, a loosely knit, occasionally mocked group so nicknamed because its members prepare, often intensely, for all kinds of calamities. From California to Texas to New Jersey, preppers who have been planning for years, if not decades, are urging other Americans to take a more methodical approach to their preparations. Jason Charles, the leader of the New York City Preppers Network, posts regularly about basic precautions on social media, and the group met this month to discuss the outbreak. “I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t be nervous; this is not the time to panic,’” he said in an interview. “This is why we get ready. This is our wheelhouse.” Preppers also say that the panic buying around the country that has drawn headlines in recent days has very little in common with what they do. “I call this the nonsensical hoarding phase,” said Ben Hansen, the chief of media for PrepperCon, a semiregular assembly outside Salt Lake City. “It’s when people say, ‘We’ve got a hurricane coming and the power might be out,’ so they start stocking up the essentials.” Others are less diplomatic. On Reddit’s forum for preppers, one prepper expressed disbelief about non-preppers: “How has it not dawned on them yet that we need to spend the good times preparing for the bad times? I’m starting to understand how Noah felt while he was building the ark.” Several preppers said they were concerned less about the virus than disruption to social services, and the confusion caused by mixed messages from the government. Anna Maria Bounds, a professor of sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, said that crises like the 2008 financial crisis and hurricanes brought many preppers into prepping. “The stereotype of preppers is that they’re paranoid and think that the government is coming for them,” she said. “Whereas people in the city, preppers of color, prepare because they think that government isn’t coming for them.” Ms. Bounds said that preppers were largely split into two very different groups: the super rich, who can afford panic rooms and hideaways, and middle-class people who work day jobs as firefighters, real estate agents and everything else. “In a sense of the word, we’re all preppers,” Mr. Hansen said. “If you carry a spare tire in your car, you’re a prepper. If you have a first aid kit, you’re a prepper.” Read more

March 17, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET By Can city life survive coronavirus? Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan was sparsely populated on Monday. Credit... John Taggart for The New York Times Traditionally, we seek solace in religion, sports, entertainment and in the promise that modern science and societies provide all the tools needed to solve any problem. But the coronavirus undermines our most basic ideas about community and, in particular, urban life. Historians tell us that cities emerged thousands of years ago for economic and industrial reasons — technological leaps produced a surplus of agricultural goods, which meant not everyone had to keep working the land. Still, cities also grew, less tangibly, out of deeply human social and spiritual needs. The very notion of streets, shared housing and public spaces stemmed from and fostered a kind of collective affirmation, a sense that people are all in this together. Pandemics prey on this relentlessly. They are anti-urban. They exploit our impulse to congregate. And our response so far — social distancing — not only runs up against our fundamental desires to interact, but also against the way we have built our cities and plazas, subways and skyscrapers. They are all designed to be occupied and animated collectively. For many urban systems to work properly, density is the goal, not the enemy. Of course, we now have teleconferencing and an abundance of social media and other forms of remote, digital interaction. We had already drifted toward a kind of social distancing by living increasingly on our phones and in virtual communities, bingeing on Netflix. Image Times Square lacked its usual bustle on Monday. Ezra Klein of Vox raised the prospect of a “social recession” in which social distancing is a particular burden to people most vulnerable to isolation. Credit... John Taggart for The New York Times Even so, we still need one other, not just virtually. Ezra Klein in Vox raised the prospect of social distancing causing a “social recession,” a kind of “collapse in social contact that is particularly hard,” he wrote, “on the populations most vulnerable to isolation and loneliness — older adults and people with disabilities or pre-existing health conditions.” There is evidence for this. Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University, wrote a book about a heat wave in Chicago in 1995, during which 739 people died. That event proved lethal among older Chicagoans living in poor, segregated neighborhoods that afforded residents little social contact. But older Chicagoans living in similarly poor, crime-ridden communities who had access to what Mr. Klinenberg calls a robust “social infrastructure” — a network of “sidewalks, stores, public facilities and community organizations that bring people into contact with friends and neighbors” — died at a markedly lower rate. Now those very forms of social interaction put people at greater risk. After a large exodus to the suburbs in the 20th century, people have been moving back into cities even as technology has created myriad new ways of connecting remotely. Cities have become epicenters of new capital and creativity, because proximity breeds serendipity and strength, from which new ideas and opportunities arise. Economists have talked about this urban migration in terms of dollars and cents. But the human value of shared space is ultimately incalculable. After 9/11, I visited the Islamic galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, where crowds had gathered. I asked some people there what brought them to the museum. They said they wanted to remind themselves of life and beauty and tolerance, and to seek strength in one another. Read more

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March 17, 2020, 3:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 3:00 p.m. ET By A small town adjusts to life with the coronavirus. An open storefront in Cynthiana, Ky., on March 13. Credit... Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times The call that upended Cynthiana, Ky., came around 5 p.m. on March 6, from the operations center that had been set up so state health officials could monitor the coronavirus. They had been bracing for the inevitable, and it had just arrived. A 27-year-old cake maker had tested positive for the novel coronavirus that has swept across America at a ferocious, frightening speed. Dozens of miles from any metropolitan center, Cynthiana’s roughly 6,300 residents had not expected the virus to arrive so quickly. In the following days, the town would emerge as the center of the state’s outbreak, as five others were diagnosed, at one point accounting for about half of the cases in Kentucky. This was a different kind of threat, insidious, invisible and boundless, with no one knowing how it arrived in Cynthiana, how long it would last or how far it would spread. In a conference room in the public health office, which has been converted into a command center, a team of employees have abandoned their day jobs to become investigators, picking through the lives of the people who became ill. They began with the first patient, who works at the Walmart Supercenter bakery and attends a small church. From there, they unraveled a tangle of daily routines and trivial interactions. They followed the threads that stitch together the connections of a small town, looking for anyone who spent more than a half-hour within six feet of the patients. It added up quickly. “You can imagine the web that weaves in a small community,” said Dr. Miller, the local public health director, noting that a week after the first diagnosis, about 150 people had isolated themselves, calling in daily to report their body temperature and condition. Read more

March 17, 2020, 2:30 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 2:30 p.m. ET By How New York buildings are trying to cope with packed apartments. Some co-op and condo buildings want to stop facade work so that people working from home can have more privacy and less noise. Credit... Mark Wickens for The New York Times The fight to contain coronavirus is hitting home for hundreds of thousands of co-op and condo residents in New York City, who awoke Monday to buildings packed with agitated workers and restless children. Now the boards in charge of keeping the peace are grappling with the best ways to move forward. “Everybody is cooped up at home, which means you’re going to hear the pitter-patter of feet,” said Steven Sladkus, a partner at Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas LLP. And guitarists strumming chords. And bankers yelling on conference calls. And contractors hammering down the hall. “It’s going to make people go crazy,” he said. Some co-op boards are already exploring whether they can restrict nonessential renovations in their buildings, he said, or postpone facade inspections mandated by the Department of Buildings — which can lead to strangers lurking outside your apartment’s windows. “It’s a gray area, and projects are going to have to be treated on a case-by-case basis,” said Rachael G. Ratner, a lawyer with the same firm. Co-op and condo boards have the authority to enforce rules to protect residents’ health, but must do so within the framework of rapidly changing government directives. A larger concern for the buildings would be a sudden shortage of building staff in the coming weeks, as more employees are forced to take time off because of illness or to care for family members, said Francois Perret, the board president of a 39-unit co-op on the Upper East Side. “We are not necessarily equipped for crisis management,” Mr. Perret said, adding that his building has a number of older residents and families with young children. He said he has a list of five resident volunteers, who could take on duties like sanitizing the common areas and taking out the trash in such an event. Mary Ann Rothman, the executive director of the Council of New York Cooperatives & Condominiums, one of the largest advocacy groups for the boards, said plans are still in flux. To prepare for the worst, some boards are reviewing the contingency plans that they would use in the case of a building workers strike, she said. Those plans often have involved enlisting residents to volunteer for certain duties. The guidelines are changing for day-to-day decisions, too, like whether to enforce virtual-only interviews with potential buyers, or whether to close the gym or children’s playrooms for fear of contamination. Ms. Rothman’s group has received a number of new guidelines, from management companies to the service employees’ union, 32BJ SEIU, and have shared their own evolving guidance to its members. “Attempt to keep the names of suspected infected individuals confidential from other residents,” begins one instruction on the group’s website. But “inform all building staff that may come into contact with that individual.” Her latest message to the membership: Their upcoming annual meeting in April, where they discuss policy and set the next year’s agenda, has been postponed until September. Read more

March 17, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET By Karen Weise and Health care workers fear bringing the virus home. Tricia Coutu, a nurse at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Fla., removed protective equipment after seeing a patient who is in isolation. Credit... Eve Edelheit for The New York Times As the novel coronavirus expands around the country, doctors and nurses working in emergency rooms are suddenly wary of everyone walking in the door with a cough, forced to make quick, harrowing decisions to help save not only their patients’ lives, but their own. “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers,” said Dr. Stephen Anderson, a 35-year veteran of emergency rooms in a suburb south of Seattle. “I am sort of a pariah in my family. I am dipping myself into the swamp every day.” The stress only grew on Sunday, when the American College of Emergency Physicians revealed that two emergency medicine doctors, in New Jersey and Washington State, were hospitalized in critical condition as a result of the coronavirus. Though the virus is spreading in the community and there was no way of ascertaining whether they were exposed at work or somewhere else, the two cases prompted urgent new questions among doctors about how many precautions are enough. “Now that we see front-line providers that are on ventilators, it is really driving it home,” Dr. Anderson said. Doctors, nurses and other staff members in a variety of hospital departments face new uncertainty. In intensive care units, for example, health care providers must have extended exposure to people who have contracted the virus. But they know in advance of the risk they face. In emergency departments, the danger comes from the unknown. Patients arrive with symptoms but no diagnosis, and staff members must sometimes tend to urgent needs, such as gaping wounds, before they have time to screen a patient for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. At times, the protocols they must follow are changing every few hours. And health care workers must still care for those with other ailments. Daniela J. Lamas, a critical care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, recounted preparing to check on a patient in isolation while being ruled out for coronavirus then quickly having to instead treat a cancer patient whose tumor had started bleeding: Only when I had left his room and was midway through gowning up in my isolation gear once again, did I realize that for those few minutes, there at my patient’s bedside, I had not once thought about coronavirus. Not about isolation protocols or the rapidity of testing or how we propose to discharge patients who test positive. These are all questions that need to be answered. But for those few minutes, my mind cleared, and I thought only about the patient in front of me. Even as public life grinds to a halt, here in one of the intensive care units that will become ground zero for coronavirus infections, the everyday tragedies continue. Our patients have cancer. Heart disease. Transplants. Their bodies fail them. And now, they have to face a new set of realities — doctors in masks, limited hospital visitors, fear and isolation. They need us now, more than ever. As a doctor in what feels like an eerie calm before an unimaginable storm, I must find some way to balance it all. So when I think about Covid-19, as I prepare to be part of decisions about triage and how to allocate our resources, to change the patterns of my own life, I will remember this. My hand on my patient’s shoulder, his eyes locked on mine, those little balloons bouncing in the corner of his room. Next time, no matter what else is going on in our unit, I will try to notice them. Vanessa Swales contributed reporting from New York. Read more

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March 17, 2020, 1:45 p.m. ET March 17, 2020, 1:45 p.m. ET By Cooking From Your Pantry: Baked Oats Edition Credit... Melissa Clark One big benefit to working from home is the ability to make yourself a good, hearty breakfast, instead of grabbing a bagel and banana on your way to the desk. For something simple and filling, baked steel-cut oatmeal is the recipe I’d go to, enriched with almond butter and cinnamon. If you’ve never done it, the beauty of baking oats instead of simmering them is twofold. First, I get to leave the oven on for an hour or so, which I find incredibly comforting when it’s still chilly out. It means I can bring my laptop into the kitchen and sit next to the heat. Second, I don’t have to do much in the way of stirring or tending it. The oats just cook themselves while I type away nearby. To make enough of it for three or four, heat your oven to 350 degrees, and bring a kettle of water to a boil. In a shallow casserole or baking dish, combine 3 cups boiling water and 1 cup steel-cut or cracked oats. Stir in ¼ cup peanut butter (or almond butter) until smooth-ish. (Don’t worry about a few lumps.) Season the mix with a big pinch of salt, and some cinnamon or nutmeg if you like. Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour, stirring halfway through. Taste, and if the oats aren’t cooked enough, let it bake a few minutes longer. I like this splashed with cream and drizzled with maple syrup (or brown sugar is great, too). But it’s good on its own, or maybe with sliced bananas. And it will keep you going all day long. In this series, Melissa Clark will teach you how to cook with pantry staples. Check back Wednesday for another installment.



Monday: Dried beans. Read more