Transcript
Page 1: EMERGENCY IS DECLARED; HOUSE PASSES AID BILL · cast doubt on when or even whether that would be possible. A ... A medical worker taking a nasal swab to screen for coronavirus at

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Bret Stephens PAGE A26

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

Older voters have carried Joe Biden inprimaries. But he would need youngvoters to win in November. PAGE A16

NATIONAL A16-20

Biden’s Young Voter ProblemBill Gates, who founded the companywith Paul Allen in 1975, said he wants tofocus on philanthropic work. PAGE B7

BUSINESS B1-7

Gates Leaving Microsoft BoardHarry Belafonte’s personal archive isgoing to the Schomburg Center forResearch in Black Culture, part of theNew York Public Library. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

A Trove of Art and Activism

protocols recommended to com-bat the spread of the virus, shak-ing hands with multiple adminis-tration officials and chief execu-tives and sharing a microphonewith them.

He said his plan would speedthe ability of Americans to betested for the virus. It includes pri-vate partnerships to speed tests tothe market and a website de-signed by Google, where Mr.Trump said potential patientscould enter their symptoms andbe directed to a drive-throughtesting center. Mr. Trump said thesite would be available starting onSunday, with the goal of allowingall Americans who needed one toget a test “very safely, quickly andconveniently.”

But later, Google appeared tocast doubt on when or evenwhether that would be possible. Aspokeswoman said that the initia-tive was in its “early stages” andwould first be introduced as aprototype in the Bay Area.

The president, who has claimedthat anyone who wanted a testcould get one, also deflected anyblame for the testing delays thathave hampered the government’sresponse.

“I don’t take responsibility at

WASHINGTON — PresidentTrump on Friday declared a na-tional emergency over the coro-navirus pandemic and announcedsteps he said would speed theavailability of testing, and theHouse passed a bill reflecting adeal with his administration toprovide billions of dollars to helpsick workers and to prop up aslumping economy.

Markets rallied on Mr. Trump’semergency declaration, which hesaid would free up $50 billion forstates and localities to cope withthe outbreak — separate from thecongressional relief measure —and which would allow the Treas-ury Department to delay tax filingdeadlines for some individualsand businesses.

During a news conference inthe Rose Garden, the presidentalso said he would indefinitelysuspend interest collections onfederal student loans, although nobills would go down. And he in-structed the Energy Departmentto buy enough oil to fill the nation’sStrategic Petroleum Reserve “tothe top.”

The S&P 500 soared during theremarks and closed the day up bymore than 9 percent.

At the news conference, Mr.Trump followed none of the safety

EMERGENCY IS DECLARED; HOUSE PASSES AID BILLTens of Billions in Help for States, Sick Pay,

Food Assistance — The Markets Rally

By JIM TANKERSLEY and EMILY COCHRANE

A medical worker taking a nasal swab to screen for coronavirus at a drive-through testing site in Seattle, which has been hard-hit.GRANT HINDSLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A7

Britain, Australia and Canada haveuniversal health care, but getting itwasn’t easy. PAGE A18

Struggle for Universal CareSome users say the countertop devicedispensed watery formula with insuffi-cient nutrients for infants. PAGE B1

Lawsuits Over Baby Brezza

It’s possible you do not remem-ber “The Man Show.” Or perhapsyou don’t want to.

From 1999 to 2004, the show —created and hosted by JimmyKimmel and Adam Carolla, andlater Joe Rogan and Doug Stan-hope — was, as Mr. Kimmel onceput it, “a joyous celebration ofchauvinism.”

The idea was to appeal to menwith a certain brand of over-the-top frat-boy humor: crude jokesabout beer, bodily functions andwomen, with a sidekick who coulddrink a pint in one gulp, resident“Juggy girls” who entertained theaudience with their, well, have alook at the name, and credits thatran while women jumped on tram-polines in short skirts and bikinis.

“I held casting sessions wherethey jumped on a mini-trampo-line,” said Dianne Martinez, a for-mer associate producer who wasin charge of casting the Juggies,as they were known. Ms. Martinez

is now the vice mayor of Em-eryville, Calif.

Times have changed, certainly.And so have the televisionperches of some of the former“Man Show” hosts. Jimmy Kim-mel is on network late-night tele-vision with “Jimmy Kimmel Live,”speaking openly about health careand gun violence. (CNN has calledhim “America’s conscience.”) OnThursday, former Mayor PeteButtigieg of South Bend, Ind. —who dropped out of the Democrat-ic presidential race this month —appeared as his guest host.

“I really thought we had a shot,”Mr. Buttigieg said of his presiden-tial campaign in his openingmonologue. “But turns out, I wasabout 40 years too young and 38years too gay.”

These are strange times.Just two weeks ago, the poli-

tician was wearing another crisp

They Peddled Frat-Boy Humor.Now They Push Social Causes.

By JESSICA BENNETT

Continued on Page A19

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Thesix young women set down theirbombs and stood around the well,staring into the dark void.

As captives of Boko Haram, oneof the deadliest terror groups onEarth, the women had been dis-patched for the grimmest of mis-sions: Go blow up a mosque andeveryone inside.

The women wanted to get rid oftheir bombs without killing any-one, including themselves. One ofthem, Balaraba Mohammed, thena 19-year-old who had been blind-folded and kidnapped by BokoHaram a few months earlier, cameup with a plan: They removedtheir headscarves and tied theminto a long rope. Ms. Mohammedattached the bombs and gingerlylowered them into the well, pray-ing it was filled with water.

She let go.“We ran for our lives,” Ms. Mo-

hammed said.In the decade-long war with

Boko Haram that has coursedthrough northeast Nigeria and

spread to three neighboring coun-tries, more than 500 women havebeen deployed as suicide bombersor apprehended before they car-ried out their deadly missions — anumber that terrorism expertssay exceeds any other conflict inhistory.

Some, like Ms. Mohammed andthe women at the well, havebravely resisted, foiling the extre-mists’ plans in quiet and often un-heralded ways.

But most women who brokeaway from Boko Haram keep theirabductions secret, knowing they

would be stigmatized as terroristsympathizers even though theywere held against their will anddefied the militants. They walkthe streets of Maiduguri in theshadow of billboards celebratingthe heroism of Malala Yousafzai,who was shot for standing up tothe Taliban.

The women are often forgotten,not unlike the more than 100schoolgirls kidnapped from thevillage of Chibok who remainmissing — nearly six years aftertheir abduction caused suchglobal alarm.

Dozens of women interviewedby The New York Times have saidthat Boko Haram gave them a ter-rible choice: “Marry” the group’sfighters or be deployed as bomb-ers. Captives have said somewomen chose instead to blow uponly themselves.

But some survived and want totell their stories. Ms. Mohammedis one.

Ms. Mohammed said she ar-rived at the Boko Haram camp in adaze in 2012. Boko Haram hadmurdered her husband in front of

The Women Quietly Outsmarting Boko Haram’s Deadly WaysBy DIONNE SEARCEY

At 19, Balaraba Mohammed foiled a bombing by Boko Haram.LAURA BOUSHNAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A15

Officials at the U.S. Centers forDisease Control and Preventionand epidemic experts from uni-versities around the world con-ferred last month about whatmight happen if the new coro-navirus gained a foothold in theUnited States. How many peoplemight die? How many would beinfected and need hospitaliza-tion?

One of the agency’s top diseasemodelers, Matthew Biggerstaff,presented the group on the phonecall with four possible scenarios —A, B, C and D — based on charac-teristics of the virus, including es-timates of how transmissible it isand the severity of the illness itcan cause. The assumptions, re-viewed by The New York Times,were shared with about 50 expertteams to model how the viruscould tear through the population— and what might stop it.

The C.D.C.’s scenarios were de-

picted in terms of percentages ofthe population. Translated into ab-solute numbers by independentexperts using simple models ofhow viruses spread, the worst-case figures would be staggeringif no actions were taken to slowtransmission.

Between 160 million and 214million people in the United Statescould be infected over the courseof the epidemic, according to oneprojection. That could last monthsor even over a year, with infec-tions concentrated in shorter peri-ods, staggered across time in dif-ferent communities, experts said.As many as 200,000 to 1.7 millionpeople could die.

And, the calculations based onthe C.D.C.’s scenarios suggested,2.4 million to 21 million people inthe United States could requirehospitalization, potentially crush-ing the nation’s medical system,

Without Mitigation, Toll in U.S.May Be Staggering, Experts Say

By SHERI FINK

Continued on Page A11

KARNES CITY, Texas —Leaner days are back in the oilpatch of South Texas.

Once-busy roads are empty ex-cept for the workers repairing thepotholes from the damage done bytruck traffic in the last boom. Oilproducers have begun to lay offemployees and call their servicecompanies to say that they havedrilled their last well for a while.One temporary-housing camp isoffering free food to attractlodgers, and trailer parks areemptying.

And the collapse of oil prices tonearly $30 a barrel — roughly a 50percent decline from the begin-ning of the year — is just begin-ning to sink in. Saudi Arabia’s de-cision last weekend to ramp upproduction, even as the global co-ronavirus outbreak saps demandfor fuel, is driving up global sup-plies with no place to go but stor-age tanks.

But even as some itinerantworkers are moving on, full-timeresidents of Karnes City and thesurrounding county are not pan-icking, at least not yet. They knowthe ups and downs of oil cycles,and they see just another trough,whatever the role of geopolitics ora pandemic.

“Everybody knows oil is boomand bust, and everyone thinks itmay not be today, tomorrow ornext week, but eventually theprice will go back up,” said Ken

Once-Booming Oil Town in TexasBraces for a Bust as Prices Crash

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Continued on Page A13

They grabbed milk and aspirin,paper towels and spaghetti. Cansof soup and bottles of laundry de-tergent. Olive oil and sanitizingwipes. With futures suddenlythrust into the unknown, they didwhat felt reassuring: panic shop.

As President Trump declared anational emergency on Friday,hordes of shoppers flooded storesacross the nation and emptiedshelves, looking to stockpile gro-ceries and household items to pre-pare for uncharted territory.

Inside the Target at AtlanticTerminal in Brooklyn, customerssnatched up hand soap, lotion,condoms, vitamins and tampons.Cold and flu medicines were com-pletely sold out. One customer, Ja-son Krigsfeld, 31, was relieved tofind a 20-pack of Charmin toiletpaper — the last one on the shelf.He and his wife had already col-lected hand soap, laundry deter-gent and floor cleaner.

“We saw people emergencyshopping yesterday and were like,‘We need to do that, too,’” said Mr.Krigsfeld, who works in software.

Stores were overwhelmed withlong lines of customers waitingjust to enter what would be a dis-orienting space of packed aisles,backed-up checkout lanes andweary employees.

In Santa Clarita, Calif., hun-dreds of people jostled for positionin the parking lot outside a Costcoon Thursday. “Please don’t call 911because people are cutting in frontof you in line,” a sheriff’s stationtweeted after deputies respondedto a false alarm of fights at thewholesale store.

Soon after the 9 a.m. opening onFriday of the Trader Joe’s in Hobo-ken, N.J., a line of nervouscustomers stretched along theblock in the rain, waiting to pickthrough the mostly bare shelves

Stocking Up for the Unknown:Store Shelves Are Plucked Bare

By CORINA KNOLL

Continued on Page A12

SPAIN The government declared astate of emergency as the numberof cases shot up to 4,200. PAGE A5

Turkey is winding down an aggressivetwo-week operation to drop tens ofthousands of migrants at Greek entrypoints. PAGE A14

INTERNATIONAL A4-15

Tensions Cool at Greek Border

Iraqis said the retaliatory strikesagainst pro-Iranian militias hit regularforces, police and a civilian. PAGE A14

U.S. Airstrikes Condemned

A small Upper West Side park had suc-cumbed to neglect. And rats. Lots ofrats. But it is flourishing again. PAGE A22

NEW YORK A22-23

A Verdi Square for All Seasons

A professional soccer team from Wu-han, China, went to Spain for preseasontraining. And got stuck. For six weeks.None of the players is sick, but the teamis ready to head home. PAGE B8

SPORTSSATURDAY B8-12

Stranded Stars of Wuhan F.C.

It’s not just games that sports is losingin coronavirus-related postponementsand cancellations. It’s memories and,for some athletes, precious time, Mi-chael Powell writes. PAGE B8

What Might Have Been

TRUMP TEST The president saidhe would get a test after firstsaying he didn’t need one. PAGE A7

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,632 + © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 2020

Late EditionToday, partly sunny, a cooler day,high 54. Tonight, partly cloudy, low37. Tomorrow, sunshine and patchyclouds, cooler weather again, high50. Weather map is on Page A28.

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