Coronavirus Impact: How a Crisis Is Changing the U.S. Image Friday was the last day for pickup service at the Henry Street Settlement Center in Manhattan. The city is taking over the service with home delivery of food for seniors. Credit... Mark Abramson for The New York Times The coronavirus is changing how we live our daily lives. Taking a look at how the global pandemic has affected various aspects of life in the United States reveals the unique nature of this crisis. In the latest installment of “New York Shuttered,” the photographer Todd Heisler was there for a tearful goodbye as horses used for therapeutic riding lessons were sent upstate.

Hoda Kotb, the co-anchor of “Today,” showed the same emotions many people at home are feeling in a brief on-air breakdown that resonated for many online.

In an adaptation to the coronavirus, black women are turning to online tutorials for advice on how to braid their own hair.

March 27, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET By ‘This is my piece of paradise.’ Juliya and Masha Puchkoff, who are dog walkers, walking five dogs in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. “Two of these are pity walks,” Juliya said, explaining that the owners were paying for walks out of good faith. Credit... Benjamin Norman for The New York Times The coronavirus has warped life in New York City, which has 23,000 cases and at least 365 deaths, making it the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States. For some city dwellers, the necessary act of walking the dog has become a glimmer of solace during a dark time. “We’re bombarded with gloom and doom every minute on the TV, but this is my piece of paradise,” said Roberta Strugger, who recently watched her Labradoodle, Harvey, romp in a dog run in the Bronx. Professional dog walkers, however, are experiencing much more troubling consequences from this scenario, including loss of income and jobs.

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March 27, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET By After 12 days on a ventilator, a chance to FaceTime hello. Heaven and Mark Frilot Credit... via Heaven Frilot On Friday, for the first time in the 12 days since he was diagnosed with the coronavirus, Mark Frilot got to speak to his family. For 12 days he had been hooked up to a ventilator in the intensive care unit of a Kenner, La., hospital, his wife, Heaven, and their son, Ethan, quarantined in their home nearby. On Friday afternoon, doctors were at last able to remove the ventilator. “The nurse FaceTimed us and we talked to him!” Ms. Frilot shared in a text message. “He’s himself joking with us already. Words cannot express my joy!” (She added that Ethan made sure to tell his dad it was time to shave.) Ms. Frilot said that a two-month recovery likely awaits as doctors continue to treat his pneumonia, a journey that will be followed by far more than just his family: Since first sharing her husband’s story, Ms. Frilot has become a light of sorts for her conservative community in Louisiana and beyond, in which many had written off the pandemic as partisan fear-mongering. She’s spent the last several days responding to dozens of messages from strangers whose families are undergoing their own trials with the virus. For now, though, she just wants to relish in her husband’s improvement. “Right now I’m soaking in that my hubby is alive, awake and himself,” she said. Read more

March 27, 2020, 5:30 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 5:30 p.m. ET By Luxury brands are boarding up their stores. A boarded up Louis Vuitton store during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Soho. Credit... Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York Times In Shanghai, day-to-day life for many luxury retailers has started — slowly — returning to normal. In Europe, where millions of citizens have been living under national shutdowns for more than a week, stores in famous retail destinations have bolted their doors. In London, department stores like Harrods and Selfridges, and Bond Street boutiques like Burberry and Chopard, have cleared jewels and stock from plain sight. But in New York, where the cobbled streets of SoHo have shuddered to a standstill as state measures to slow the spread of the virus have taken hold, a number of elegant luxury boutiques, including Fendi, Celine and Chanel, did not just shutter storefronts this week; they had them boarded up with vast sheets of plywood, as if in anticipation of riots and civil disobedience, similar to how they react to European protests. But some are cautioning against the practice. “Boarding up your storefront makes it so that people on the street can’t see inside,” said Mark Dicus, the executive director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative business improvement district. “That might be more appealing to those looking for break in opportunities.”

March 27, 2020, 5:15 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 5:15 p.m. ET By Real estate listings in Manhattan plummet. In the first week since New York State announced a stay-at-home order to help fight coronavirus, real estate listings in Manhattan have plunged and the spring buying season has ground to a halt. Since March 20, the day Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the executive order, just 66 homes were listed for sale in Manhattan, an 85 percent drop compared to the same period last year, when 428 listings came to market, according to UrbanDigs, a real-estate data company. Real estate agents, who have been deemed nonessential workers, have been unable to schedule showings and in many cases are barred from co-ops and condos, where the buildings have adopted strict entry policies. The virus is not only keeping new sellers on the sidelines, but leading many to pull their listings from public view altogether, said Noah Rosenblatt, the chief executive and founder of UrbanDigs. With just a few days left to the month, 1,074 listings had been taken off the market in Manhattan, compared to just 417 in all of March 2019. There were 5,882 active listings for sale in Manhattan on March 26, down 12.8 percent from the same time last year. “If you look at 2009, the market did the same exact thing,” Mr. Rosenblatt said, referring to the high number of sellers who simply gave up when the Great Recession took hold. “Everything came to a screeching halt last week,” said Barbara Fox, the president of Fox Residential, a New York brokerage. While measures have been taken by the state to ensure that closings can proceed — for instance, allowing virtual alternatives for typically in-person requirements, like appraisals and notarization — there are still several steps in the sales process without simple solutions. “I just can’t imagine people are going to be buying apartments from a video,” Ms. Fox said, referring to virtual house tours via FaceTime and other apps. Agents say the extent of the damage to the real estate industry will depend largely on how long the stay-at-home protocol is enforced, but added that the timing is terrible. The real estate market, especially the high-end, has been softening since prices peaked around 2016. The first quarter of the year showed signs of improvement, before the virus arrived, said Jonathan Miller, a New York real estate appraiser. Many agents expect the second quarter, typically a bright spot for sellers, to erase those gains. “It’s like a retail store losing Christmas,” said Mr. Miller. “That’s really what this is.” Read more

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March 27, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET By A small shop in Rhode Island keeps quahoggers out on the water. Victoria Young, who helps run Andrade’s Catch with her fiancé, Davy Andrade, wipes down the door after each customer. Credit... C.J. Chivers Many fishing ports across the United States, long imperiled and struggling under strict regulations and the declines of valuable fish and shellfish stocks, have fallen even quieter during the pandemic. For Rhode Island’s quahoggers, as the harvesters of wild hard-shelled clams are known, the circumstances have gone past difficult to bizarre. While their neighbors struggled to buy food during surges of panic shopping that emptied grocery store shelves, quahoggers found the market for fresh clams — a food rich in protein and minerals — abruptly shut down. In Rhode Island, where state regulations forbid quahoggers from selling clams directly to consumers, the result is that the fleet has all but stopped working — even though catches were high and people, wary of going into crowded and picked-over grocery stores, are eager for healthy meals. Andrade’s Catch in Bristol has managed to support quahog sales, at least at a small scale. While the shop does a robust wholesale business, it also runs a retail shop out front. By shifting operations almost entirely to retail, it has kept a few boats on the water. “I’ve got about six guys I am buying from,” Mr. Andrade said, and he rotates their days. “We want to keep the guys going.” Read more

March 27, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET By An artist hopes a communal project can weave us all together. Liza Lou in her studio, with “Sunday Morning" (2019), oil paint on woven glass beads and thread on canvas. Credit... Liza Lou and and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul; Zihui Song Looking to create beauty and build community in the time of social distancing, the artist Liza Lou is inviting other artists along with the general public to join her in a communal art project called “Apartogether.” She introduced the concept on her Instagram page last week, cuing people to begin gathering old clothes and materials around the house from which to piece together a quilt or what she’s calling a “comfort blanket.” (Ms. Lou showed herself hugging her own baby blanket.) “The idea that an object can protect is, of course, a childlike idea,” she said in her posted video. “I think that making is a form of protection.” Known for her monumental sculptures and wall pieces encrusted with mosaics of individually applied beads, the 50-year-old artist has long explored the meaning found in process and labor traditionally associated with craft and performed by women. Ms. Lou is rolling out more details of “Apartogether” in a virtual studio visit on Friday at 12:00 EST on Instagram Live, where viewers can comment and ask questions. From this hub, using the handle @liza_lou_studio, she will post regular prompts and live videos over the coming weeks. She is encouraging people to share their progress by tagging it @apartogether_art so that it can be seen and archived on the website apartogether.com. She hopes that groups will gather on Zoom to talk and work on their projects in real time.

March 27, 2020, 4:00 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 4:00 p.m. ET By The debate about going outside is intensifying. Barrie Motola’s solo walks were helping her “keep it together,” she said. Now just the thought of going out makes her wonder, “Is it worth dying for?” Credit... Kholood Eid for The New York Times In the Dilemmas series, Jodi Kantor is helping answer questions from readers about how to deal with the changes to our life as a result of the coronavirus. Barri Motola, a reader from New York City, wrote: I’m 77 years old and I want/need to walk. The two buildings in my complex have a basketball court between them. I have previously taken the freight elevator down 36 stories at 5:30 a.m., meeting no one but armed anyway with mask, gloves, wipes and hand sanitizer. I walked for 35 minutes and went back upstairs, again meeting nobody. Should I force myself to continue? I am simply afraid to go outside. Ms. Motola’s world has mostly shrunk to one room. She lives by herself in a studio apartment high above Manhattan, with a piano, books and a narrowing set of routines. Her longtime habit of swimming laps is on pause. So are her dates with her children and grandchildren. “The walking was truly helping me keep it together,” she said on the telephone. But she stopped a week ago and hasn’t left her building since. “As this ramped up, I kept weighing anything and everything I was thinking about doing outside, and saying: ‘Is it worth getting sick for? Is it worth dying for?’” She’s not the only one asking. The outdoors is now contested ground. Parks and trails from Los Angeles to the Great Smokies are being closed. (Too many people were socially distancing in the same places, and therefore not at all.) Authorities are patrolling others, warning people to disperse. This week, India’s prime minister told 1.3 billion people not to set foot outside their homes. “Stay Home Save Lives” has become a rallying cry and a pressure point on social media. Read more

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March 27, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET By David Yaffe-Bellany and For college seniors, the job market adds to frustrations. Some college seniors who recall the 2008 financial crisis are outraged to be graduating into another catastrophe. “It’s hard to be motivated or excited about the systems we have in place because we’ve seen the mess they’ve created over and over again,” said Isabel Serrano, a senior at N.Y.U. Credit... Ben Solomon for The New York Times They hoped to secure jobs on political campaigns, at fashion brands and law offices, and in sales and finance. Instead, they’ve had internships canceled and interviews postponed, wandered through empty job fairs and seen recruiters ignore their anxious emails. When the coronavirus pandemic forced college students across the country to leave campus in early March, the abrupt departure was especially painful for seniors. It meant rushed goodbyes, canceled graduation ceremonies — an overwhelming sense of loss. Now, many of those seniors are home with their families, contemplating an even worse prospect: a job market more grim than any in recent history. Last week, according to the Labor Department, nearly 3.3 million people filed for unemployment benefits, more than quadruple the previous record.

March 27, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET By Online videos help black women learn to braid while social distancing. Several black women have joined a virtual hair-braiding class on Facebook to learn how to keep their hair healthy while staying home during the coronavirus pandemic. Many are parents trying to learn how to do their children’s hair. Credit... Charlie Riedel/Associated Press Niani Barracks usually tends to clients at a salon in Detroit, but now that she must stay indoors because of the coronavirus pandemic, she has been running her fingers through the hair of a mannequin head affixed to a stand in her home, as a dozen other black women, who paid $5 each, watch her on Facebook Live. In one video, Ms. Barracks gently cradles three strands of hair between her fingers as she explains how to start a braid. The skill is essential for many black women trying to keep their hair healthy while they practice social distancing. Braids are the foundation of many protective hairstyles, like wigs and hair extensions. With nonessential businesses closing and nearly two dozen states urging at least 212 million Americans to stay home, Facebook has experienced a sharp increase in the use of its Live feature, which lets users broadcast videos. Most of the students in Ms. Barracks’s class are black women hoping to learn how to braid while salons and barbershops have shuttered to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. After she started staying home with her son when his school closed, Ms. Barracks got the idea to start the class. “There were some moments of anxiety when I realized I don’t have another job and that I won’t be making any money,” Ms. Barracks said. “Everything started shutting down except the bills.” Read more

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March 27, 2020, 12:00 p.m. ET March 27, 2020, 12:00 p.m. ET By It wasn’t ‘only’ toilet paper. Credit... Xiao Hua Yang The Covid-19 pandemic is gutting the global economy and forcing entire nations into quarantine. While reporting on devastation that is incomprehensibly big, our reporters have been accumulating in their notebooks some moments that are compelling because they are small. On Monday night, three police cars sat outside a CVS in northwest Washington, lights flashing, while officers stood in the doorway of the drugstore, watching the unboxing of a delivery of Cottonelle. The mood among shoppers was calm enough, even collegial. There were maybe 20, and they took the goods directly from the deliverymen. “There’s no Charmin!” one said. Another shopper — my father — thought to himself, “Lady, it’s only toilet paper.” It wasn’t “only” toilet paper. Not when its delivery required the cops. Not when holding half a dozen rolls in your arms felt like pressing a security blanket to your chest. My dad needed to make sense of things, so he walked up to the police. “You guys are here just —” A policewoman smiled at him. “Just to ensure that everything is going to be OK.” Read more

March 27, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ET March 27, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ET By A tearful goodbye for horses used for therapeutic riding lessons. 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. Amid the shutdown of large gatherings and nonessential businesses, Gallop NYC, which specializes in therapeutic riding for people with emotional, developmental and physical challenges, had to cancel all its programs. The measures being taken to fight the spread of coronavirus, specifically the orders to stay at home, are “going to have a huge toll on people with disabilities,” said the executive director, James Wilson. Image

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March 27, 2020, 10:00 a.m. ET March 27, 2020, 10:00 a.m. ET By A spirit of forgiveness has emerged. Its longevity is in question. Kevin Payne and his girlfriend, Lori O’Brien, have not left the small hotel room they now call home since checking in on March 9 after they were evicted from their apartment in Kansas City, Mo. Credit... Christopher Smith for The New York Times The coronavirus, for all its devastation, is spreading a spirit of forgiveness across America and softening the country’s often uncompromising lock-’em-up ways. Dozens of states and localities have suspended evictions and utility shut-offs. The $2 trillion stimulus bill that passed the Senate this week included provisions to halt evictions in some federally funded housing, defer federal student loan payments interest-free and stop collections on those who are in default. Law enforcement officials in numerous jurisdictions are refusing to send people accused of low-level offenses to jail or releasing some who are already locked up. The efforts at leniency have bipartisan backing, with the biggest debate over just how long the generosity ought to extend. Those who have long been fighting for tenant rights or criminal justice reform all of a sudden see their views in the mainstream and argue that this is not forgiveness, but justice. Law-and-order and small-government types shudder to think of the consequences if the current mood is longstanding. “We’re winning stuff that last week sounded radical,” said Tara Raghuveer, a tenant rights advocate in Kansas City, Mo. “We have to start demanding more.” The calculation for public officials may be as much about practicality as good will. How can they ask people to stay at a distance, yet pack them into crowded jail cells? How can they demand that residents hunker down at home and maintain good hygiene, yet shut off their water and kick them out of their residences? Read more

March 27, 2020, 9:03 a.m. ET March 27, 2020, 9:03 a.m. ET By Distance will temporarily reinvent some holidays. The Seder typically brings family and friends together on the eve of Passover, but this year some downsizing and spacing between guests may be necessary. Credit... Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Over the next several weeks, Americans will conduct virtual Seders, cook Easter brunch for just one or two, enjoy scaled-down Nowruz feasts at a six-foot distance from one another, and break their Ramadan fasts while isolating at home. All of these holy days and celebrations, which promote renewal and reflection, involve gathering around meals. Social distancing has suddenly posed a big barrier, and some festivities have been called off. Yet despite widespread restrictions on travel, congregating in large groups or attending religious services, many people are finding creative ways to stage their holidays. A look at how various religious groups will handle the restrictions reveals some common ground between a wide mix of people. The Washington Post reported on other adaptations by religious groups, including a Catholic diocese in New Jersey that has lifted the restriction on eating meat on Fridays during lent. In a tweet, Bishop James F. Checchio acknowledged that his parishioners were sacrificing enough during this crisis, and said sacrificing meat would not be necessary. “I have granted a dispensation from abstaining from meat on Fridays for the rest of Lent, except Good Friday which is universal law,” he said. Read more