March 14, 2020, 9:16 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 9:16 p.m. ET By A doctor recounts her experience with social distancing. Dr. Jen Gunter’s babies needed supplemental oxygen for the first nine months of their lives. Credit... via Jen Gunter In 2003, my triplets were born extremely early. Aidan died at birth and my two surviving boys, Oliver and Victor, born at 26 weeks, were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit. They weighed 1 pound, 11 ounces and 1 pound, 13 ounces, respectively, and were among the most vulnerable a human can be to lung infections. In addition, Oliver had a severe heart defect unrelated to his premature delivery, further increasing his risk of serious complications from infections. After almost three months, the boys were ready to come home on oxygen. My husband and I were told to limit their interactions with society — especially with other children. Even a cold could be devastating, never mind influenza. The best medical advice was to do everything possible to keep them from getting an infection in their first year of life. But how? It wasn’t as if we could just take them home, barricade the doors and never leave. I was fortunate to have six months of maternity leave, and it also seemed best to have the doctor at home. But there were other things to consider: essential food and supplies to restock, medications to pick up, blood work at the hospital, home visits from nurses and physical therapists and doctors’ appointments. So many appointments, and all at a children’s hospital — the very place where serious infections were most likely to exist. Each visit felt as if I were running a gantlet of infectious horrors. How did I do it? I never shook hands, I nodded and smiled.

I used a lot of hand sanitizer — getting a twin stroller laden with oxygen tanks in and out of a public bathroom made hand washing a challenge. Everyone who entered the house — whether medical professional, friend or family — was required to be fully vaccinated and to either use hand sanitizer at the door or head straight to the bathroom to wash their hands.

We declined visits from people with children in day care or school. A few were upset, but if being insulted about their child’s runny nose being a potential cause of death for my children was an issue, frankly, we weren’t meant to be friends. I had to return to work when the boys were 6 months. Their dad’s work offered no paternity or sick leave, so he was forced to quit. One of us had to stay home with the kids. They were still on oxygen 24 hours a day and at risk for infection. When the boys came off oxygen at 9 months, we relaxed a little and occasionally went to restaurants. We had enough confidence to throw a party for their first birthday, a milestone we couldn’t have imagined a year earlier. Everyone who came knew what they’d been through, and we trusted our friends and family not to show up sick. These measures aren’t just for the medically vulnerable like my boys — social distancing slows the spread of a virus in communities. The risk with viruses like the new coronavirus isn’t just that people will get sick and some will die. This coronavirus is transmitted easily — even from people with few or no symptoms — so many may get sick at once, overwhelming the health care system. Read more

March 14, 2020, 7:58 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 7:58 p.m. ET By At a Los Angeles food bank, groceries are plentiful, but volunteers are scarce. Food ready for distribution at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in July 2019. On an average Saturday, the bank would have about 100 volunteers. Today, it had 12. Credit... Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images LOS ANGELES — In a warehouse crowded with pallets of cabbage and yogurt, pasta and canned pineapple, Roger Castle sorted through slightly smushed loaves of Wonder Bread, checking for expiration dates and any signs of mold. “The rule is, anything we wouldn’t eat ourselves, we wouldn’t set aside for a pantry,” he said. Despite spurts of panic-driven shopping in chain supermarkets all week — the apocalyptic images of empty aisles, the anxious hoarding of staples like water, rice and beans — The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank was flush with supplies. It had even more than could be sorted. “There’s absolutely no shortage of food. There’s been no disruption to our supply chain,” Mr. Castle, the chief development officer of the food bank, said, adding that it receives food from companies like Sam’s Club, Walmart, Del Monte and Gelson’s. “But there is a shortage of volunteers.” On an average Saturday, Mr. Castle said, the bank would have about 100 volunteers, all working to sort and pack food for older adults and children. Today, there were 12. With most community centers and gathering places closed, and volunteers staying home to practice social distancing, the food bank faces a particular challenge: How to get more than 20,000 boxes of food to vulnerable seniors in low-income communities. Mr. Castle said the team was working on devising a new — and he hopes, temporary — system. For now, next to a speaker set to thumping dance music, a worker sorted through boxes of red and green apples, bagging them for delivery. Read more

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March 14, 2020, 7:16 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 7:16 p.m. ET By Major ski resorts suspend their operations in North America. Vail Resorts announced on Saturday that it would suspend operations at its resorts and retail stores in North America for a week starting Sunday. Alterra Mountain Company also announced it would suspend operations at its 15 North American ski resorts starting on Sunday until further notice. A British Columbia location will remain open through Saturday, with no new guests admitted after Tuesday. Guests already at Vail locations or with scheduled reservations will have access to lodging and property management services, but new reservations will be suspended, Rob Katz, the chief executive, said in a statement. The company advised customers to check its website for information on travel credits and refunds. Nonessential employees were encouraged to work remotely, and all employees, including seasonal workers, would be paid during the closing, Mr. Katz said in the statement. Vail said it would provide an update by Friday. Alterra said each resort would coordinate refunds directly with customers, Rusty Gregory, the chief executive, said in a statement. Read more

March 14, 2020, 6:25 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 6:25 p.m. ET By Rudy Gobert will donate $500,000 to relief efforts. Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert and his teammate Donovan Mitchell have tested positive for Covid-19. Gobert said he would donate at least $500,000 for relief related to the outbreak. Credit... Usa Today Uspw/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert will donate at least $500,000 to relief efforts related to the coronavirus outbreak, the team announced on Saturday. He joined a group of N.B.A. players and team owners who have committed to supporting arena workers affected by the suspension of the league’s season. Part-time employees at Vivint Smart Home Arena, where the Jazz had 10 remaining home games before the N.B.A. suspended its season on Wednesday, will receive $200,000 in aid. More than 800 part-time employees work events at the arena, the Jazz said in a statement. The team is also making its own donations. Gobert’s donation will also support services in his native France and help families in Oklahoma City, where the Jazz had been scheduled to play on Wednesday before the game was abruptly canceled after officials learned that Gobert had tested positive for infection with the new coronavirus. Rocky Wirtz, chairman of the N.H.L.’s Chicago Blackhawks, and Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls, also announced on Saturday in a joint statement that game-day employees would be paid through the remainder of each league’s regularly scheduled season. Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Nets and Barclays Center, also committed to paying its employees during the suspension. Read more

March 14, 2020, 4:52 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 4:52 p.m. ET By Millennials cooped up by the coronavirus head back home. Brent Smith and Griffin Gluck, students at Bard College, exited Pennsylvania Station on their way to the airport for a flight back home to Los Angeles because of concerns about Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Credit... Noah K. Murray/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Across the country, childhood bedrooms are back in use. Families are again eating dinner together around dining room tables. And parents, who bought groceries in bulk well before the coronavirus panic set in, are the new saving grace for millennials wary of being cramped in small apartments during the outbreak. “I wanted to be in a place where I would be more comfortable,” said Hanna Galvin, 24, who left the small two-bedroom apartment in Lower Manhattan she shared with a roommate to return to Greenwich, Conn. “I have childhood board games that I can play with my family. I can watch TV with them.” When Ms. Galvin was still considering staying in New York, though, she and her roommate removed all the alcohol from their freezer to make space for soups and other frozen foods. “I can drink another time,” she said, with a grim chuckle. Ben Paltiel, 25, an editor at an online magazine, packed a big bag and said goodbye to his roommates in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Although he has no symptoms, he worried about bringing the coronavirus home with him unintentionally. Still, he and his family decided that it would be best for him to get out of New York before stricter measures went into effect. “The togetherness is nice,” said Mr. Paltiel, who went back to his parents’ home in New Haven, Conn. “There’s a hell of a lot of more space here than there would be in my New York apartment.” Read more

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March 14, 2020, 3:53 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 3:53 p.m. ET By Arriving in the U.S. from Europe ‘didn’t feel organized,’ a passenger says. A woman walking past a baggage carousel at Kennedy International Airport in New York. President Trump’s European travel restrictions took effect Friday at 11:59 p.m. Credit... Stephanie Keith for The New York Times Rhea Paul, a speech language pathology professor at Sacred Heart University, was among the first passengers from Europe to land in the United States after President Trump’s European travel restrictions went into effect on Friday at 11:59 p.m. Ms. Paul, 70, an American citizen who landed at Kennedy International Airport at about noon on Saturday, said the American Airlines pilot and the flight attendants made no mention of the coronavirus or what would happen once they got to New York during the eight-hour flight from Paris. Then, when they landed, Ms. Paul said, “the pilot got on the intercom and said the Border Patrol was going to get on the plane and test everybody, but that this was all the information that they had.” About 10 minutes later, the pilot announced it would instead be the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that would screen them, Ms. Paul said. But minutes later, while everyone still sat inside the plane, the pilot announced that United States Customs & Border Protection would be the ones testing the passengers on the jetway. Agents wearing paper and plastic masks boarded the plane and handed the rest of the passengers a questionnaire to fill out before leaving the plane. It asked for their names, addresses, destinations, where they had been in Europe and if they had any symptoms including a fever, a cough or trouble breathing, she recounted. Once they exited the plane, the passengers waited in line on the jetway where one by one they handed in the questionnaires to an agent. Another agent took their temperatures and logged it on a separate list. “And then from there, we just went down through customs as usual,” Ms. Paul said. “It really didn’t feel organized,” she said. “It seemed to me that for an airplane that left eight hours ago, there should have been time for whoever was doing the inspection to let the crew know what procedures would be so they could prepare the passengers. We didn’t get information that would have been perfectly easy to get had anyone thought ahead.” The plane was about half-full, Ms. Paul said, and while the crew did not discuss the coronavirus, passengers did, at least in the economy section, where she was sitting. “Everybody felt a little nervous but people were trying to make jokes and take it light. There was quite a lot of camaraderie on the plane,” Ms. Paul said. “We all felt like we were in the same boat.” Many of the passengers sitting near Ms. Paul, who had been in France as a visiting professor at the University of Tours, had, like her, scrambled to board the earliest flight to the United States after President Emmanuel Macron of France asked people to self-quarantine if they were 70 or older on Thursday, she said. “That combined with Trump’s speech made us feel like maybe we better get out now before we were not able to get back home,” she said. Packing up her life in France was stressful, she said, but “once I got on the plane, everybody seemed very calm. Being on the plane was the best part of the trip and I don’t generally like flying.” Read more

March 14, 2020, 3:43 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 3:43 p.m. ET By At Guantánamo Bay, temperature checks and a ban on sharing food. Visitors will be required to use prison-issued sanitizers and masks. Handshaking and food sharing will be forbidden. Credit... Alex Brandon/Associated Press At the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, the remote outpost in southeast Cuba with a prison of 40 wartime detainees, including five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the military is taking steps to both prepare for and try to avoid a coronavirus outbreak. A public health official at the base on Friday came onboard a Boeing 737 charter plane from Florida with about 120 passengers. One by one, the official took travelers’ temperatures with oral thermometers to try to protect the 6,000 residents on the base, which it said was free of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Everyone waited their turn, “like primary school,” one traveler said. Earlier, as the passengers boarded the flight at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, they were all checked for fevers with a no-touch forehead thermometer. Defense lawyers were notified on Friday evening that meetings between prisoners and their legal teams for those already on the base and those who can still get there will continue, with new restrictions. Visitors will have their temperature checked at the meeting site, and those registering 100.4 degrees or higher will be turned away. Social distancing for those allowed inside the cramped Camp Echo legal meeting rooms will be strictly enforced. Visitors will be required to use prison-issued sanitizers and masks. Handshaking and food sharing will be forbidden. The detainee and visitor must sit six feet apart. The oldest prisoner at Guantánamo is 72, and the youngest is in his 30s. Base officials have not indicated how they will handle cases of people thought to be ill with the virus. More than a third of the residents, or about 2,200, are foreign contractors from Jamaica and the Philippines. Typically, the base sends medical samples by air to Navy facilities on the mainland to be processed, but the Southern Command, which runs the prison at Guantánamo, has had no comment on how it will handle testing, other than from the officials who said they had been planning for different situations. “We’ve got wonderful health care providers at the Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay and the detention facilities,” Adm. Craig S. Faller told reporters on Wednesday at the Pentagon. “If you’re suspected of symptoms there, how do you best get the test results read? And so what’s the path?” Read more

March 14, 2020, 3:26 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 3:26 p.m. ET By Play dates are OK, but indoor playgrounds are not. Children arrive at school in San Francisco on Friday, which will be the last day of school there for at least the next three weeks. Credit... Jim Wilson/The New York Times Set limits and take precautions. Keep them small, maybe with just two or three kids at a time, advised Saskia Popescu, an infection prevention epidemiologist in Phoenix. Organize play dates around an isolated outdoor activity , said Dr. Eli Perencevich, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at the University of Iowa. Invite another child to come along on a family hike. Or have the children run around in a big, uncrowded park, which will be less germy than a popular local playground.

Avoid parties at indoor playgrounds and trampoline parks. Birthday parties with a few children in an uncrowded outdoor space will be pretty low risk, but experts advised against visiting indoor playgrounds and museums because they could harbor so many germs.

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March 14, 2020, 2:56 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 2:56 p.m. ET By Jogging was made for social distancing. Pathways that are normally too clogged for choosy runners have opened up during the coronavirus outbreak. Credit... Stephanie Keith for The New York Times Longtime runners in New York City have their own rules that they live by, as do runners everywhere else: Avoid the path along the Hudson River at rush hour. Stay off the High Line. And if you are going to run on the Brooklyn Bridge on a sparkling weekend morning, do it very early, before the tourists show up with their cameras and their love locks. Unless, of course, a pandemic has descended on the city. The city was largely empty on Saturday morning. Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan at midday could have hosted drag racing and barely caused a disturbance, and all those running spots that usually get clogged by 9 a.m. were virtually deserted. As for the usual clumps of runners out doing their weekend training in preparation for the big spring marathons, well, there are no big spring marathons anymore. Those runners were either dispersed or alone, as running groups and clubs called off their regular gatherings, or they were running on remote trails in the hills somewhere — the sport’s version of social distancing. When it comes to exercising during a pandemic, running outside may be the last activity to go. If the gyms and the yoga studios of the world are deemed too risky, we’ll still be able to head into the fresh air, find a little space and pound out some miles, just like we did today.

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March 14, 2020, 1:06 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 1:06 p.m. ET By New Yorkers are dusting off their bicycles to avoid subway germs. Cyclists ride along the Allen Street bikeway in Manhattan. Credit... Kevin Hagen for The New York Times Halimah Marcus’s bike had been collecting dust for five years. But as coronavirus fears exploded in New York, she pumped air into the tires and replaced the batteries in the light mounted on the handle bar. By Monday, Ms. Marcus, 34, was biking daily to work instead of taking the R subway train. She has not been back on the subway. And she has a lot of company in the bike lanes. Citi Bike, the city’s bike share program, has seen demand surge 67 percent this month: Between March 1 and March 11, there were a total of 517,768 trips compared with 310,132 trips during the same period the year before. A growing wave of New Yorkers are embracing cycling to get to work and around the city as their regular subway and bus commutes have suddenly become fraught with potential perils, from possibly virus-tainted surfaces to strangers sneezing and coughing on fellow passengers. “It reduced my anxiety,” said Ms. Marcus, the executive director of a nonprofit digital publisher in Downtown Brooklyn. “For me, riding is manageable, and I felt it would be beneficial to my mental health.”

March 14, 2020, 12:33 p.m. ET March 14, 2020, 12:33 p.m. ET By Two Tennessee brothers are stuck with a staggering stockpile of hand sanitizer. Matt Colvin purchased hand sanitizer, masks and cleaning supplies to resell on Amazon, but he's now unable to sell them on the marketplace as the online retailer cracks down on price gouging amid coronavirus concerns. Credit... Doug Strickland for The New York Times Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver S.U.V. to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tenn., they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves. Matt Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer on Amazon and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic. The next day, Amazon pulled his items and thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks. The company suspended some of the sellers behind the listings and warned many others that if they kept running up prices, they’d lose their accounts. Now, while millions of people across the country search in vain for hand sanitizer to protect themselves from the spread of the coronavirus, Mr. Colvin is sitting on 17,700 bottles of the stuff with little idea where to sell them. “It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” he said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?’”

March 14, 2020, 11:52 a.m. ET March 14, 2020, 11:52 a.m. ET By In sports, athletes and fans wonder if this is really goodbye. The empty West 72nd basketball courts in Riverside Park in New York. Credit... Vincent Tullo for The New York Times The last game in my town was a girls’ junior-varsity lacrosse game on Thursday night. The spring season was just getting started. Fans were spread across the metal bleachers, not in acts of “social distancing” but because there were only a few dozen of us. Still, we knew the world had changed. It was strange, thinking of sports as a threat, not a relief. All this time, all these years, sports were the diversion from life’s problems, not the problem itself. The sun fell and the breeze cooled. Talk was that schools all around were closing and ours was sure to be next, at any moment. We were all about to go into hiding, a civic battening of hatches against some strange storm gathering at the horizon. And when the game ended, in the dusk of what was anything but another day, the two teams of teenage girls lined up in dueling receiving lines and clicked sticks with their opponents, a universal display of sportsmanship. The parents gathered belongings and half-joked about washing hands and not seeing one another for a spell. Stay in touch (we need another expression). Be safe.

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March 14, 2020, 11:23 a.m. ET March 14, 2020, 11:23 a.m. ET By A pizza chain will give its workers a bigger share of the pie. Michael Lastoria, the chief executive and co-founder of &Pizza, will raise hourly pay by $1, and provide other benefits to employees. Credit... Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for NYCWFF As restaurants temporarily close in the face of the public-health threat and businesses like Whole Foods Market suggest employees give vacation time to their sick co-workers, &Pizza — a 40-store East Coast chain that positions itself as a David to the Goliath of traditional pizza-delivery giants — is heading in another direction. In an email to staff on Friday night, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, Michael Lastoria, announced that the company was offering free, unlimited pizza to all 750 employees and their immediate families, as well as to all hospital workers who show identification. Mr. Lastoria is raising hourly pay by $1, and workers who have or suspect they have the coronavirus and co-workers who might have come in contact with them will get 14 days of health and safety pay. Any employee who doesn’t want to take public transportation can get a car-share ride for $5. Delivery will be free for all customers. The company is shutting down its corporate offices in Washington, D.C., and New York, and sending the nearly 50 members of the executive and office staff — including Mr. Lastoria — to work in the pizza shops, which are spread across six states, from Boston to Virginia. Mr. Lastoria, an entrepreneur who made his first million dollars from an advertising, technology and marketing services firm he started right out of college, will divide his time making pizza in Washington and New York. Image &Pizza is offering free, unlimited pizza to all employees and their immediate families, as well as hospital workers who show identification. Credit... Cole Wilson “We were thinking about what our job is and how can we put our best foot forward and what can we do in a safe environment,” Mr. Lastoria said in a phone interview. “We need to give people hours and pay people more because in times like this people need more.” The idea to feed hospital workers was inspired by a program &Pizza ran during the 2019 government shutdown. The company, which started in Washington in 2012, handed out free pizza to furloughed government workers. Health care workers who are going to be called into service need support, too. “People just don’t have the choice in this situation,” he said. “If people don’t have the choice, let’s do the right thing.” No end date for the program has been set. And then there’s the big question: How to pay for it all? “It’s a combination of doing the right thing first, and then figuring out how to pay for it,” Mr. Lastoria said. “But we are lucky to have incredibly supportive shareholders who understand what they signed up for.” Read more

March 14, 2020, 10:59 a.m. ET March 14, 2020, 10:59 a.m. ET By Last call at city libraries sends readers scrambling. The scene at the New York Public Library the day before closing down at least until April 1 over coronavirus concerns. Credit... Nina Westervelt for The New York Times For a certain kind of New Yorker, the news on Friday that the New York Public Library would be closing the soaring Rose Main Reading Room in its 42nd Street flagship — along with its 91 other locations — at least until April 1 caused a special kind of sadness and alarm. At 3 p.m., three hours before closing, the reading room was hardly deserted. But the crowds were markedly thin, several regulars said, compared with the roughly 5,000 who visit each day, according to the library’s statistics. In the northern section of the room, reserved for researchers, one young man was dozing with his head on the table, next to a splayed-open copy of “500 Great Military Leaders of World History.” In another corner, a man was munching contraband doughnuts from a plastic carton. (Food is forbidden.) “For some people, their getaway is the beach or a spa,” said Lyubov Ginzburg, an independent scholar who had rushed over to consult a few books after she heard about the closing. “For me, it’s the library.”

March 14, 2020, 10:19 a.m. ET March 14, 2020, 10:19 a.m. ET By For one college’s graduates, a ‘Coronamencement’ may have to do. Graduates at the University of Michigan commencement in 2011. The school announced on Friday it was canceling the ceremony, which was planned for May. Credit... Paul Sancya/Associated Press With warnings against large public gatherings posing a threat to college graduations — the University of Michigan canceled its ceremony planned for May — students at one college got creative just in case they don’t get a formal opportunity to don a cap and gown. At the University of Maine in Orono, just north of Bangor, students mobilized and organized an impromptu “Coronamencement,” which they celebrated on Friday. Hailey Bryant, 21, a senior majoring in journalism and political science, said students wanted to do something to ensure their graduation was not lost. “It was really hard because we’ve all been envisioning our graduation since we started college and all of a sudden it was taken away,” she said Friday night.

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March 14, 2020, 9:46 a.m. ET March 14, 2020, 9:46 a.m. ET The parents of children with asthma are worried. Credit... via Hillery Stone In an essay for NYT Parenting, Hillery Stone wrote about what it’s like to have a child with asthma at home as the new coronavirus spreads around the globe: For me — and, I imagine, for many parents of the approximately six million other children in the United States who have asthma — it’s hard to believe that this coronavirus, which targets lung cells, isn’t more dangerous to our kids. So I called Dr. Gwynne Church, M.D., a pediatric pulmonologist at University of California, San Francisco, Benioff Children’s Hospital. She admitted that almost all the research on the new coronavirus so far has been focused on what is leading to severe pneumonia and death, not its effect on common chronic diseases. “It’s reassuring that asthma was not a risk for death with the coronavirus in China,” she said. “But we don’t know that the virus wasn’t leading to sickness causing increased asthma.” It’s an evolving situation, she added, and our populations are not identical. For one thing, the reported rate for childhood asthma in China is lower than in the United States.