March 25, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET By Peace Corps volunteers return home after abrupt goodbyes. Peace Corps volunteers working in Fatick, Senegal, last fall. “We didn’t have time to mentally prepare for leaving,” said one volunteer who was in the country. Credit... Paula Ospina For the first time in its nearly 60-year history, the Peace Corps has temporarily suspended its operations, evacuating more than 7,000 volunteers from posts in more than 60 countries because of the coronavirus pandemic. An independent agency of the U.S. government created by President Kennedy in 1961, the corps sends volunteers abroad to help with social and economic development projects. They dig wells, teach in schools and train people in everything from sewing to healthy breastfeeding. It was a crushing blow for a group of idealistic Americans, mostly young people who had postponed careers and graduate school to promote the lofty goal of “world peace and friendship.” Their average age is 26, although some are retirees older than 50. The hardest part, some said, was fleeing before they could help their communities prepare for the pandemic. In interviews, a handful of volunteers described shock, confusion and heartbreak as they arrived back home in the United States, jobless in the middle of growing outbreak and economic shutdown. All were asked to quarantine themselves. “The situation in Morocco went so fast,” said Elizabeth Burke, 54, who had been in the country for less than a year, teaching English and working at a sewing cooperative. “It went from Moroccans not being aware of the coronavirus and what was going on to a complete shutdown. Hours after we left, all cafes and restaurants had closed.” The cooperative is now sewing masks for health care workers, she said. Hailey Hall, 26, had spent nearly two years in Zambia. “None of us saw it ending this way,” she said. “It was a shock. Everything happened so quickly, but I think people understood why this had to happen.” With more than 400 volunteers and trainees, Zambia had the largest number of Peace Corps volunteers, she said. “I had a friend in a northwestern province, which is a two- to three-day journey by public taxi and bus,” Ms. Hall said. “The worst part was the way people had to say goodbye so quickly. It was heartbreaking.” After nearly two years in the Philippines, Ashley Vetter, 26, gave away a lot of her belongings, found a new home for her dog and said goodbye to the teachers she had worked with — all within 24 hours — before hopping on a 13-hour bus ride to get to Manila on time. “I couldn’t really wrap my mind around the fact that I was leaving for good,” Ms. Vetter said. She had to leave in the middle of a big project: Her high school students were building wells to provide fresh water for their community, essential for hand washing and other good hygiene to fight Covid-19 and other diseases. After she arrived home in the United States, the teenagers sent her photos: They had finished the wells. Read more

March 25, 2020, 8:45 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 8:45 p.m. ET By Robin Stein and Inside a battle-worn New York hospital, ‘people are dying.’ Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 5:33 - 0:00 transcript ‘People Are Dying’: 72 Hours Inside a N.Y.C. Hospital Battling Coronavirus An emergency room doctor in Elmhurst, Queens, gives a rare look inside a hospital at the center of the coronavirus pandemic. “We don’t have the tools that we need.” [Machine beeping] “The frustrating thing about all of this is it really just feels like it’s too little, too late. Like we knew — we knew it was coming. Today is kind of getting worse and worse. We had to get a refrigerated truck to store the bodies of patients who are dying. We are, right now, scrambling to try to get a few additional ventilators or even CPAP machines. If we could get CPAP machines, we could free up ventilators for patients who need them. You know, we now have these five vents. We probably — unless people die, I suspect we’ll be back to needing to beg for ventilators again in another day or two. There’s a mythical 100 vents out there which we haven’t seen. Leaders in various offices, from the president to the head of Health and Hospitals, saying things like, ‘We’re going to be fine. Everything’s fine.’ And from our perspective, everything is not fine. I don’t have the support that I need, and even just the materials that I need, physically, to take care of my patients. And it’s America, and we’re supposed to be a first-world country. On a regular day, my emergency department’s volume is pretty high. It’s about 200 people a day. Now we’re seeing 400 or more people a day. At first, we were trying to isolate patients with cough and fever and be more careful around them, but we weren’t necessarily being extra careful around all the other patients. And then we started to realize that patients who were coming in with no fever but abdominal pain actually had findings on their X-rays and chest CTs that were consistent with this coronavirus, Covid-19. So someone in a car accident gets brought in and we get a CT scan of them, and their lungs look like they have coronavirus. We were seeing a lot of patients who probably had Covid, but we didn’t realize. Ten residents and also many, many of our nurses and a few of the attending physicians got sick. The anxiety of this situation is really overwhelming. All of the doctors, it’s hard for us to get tested even if we want to, even if we have symptoms. We’re exposed over and over again. We don’t have the protective equipment that we should have. I put on one N95 mask in the morning. I need to have that N95 mask on for every patient I see. I don’t take it off all day. The N95 mask I wore today is also the N95 mask I wore on Friday. We’re always worried that we’ll be out of N95 masks. What’s a little bit scary now is the patients that we’re getting are much sicker. Many of the young people who are getting sick don’t smoke, they’re healthy, they have no co-morbidities. They’re just young, regular people between the ages of 30 and 50 who you would not expect to get this sick. So many people are saying it’s going to be OK, everything’s fine, we have what we need. And if this goes on for a month or two or three or five like it did in China, and we’re already this strained, we don’t have what we need. I don’t really care if I get in trouble for speaking to the media. I want people to know that this is bad. People are dying. We don’t have the tools that we need in the emergency department and in the hospital to take care of them, and — and it’s really hard.” An emergency room doctor in Elmhurst, Queens, gives a rare look inside a hospital at the center of the coronavirus pandemic. “We don’t have the tools that we need.” Credit Credit... Colleen Smith Dr. Colleen Smith gave us a rare insider’s view of an overstretched E.R. in New York City, the epicenter of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

March 25, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET By The victory gardens of wartime re-emerge. During World War II, some 20 million victory gardens were planted in the United States. Credit... Bettman/Getty Images The victory garden movement began during World War I and called on Americans to grow food in whatever spaces they could — rooftops, fire escapes, empty lots, backyards. It maintained that there was nothing more valuable than self-sufficiency, than working a little land, no matter how small, and harvesting your own eggplant and tomatoes. That idea resonates as trips to the grocery store become fraught with fears of coronavirus exposure, and shoppers worry that industrial agriculture could fail them during a global pandemic. When victory gardens came back to prominence during World War II, newspapers and magazines gleefully documented national gardening initiatives, with Life Magazine publishing full-page images of “pretty girls in becoming shorts” digging the ground in 1943. It looked like a stunt, but so many people took the movement to heart that, at one point, it’s estimated that home, school and community gardeners produced close to 40 percent of the country’s fresh vegetables, from about 20 million gardens. As the war ended, and lawns took over American backyards, those earnest posters of cheery home gardeners and fierce-looking vegetables became a relic of wartime scarcity — until a few weeks ago. With panicked shoppers cleaning out stores, and basic foods like dried beans and potatoes becoming increasingly difficult to track down, even those with no gardening experience are searching for do-it-yourself YouTube videos on how to build a raised bed. When Nate Kleinman, who lives and farms in South Jersey, put up a call on his social media for planting “Corona Victory Gardens,” alongside an image of Superman, Batman and Robin gardening on the cover of a 1943 issue of “World’s Finest Comics,” he heard back almost immediately from 1,000 eager gardeners. The majority of them were amateurs, looking for seeds, lumber to build raised beds and basic information about soil and how to grow food, he said. “The war-garden model was inspiring for a lot of people, because there were all these huge forces at work around the globe that were out of their control,” Mr. Kleinman said. But he added that the term “victory garden” makes some modern farmers cringe because of its military connotations, and its use during the internment of Japanese-Americans, many of whom were farmers themselves. The victory garden program may be more than a century old, but “the parallels right now are pretty stark,” said Rose Hayden-Smith, the author of “Sowing the Seeds of Victory: American Gardening Programs of World War I.” The first such push started in the context of another pandemic, the influenza outbreak of 1918. “You have to remember, we lost more Americans to the flu than we did to the battlefield,” she said. Gardens flourished on the home front because people were eager to build their own community-based food security, and to cultivate something beautiful and useful in times of great stress and uncertainty, Ms. Hayden-Smith said. Read more

March 25, 2020, 8:15 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 8:15 p.m. ET By For now, New Yorkers cannot get evicted if they don’t pay their rent. Credit... Nadia Pillon With a 90-day moratorium on evictions in place, renters can rest easier. What happens after that is less clear, says our Ask Real Estate columnist. Q: My partner and I are freelancers in creative fields. We suddenly have no work or income because the response to the coronavirus has effectively shut down our industries. The rent is due on our Brooklyn market-rate apartment on April 1 and if we pay it, we will rapidly deplete our very modest savings. What are we supposed to do? A: A survey published on March 23 by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy found that 29 percent of New York City residents had at least one member of their household lose a job because of the coronavirus pandemic in the previous two weeks. In a city where two-thirds of residents rent, the sudden spike in unemployment will have an enormous and immediate impact on households that have to pay the rent April 1. For now, New Yorkers cannot get evicted if they don’t pay their rent. On March 20, Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a 90-day moratorium on evictions for residential and commercial tenants, a day after he suspended mortgage payments for three months for homeowners in financial distress. Because holdover and nonpayment proceedings are not considered emergencies, landlords cannot even file such cases in housing court until April 19, at the earliest. So if you are facing a choice between paying for food and paying the rent, know that you will not lose your apartment for nonpayment, for the time being. But what happens when the moratorium ends? It’s an open question. “Hopefully we’ll figure that out,” said Andrea Shapiro, a program manager at the Met Council on Housing, a tenant advocacy group that is calling for rent suspension and rent forgiveness legislation. “Don’t panic. You’ll have an apartment to stay in during the course of this crisis.” Read more

March 25, 2020, 8:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 8:00 p.m. ET By City residents use the Nextdoor app to be neighborly (but distant). Credit... James Steinberg “I’m 84 years old, so staying confined to the house for protection,” wrote Marcia Savin, a children’s book author and teacher who lives alone in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, on the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor. Before the virus, Nextdoor was, to most users, something between a hyperlocal Facebook and an updated version of Craigslist. In recent weeks, however, some New Yorkers, many isolated and under quarantine, have logged on, many for the first time, with a focused and urgent set of questions. Last week, Nextdoor told CNN that engagement had nearly doubled. In Ms. Savin’s neighborhood, the posts read like a diary of a neighborhood on lockdown. It was Saturday, March 21. Ms. Savin’s prescriptions were ready at a local pharmacy, she said, but she couldn’t pick them up “because I’m not leaving the house and they have stopped answering phone.” Soon, she said, she received five offers to help. “None of them were people I know,” Ms. Savin said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “It’s been quite heartening.” So far, Laura Weiland, 32, has made two drop-offs at Ms. Savin’s home. Their interactions are simultaneously neighborly and distant. “I’m completely confined,” Ms. Savin said. She doesn’t open the front door. “I see the person, I flip the check through the mail slot, I tell her to leave the supplies and I drag them in,” she said. Now she has her medicine, and her fridge is full. She is grateful to Ms. Weiland, whom she has never met without a phone, screen or door between them. Ms. Weiland, a marketing professional, described her neighbor as “lovely.” In New York, where millions of people are living under some of the country’s strictest rules, users have been posting as they see fit, unsure, as in so many other things, what a local social network is for. Nextdoor has added new features to the platform, including a map to which neighbors wishing to help can add their location and volunteering abilities, seizing a moment when neighborliness is both necessary and necessarily mediated. There are still relics of Nextdoor 1.0: complaints about discourteous runners, unverified rumors about what the city may do next and full-on conspiracy theories. But Nextdoor was not built to be a disaster-relief platform. Its most vital role may be in directing people to organizations and networks best suited to respond to needs as the city weighs guidelines for safely helping neighbors. Shira Milikowsky, 38, who lives near Ms. Weiland, posted her own offer to help on Nextdoor. There she found a small army of others nearby who were also looking for ways to chip in. “It was people saying, ‘me too, me too, me too,’” she said. Nextdoor has also continued to function in another way: as an object of bewilderment and humor. Jenn Takahashi, 31, a tech worker in San Francisco who runs @bestofnextdoor, a Twitter account that collects strange, shocking and whimsical posts from the platform, hasn’t been too surprised by what has been sent her way. A few residents of Minneapolis circulated a call to get together and sing from their front porches, inspired by videos of quarantined Italians singing from their balconies. One later shared the experience, which was then shared with Ms. Takahashi. “I guess a bunch of people sang last night, and I tried it tonight,” the poster wrote. “I was the only one on my block but it still felt really good, and just a little bit embarrassing.” Read more

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

March 25, 2020, 7:45 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 7:45 p.m. ET By A homeless family copes with challenges amplified by coronavirus. April Goode, 39, in the hotel room where she has been living with her son, Ethan, 9, and three other children last month. The coronavirus outbreak has since brought added challenges. Credit... Erica Lee for The New York Times A reporter takes us through a day in the life of a woman and her four children who are living in temporary housing. April Goode awoke shortly before 7 a.m. after a night of restless sleep atop two sleeping bags and a blanket on the floor of her hotel room. Her four children were asleep on the two full beds. Ms. Goode turned on the television and kept the volume low. More news about the coronavirus. On a normal weekday — if anything about being homeless and living in a Quality Inn in northern New Jersey could be considered normal — a van would have picked up her children and taken them to school 45 minutes away in Chatham, N.J. But the schools had shut down a week earlier. The children had not left the hotel in 10 days. Even before the pandemic, Ms. Goode was counting the days until she could get a job, find an apartment and move out of the cramped room at the end of a long second-floor hallway. There was a bar downstairs, and she worried about letting her children, who range in age from 9 to 14, wander by themselves. The hotel in Ledgewood where they have been living since mid-February is sandwiched between two highways. There are no sidewalks. The family had no car. The coronavirus outbreak has only amplified those challenges, as it has for homeless people nationwide. People living in crowded shelters or doubled up with other families are more likely to contract the virus. They are less likely to have access to health care. Many who work low-wage jobs are likely to be laid off.



Ms. Goode said her situation was relatively stable. The family had clothes. They had temporary shelter. But the outbreak brought a new layer of anxiety and uncertainty to their lives. “I’ve just been laying here, watching CNN, trying to understand that things are not going to change very quickly,” she said.

Read more

March 25, 2020, 7:30 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 7:30 p.m. ET By The hospitality group that owns the Boston Bruins will place many workers on leave. Delaware North, the Buffalo-based hospitality group, which also owns TD Garden and the Boston Bruins of the N.H.L., announced Wednesday that it was placing most of its full-time employees on temporary leave, citing uncertainty over when the coronavirus pandemic will end. The company said more than two-thirds of its 3,100 full-time employees will go on leave. In a statement, Delaware North, which has an annual revenue of about $3.7 billion, said the outbreak had precipitated the closures of most of its more than 200 venues, including restaurants and casinos, across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, with only its airport locations operating. All full-time employees will be paid for their first week out of work and receive medical, dental and vision benefits for eight weeks. Those who were spared will have their pay slashed “to a reduced rate.” Delaware North said it intended for these measures to be temporary. In a separate statement, Delaware North said it would be putting on leave 68 of its full-time employees at TD Garden, where the Bruins and the Boston Celtics of the N.B.A. play, and indefinitely reducing the salaries of 82 other full-time employees. The moves are effective as of April 1. Jeremy Jacobs, the chairman of the company, was trending on Twitter, as the decision was largely met with backlash as people cited his net worth, which is over $3 billion, according to Forbes. “None of these decisions were reached without difficult and painful deliberations,” the statement said. “These measures are intended to be temporary with associate employment and compensation returning once our business resumes to its normal state from this unprecedented stoppage.” Read more

March 25, 2020, 7:15 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 7:15 p.m. ET By Yankees’ minor leaguers are looking forward to the end of a 2-week quarantine. On March 15, while most of the Yankees’ players were still in Tampa for spring training, the Florida Department of Health informed the franchise that one of its minor league player had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. That meant that all Yankees minor league players and some staff — about 175 people in all — were recommended to isolate themselves through March 25. So, for the last two weeks, the minor leaguers have been cooped up in hotels, houses and apartments, while dealing with similar issues as the rest of the world is: worry, attempts to still work, uncertainty about the future, and the balance between adjusting to isolation and cherishing safety. As young professional athletes, they also found plenty of creative ways to work out, including racing local chickens. While Thursday was supposed to be the start of a new M.L.B. season, instead it will be the end of a bizarre spring training quarantine for dozens of young players and staff members.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

March 25, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET By Construction on New York luxury towers, deemed essential, presses forward. Workers at a construction site in Brooklyn on Tuesday. Many workers say they cannot practice social distancing. Credit... Stephanie Keith for The New York Times While Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has told New Yorkers to stay indoors in a furious effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus, construction workers have been deemed essential employees, meaning they have to continue working even as most of the work force stays home. “I’m essential to the pocketbooks of rich contractors and essential for spreading the virus, but that’s about it,” said Kirk Gibbs, 57, an electrician at a new parking garage in Syracuse, N.Y. “It’s not essential for us to be here right now.” Across the country, governors and mayors have urged roughly half of the United States — at least 179 million people — to stay home. The only people who should go outside, they say, are emergency responders and those considered essential, a wide-ranging term with different meanings in each state. In New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and most of the country, construction workers have fallen into the essential category. In New York City, which had nearly 158,000 construction jobs in 2018, laborers are hauling hard hats and tools on nearly empty subways and trains every morning on the way to job sites. Construction sites, even during normal times, are notoriously dirty. Workers often share a single portable toilet, which rarely has soap or hand sanitizer. Running water is not common. None of the recent safety protocols recommended by public health officials are practical at a job site, workers said. They share tools, and procedures require that they closely watch over one another. There is no social distancing. Some workers wear protective masks, which are in short supply. Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose office is working with the state on possibly stopping some construction, said some of the work, like infrastructure and low-cost housing, remained vital. “Luxury condos are not the priority in this city, but there’s a lot of other things being worked on that are important,” the mayor told reporters at a news conference on Sunday. Before the sudden collapse of the economy, a booming construction business in New York City over the past decade had helped transform the skyline, erecting soaring skyscrapers south of Central Park, in Midtown Manhattan and on the Far West Side of Manhattan. But now, while the well-off who will eventually occupy many of those buildings stay home, construction workers say they face an agonizing choice. If they refuse to work, they could lose their jobs during a cratering economy. But if they do work, they worry about contracting the virus and spreading it to their families. Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting. Read more

March 25, 2020, 6:15 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 6:15 p.m. ET By Wimbledon organizers will decide on the tournament’s status next week. A doubles match on Court 18 at Wimbledon last year. The 2020 tournament could be postponed or canceled. Credit... Jane Stockdale for The New York Times Wimbledon could become the latest major global sports event to be canceled in 2020 because of the coronavirus outbreak. Organizers announced on Wednesday that they have scheduled an emergency board meeting for next week to make a decision about this year’s edition of the grass-court tennis tournament, which is scheduled to run from June 29 to July 12 at the All England Club in London. The club, which organizes the event, said that it was considering “all scenarios,” including postponement and cancellation. “The single most important consideration is one of public health, and we are determined to act responsibly,” said Richard Lewis, chief executive of the All England Club. The British government issued a stay-at-home order to its citizens on Monday and said it would be reviewed after three weeks. Lewis, in his final year in the post, said “a decision on Wimbledon will be made” at next week’s board meeting. The French Open, the Grand Slam tournament in Paris that normally precedes Wimbledon, already has been postponed to Sept. 20 to Oct. 4 from its original May 24 start date. Although there appears to be space on the calendar for Wimbledon to move back with the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to 2021, the club expressed doubts about postponement in its statement. It also ruled out the option of playing the tournament “behind closed doors” without spectators. “At this time, based on the advice we have received from the public health authorities, the very short window available to us to stage the championships due to the nature of our surface suggests that postponement is not without significant risk and difficulty,” the club said. The sense is that the former Olympic dates — July 24 to Aug. 9 — are likely too close to the current dates for Wimbledon to make for a promising option. Playing the tournament outdoors in September is undesirable because of less daylight and more dew on the grass, which can make conditions too slippery. The August calendar is dominated by the hardcourt events leading up to the United States Open, still scheduled for Aug. 24 to Sept. 13. Wimbledon, founded in 1877 and the oldest of the four Grand Slam tournaments, has been canceled only in wartime. But unlike the French Open, which made a unilateral decision to shift dates, the All England Club made it clear that it intended to consult with the sport’s other governing bodies before it came to a conclusion. It said it was communicating with the women’s tour, the men’s tour, the International Tennis Federation and the leaders of the other three Grand Slam tournaments — the Australian Open, the French Open and the United States Open. Read more

March 25, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET By Miriam Jordan and Household workers are being cast out with little help. Maria Zamorano has lost work as a housekeeper since the coronavirus outbreak began in Southern California. Credit... Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times Late last week, Maria Zamorano, 50, picked up her cellphone to check her messages. “Hi, plz cancel our cleaning for tomorrow,” said one. “Maria, I’m going to have to cancel tomorrow’s cleaning. Thank you,” said another. The housekeeper had been receiving similar texts all week, every one of them a cancellation from homeowners on whom she depends to make a living — swabbing their toilets, vacuuming their carpets and shining their floors. Household help, often performed by undocumented immigrants like Ms. Zamorano, has become a fixture of American homes. In a thriving economy, even middle-class families have been able to hand off their off mops, brooms and lawn mowers to low-paid workers from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries. With reliable caregivers at home, many dual-income couples have raised children while building high-powered careers. The coronavirus crisis is compelling many families to reassess. Concerns about the safety of an outsider entering their homes coupled with financial instability have prompted even the well-heeled to dispense with their help, and severance payments are a rarity. Unlike their employers, undocumented workers cannot collect unemployment or benefit from a government bailout. They are part of the bustling informal economy, typically paid cash and off the books for the essential work they do. Without paid sick leave, remote work capability and access to jobs, they become uniquely vulnerable. For many undocumented workers, instability is a fact of life, and abruptly losing a job is not uncommon. But rarely have they faced the loss of so much of their work at once. Read more

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

March 25, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET By A chef who brought Indian cuisine to the fine dining scene in the U.S. dies from the virus. Floyd Cardoz, an international restaurateur and the first chef to bring the sweep and balance of his native Indian cooking to fine dining in the United States, died on Tuesday at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J. He was 59. The cause was the coronavirus, his family said. Mr. Cardoz was the first chef born and raised in India to lead an influential New York City kitchen, at Tabla, which he and the restaurateur Danny Meyer opened in the Flatiron district of Manhattan in 1998. Soon after, Ruth Reichl of The New York Times gave Mr. Cardoz’s cooking a rapturous review. “Yes, I thought. This is what I have been waiting for,” she wrote. “This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices.” Image Floyd Cardoz at his SoHo restaurant Bombay Bread Bar in 2018. “This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices,” a critic said of his cooking. Credit... Devin Yalkin for The New York Times Before opening Tabla, Mr. Cardoz cooked at the luxurious New York restaurant Lespinasse, where he rose from line cook to executive sous-chef under the Swiss chef Gray Kunz. (Mr. Kunz died in February.) The Atlanta-based chef Asha Gomez said Mr. Cardoz’s work at Tabla inspired her culinary career and those of many other Indian-American chefs. “I remember walking into that restaurant and feeling this sense of pride that I had never felt as an Indian,” she said. “To see what he had done to elevate Indian cuisine to the likes of French cuisine — because it deserves to be in that same light — was at the time mind-blowing to me.” After winning the culinary competition television show “Top Chef Masters” in 2011 with a variation on upma, a South Indian breakfast staple, Mr. Cardoz became a celebrity son of India. In Mumbai, he opened the Bombay Canteen and O Pedro, a restaurant influenced by his family’s Portuguese roots in Goa. This month, he visited the city to attend an anniversary party for Bombay Canteen and to oversee the opening of his Bombay Sweet Sho. On Instagram, he wrote that he had become ill soon after returning home to Roseland, N.J., on March 8. He is survived by his wife; his sons, Peter and Justin; his mother, Beryl Cardoz; and five siblings. Priya Krishna contributed reporting. Read more

March 25, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET By Readers react to a gut-wrenching coronavirus story. Credit... Photo illustration by Delcan & Co. On Tuesday, Jessica Lustig, a deputy editor for The New York Times Magazine, published an article about what it has been like for her family over the past two weeks while her husband fell ill with the coronavirus. The emotional story struck a chord with readers, many of whom posted about it online and left comments on The Times’s website. Please read @jessicalustig’s sobering description of caring for her husband, who’s battling COVID-19, at home alongside her 16yo daughter.



We desperately need to humanize this by sharing the experiences that are happening right now.https://t.co/J8qCdm2u0p — Amy Cuddy, PhD (@amyjccuddy) March 25, 2020 Lois Beckett, a writer for The Guardian, tweeted about some of the imagery captured by Lustig the piece. @loisbeckett I cannot stop thinking about this @jessicalustig piece. The intense, fraught geography of a single apartment. The smell of bleach and the rattle of the dishwasher. How it reports from a place where most of us aren’t, yet, but where most of us are going. The story even drew a reaction from the official account of the Columbia University Department of Surgery, which used Lustig’s article as a call for people to continue to practice social distancing. @ColumbiaSurgery “This thing grinds you like a mortar.” Please, #stayhome. In the article’s comments section, readers were able to expand more on their thoughts on the story and on the brutal reality of dealing with the coronavirus. One from a reader under the username “SK” described a harrowing tale of her own in which her husband, in seeking treatment, may have infected others. My husband was taken to Mt. Sinai ER by ambulance last night. He was having difficulty breathing, his temperature was high, he has been coughing for a week and unable to lift himself out of bed. The ER doc said she thought he definitely had Covid, but she couldn’t admit him because he wasn’t sick enough to need a ventilator. She also said they couldn’t “waste” a test on him since he wasn’t as badly off as some.



He left the hospital and had to take a cab home; he was too weak to walk. I assume the cab driver is now infected as well as the next passenger the driver picked up.



On top of this, he freelances for a company that says they won’t pay him unless he can furnish a positive test result.



He’s at home tonight. His breathing is shallow and his fever’s spiked. What can we do but wait?



It’s crazy and it’s terrifying. And the statistics are clearly meaningless. A reader who goes by Jyoon also wrote of dealing with a sick husband, thanking Lustig for the piece and offering some encouragement. I want to thank you for this article. I am going through what you’ve so beautifully written. My husband is very ill and has been for over 10 days. He was at the ER today and was told he has pneumonia. We are waiting for the test results. He is so weak and can barely eat. I try to make some food that he can eat or I am non-stop sanitizing everything. I have a 6 year old daughter who is remote learning and I am trying to wfh with all this going on. It’s so hard and I am in tears every night. Stay strong. You are doing an amazing job! And as part of a longer comment on the story, David Murray of Syracuse, N.Y., summed things up well. This was heartbreaking to read, and I can only imagine how heartbreaking it was to write. Read more

March 25, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET By Emily Palmer and Travel and hospitality workers face uncertain futures. Credit... Illustrations by Rachelle Baker Workers in the tourism industry are worrying about their livelihoods as governments across the world close borders, prohibit large gatherings and implement strict quarantines on entire regions and countries. We spoke with several travel and hospitality workers. Each had their own story, but echoed similar concerns about the uncertainty about their future. In looking at an unprecedented worldwide coronavirus outbreak, they turned to the past: how their tourism industry had survived devastating hurricanes and destructive civil wars. They will survive this, too, they said. A selection of their remarks is below. These interviews, conducted by telephone and email, have been edited and condensed for clarity. TRANSPORTATION Carlos Tamarit, 62, has worked as a driver for EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services in New Jersey for more than five years. He was laid off on Sunday. With your family’s health concerns, are you worried about being exposed to the coronavirus? As drivers we’re putting ourselves at risk. If coronavirus is coming from other countries, it’s coming from the airports, and who’s going to the airports? We do. Everyone who gets into the car is potentially a carrier. But in our position it’s either work and eat, or don’t work and don’t eat. TOUR GUIDES Jacob Knapp, 39, a tour guide working for Bespoke Lifestyle Management and living in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, has been out of work since Monday. On Sunday, the territory issued one of the most restrictive lockdowns in the United States. You’ve not been able to give a tour since Sunday. How does it feel to be out of work? I have a lot of worries. I have two boys — 2 and 4 years old, and one is diabetic and I have to be sure there’s always money for insulin — so I always have to provide. I just can’t not provide. Something I learned with Hurricane Maria is you have to have a Plan B in life, and it has to be a complete opposite of your Plan A. After the disaster, the whole infrastructure was down and the only people who worked were those who worked with their hands — so I got certified as an electrician. I’m worried right now but, down the line, I have many doors open. AIRLINES A Chicago-based flight attendant for United Airlines, Maria Alpogianis, 51, has worked in the field for 25 years. What is the physical and psychological toll? I don’t feel I have a sense of job security. I really don’t. I’m flying with several very junior flight attendants who are terrified of losing their jobs and their insurance. I’ve been flying for 25 years and I, too, am afraid that I’m going to be furloughed. When I leave somewhere I become concerned about not being able to get home because of the border closures. When we land we cringe because we don’t know what’s changed during the time we’ve been in flight. Read more

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

March 25, 2020, 1:30 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 1:30 p.m. ET By A photographer watched Roosevelt Avenue go dark. In the “New York Shuttered” series, the photographer Todd Heisler — with occasional help from some reporters — is capturing what it is like to live in New York City during the coronavirus pandemic. As twilight approached on Sunday, Jatin Prajapati set up a folding table on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, outside a shuttered eyebrow-threading salon. Mr. Prajapati, who works at a pharmacy in Manhattan and lives in the neighborhood, spent Sunday handing out bags containing masks, gloves and hand sanitizer to passers-by. They were free, which often surprised them. “Namaste,” he said, as he handed out bags. “Everybody is scared. I don’t like if somebody is scared,” said Mr. Prajapati, who filled the bags with supplies he bought at local stores with his own money. “I give them the mask and see them smiling, it’s good.” Image Roosevelt Avenue, a street that runs under the elevated 7 train, is usually a bustling business corridor. People crisscross under the tracks, patronizing the various salons, restaurants and clothing stores. But on Sunday, the 8 p.m. deadline — the time when the city ordered nonessential businesses to close indefinitely — was fast approaching, and residents in the Woodside and Jackson Heights neighborhoods were trying to adjust to this rapidly morphing reality. Read more

March 25, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ET By If cooking from your pantry, try a riff on sesame noodles. If you stocked your pantry with loads of peanut butter, you might be getting tired of P.B.&J.s. Or in my case, peanut butter spread on banana slices and sprinkled with flaky sea salt. (Try it before you knock it.) For something a little different, I offer an extremely simple riff on cold sesame noodles, made with peanut butter instead of sesame paste. Although it’s excellent cold and at room temperature, I like it best just after mixing, while the noodles are still a little warm. Make a batch and eat it whenever you’re hungry. Leftovers keep for several days in the fridge, though you might want to keep the optional veggies separate until serving. To make it, boil up a pound of whatever noodles you have: rice noodles, spaghetti, ramen, soba, egg noodles — it’s all good. Image Credit... Melissa Clark While the noodles are cooking, make the dressing by whisking together ⅓ cup peanut butter with ¼ cup soy sauce and 3 tablespoons each toasted Asian sesame oil and rice vinegar (or some other mild vinegar — white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar or lime juice all work nicely). Season this with a grated garlic clove and a grated inch-long piece of fresh ginger root, if you have it (or leave it out). Then, sweeten to taste with a tablespoon or so of brown sugar, honey or maple syrup. If you want to add vegetables, slice up some cucumber, radish or celery — or anything crunchy, fennel or carrots would also work — and dress with a little sesame oil, rice or other vinegar, and salt. Set the vegetables aside while you combine the dressing with the drained noodles, along with some chopped peanuts or sesame seeds if you like. Top with the veggies if using. You can garnish it with a handful of fresh cilantro, scallion greens or celery leaves, if you have them. But it’s good without the greens, too. In this series, Melissa Clark will teach you how to cook with pantry staples. Check back Tuesday for another installment. This week’s recipes: Monday: Vegetarian skillet chili. Tuesday: Crunchy pantry popcorn. Last week’s recipes: Monday: Dried beans. Tuesday: Baked oats. Wednesday: Canned tuna pasta. Thursday: Any-vegetable soup. Friday: Pantry crumb cake. Read more

March 25, 2020, 12:30 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 12:30 p.m. ET By Medicare is updating coverage to help in the crisis. Health care workers handling a coronavirus test at a drive-through station in Stamford, Conn. Credit... John Moore/Getty Images Older Americans are at a high risk for serious illness from the novel coronavirus, and most who are over age 65 are covered by Medicare. Medicare already covers its enrollees for much of what they might need if they contract the virus and become seriously ill — and it has expanded some services and loosened some rules in response to the crisis. Here’s a look at what enrollees can expect. Will Medicare cover a test for the coronavirus? Tests for the coronavirus ordered by a health care provider who accepts Medicare are covered under Part B (outpatient services). This is the case if you are enrolled in traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage. Co-pay and deductible amounts for the test have been waived, along with associated services such as physician visits or hospital observation. Will Medicare cover care for Covid-19, the disease the virus can cause? Any needed outpatient services will be covered under Part B, and if you require hospitalization, it will be covered under the usual Medicare Part A rules. This includes a deductible of $1,408 for each stay, and daily co-payments if your stay exceeds 60 days. The most popular supplemental insurance policies used in traditional Medicare cover 100 percent of that, but six million enrollees have no supplemental insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. For Medicare Advantage enrollees, the out-of-pocket costs for hospitalizations vary by plan and length of stay. Kaiser research found that for stays of five days or more, at least half of Advantage enrollees would pay more than the deductible paid by traditional Medicare enrollees without supplemental coverage. Would Medicare cover a Covid-19 vaccine if one became available? Medicare Part B already covers some vaccines for things like flu. If a vaccine for Covid-19 becomes available, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as C.M.S., has stated that it would be covered under Part D prescription drug plans, including both stand-alone plans and Medicare Advantage plans that cover drugs. I’m in a Medicare plan that has network restrictions on the health care providers I can use. Are these limitations still in place during the crisis? Medicare Advantage plans, and many Part D plans, typically require enrollees to use in-network providers, or pay more if they go out of network. But when a state of emergency is declared, things change. C.M.S. has advised Advantage plans that during the crisis, they must cover services at out-of-network facilities that participate in Medicare and charge enrollees affected by the emergency no more than in-network rates. Drug plans often require enrollees to use preferred retail or mail-order pharmacy networks. During the crisis, C.M.S. is permitting plans to relax these restrictions — but this is not a requirement, so check with your plan. I lost my job and need to sign up for Medicare. What should I do? People who work past age 65 can delay Medicare enrollment if they have health insurance through their employers without incurring steep penalties for late enrollment in Part B (10 percent lifetime for each 12-month period past the otherwise-mandatory sign-up age of 65). If you were in this situation and need to sign up for Medicare now because of a job loss, you can take advantage of a special enrollment period that is available to you up to eight months after you lose coverage from employment. Read more

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

March 25, 2020, 12:00 p.m. ET March 25, 2020, 12:00 p.m. ET By ‘With this, there’s not going to be a back to normal.’ Credit... Sarah Mazzetti It has been just over a week since Americans started to be ordered to stay at home and out of the way of the coronavirus pandemic. For many people, it already feels like an eternity. Kids are trying to escape. Careers are falling apart as parents working from home become de facto kindergarten teachers. Marriages are being strained. Couples who wanted to break up are stuck together; Craigslist roommates are suddenly family. And everyone has to stay put with others 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because there is nowhere else, really, to go. “There’s going to be increased misbehavior, defiance, tantrums and blowing up,” said Jennifer Johnston-Jones, a child psychologist in Los Angeles. “After a natural disaster, you go back to normal. With this, there’s not going to be a back to normal.”

March 25, 2020, 11:45 a.m. ET March 25, 2020, 11:45 a.m. ET By Washington’s Metro system closes 19 stations. The Metro system in Washington D.C. has seen a 90 percent decrease in ridership since limiting the types of travel that are permitted. Credit... Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times More than one-fifth of the stations in the Washington D.C. Metro system will be closed indefinitely starting this week to protect workers and riders while conserving cleaning supplies, transit officials said Tuesday, marking the latest reduction in mass transit during the outbreak. The rail line has recently seen a 90 percent decrease in ridership after it moved to limit travel on the system to “essential trips only,” the officials said. Two of the stations — Smithsonian and Arlington Cemetery — were closed last week to limit people visiting the nearby cherry blossoms. Seventeen other stations will close starting on Thursday. Some of the stations that will be closed have other stations nearby that will remain open. Other closures followed reports of particularly low recent ridership, transit officials said, leaving some parts of the capital region without an easily accessible link to the system. “They have made it very clear through their public statements that they are trying to reduce ridership as much as possible, to the point of what I would consider public shaming of people who are still riding transit these days,” said Katherine Kortum, who has been a member of Metro’s Riders’ Advisory Council since 2013. “That’s troublesome for me. The people who are riding transit at this point — they are not joyriding. They are taking it to places where they need to go.” Transit systems worldwide, typically hubs of human activity where the coronavirus could spread, are seeing ridership evaporate during the pandemic. They are also trying to reduce service to protect workers from getting sick, while balancing the needs of people who have no other way of getting around. In New York, the public transportation network is slashing service by at least 25 percent. Ridership plunged almost 90 percent compared to the same day last year, officials said this week. Personnel shortages forced the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees subways, buses and two commuter rails, to temporarily eliminate service on three subway lines: the B, the W and the Z. Last week, New Jersey Transit, which operates a vast network of commuter railroads, announced that it would reduce service on some of its rail lines after ridership dropped 88 percent since the beginning of March. Read more