THE BIG STORY

The US is closing down

All large gatherings involving more than 50 people should be canceled nationwide for the next 8 weeks because of the coronavirus outbreak, the CDC said on Sunday. Those gatherings include conferences, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events and weddings, but the CDC said its advice doesn’t apply to schools, colleges and workplaces.

The CDC’s recommendation would have seemed wild even a week ago, but by the time it was announced, many big cities were already shutting down, particularly those hardest hit by the outbreak. Major tourist centers are also being seriously restricted: After banning large gatherings, New Orleans police cleared Bourbon Street, and most of the big hotel resorts on the Las Vegas strip are closing.

Nothing like this has ever happened before

In terms of such a sudden shutdown of huge segments of the economy, we’re in a place we’ve never been before. The cost will be enormous — so big, and so unlike anything else, that people are still trying to comprehend it. “This hits the heart of the economy, and it hits the economy on all sides,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, told the Boston Globe. “It’s not just that we’re slowing down things. We’re actually hitting the pause button, and there is no precedent; there is no mold for that.”

On Sunday the Federal Reserve rolled out its financial crisis toolbox, announcing that interest rates would be cut to zero and it would pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system. But its chairman stressed that addressing the massive economic disruption caused by so many businesses suddenly grinding to a halt is a job for government, not the central bank — and particularly a job for Congress and the White House.

The global outbreak has hit a turning point

As of this weekend, there have been more reported deaths in the rest of the world than in China. That trend looks likely to accelerate, as new infections in China appear to have slowed dramatically, while cases in Europe are exploding. The World Health Organization has declared Europe the new epicenter of the outbreak.

In Italy, by far the hardest hit country outside of China, 368 deaths were reported on Sunday alone, bringing its total to 1,809. In Spain there were 97 deaths on Sunday, while the UK also reported a single-day record, with 14 deaths.

Students leaving Stuyvesant High School in New York City. (Bebeto Matthews / AP)

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the coronavirus outbreak. Our newsletter, Outbreak Today, will do its best to put everything we do know in one place — you can sign up here. Do you have questions you want answered? You can always get in touch. And if you're someone who is seeing the impact of this firsthand, we’d also love to hear from you (you can reach out to us via one of our tip line channels).

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

There continues to be an election

There’s still an election this November, and tomorrow people will still be voting in Democratic primaries in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona. Last night there was another debate, this time with only two candidates on stage, standing six feet apart — social distancing! — and with no audience to cheer and/or boo.

The debate was obviously overshadowed by *waves arms in general direction of everything* all this, but there was some news: Joe Biden, now the frontrunner, committed to selecting a woman as his vice presidential candidate and Bernie Sanders said he would “in all likelihood” do the same. Biden secured a huge new endorsement this weekend: the country’s largest union, the National Education Association, said it would back him. It has more than 3 million members, and 75% of them are college-educated women — it’s a big deal.

SNAPSHOTS

Hong Kong got the coronavirus outbreak under control — can NYC do it? Rosalind Adams, who was based in Hong Kong when the outbreak began and recently relocated to New York, recalls what it takes to defeat the coronavirus.

French perfume makers Christian Dior, Guerlain, and Givenchy will use their factories to make hand sanitizer. Their corporate parent, the luxury goods giant LVMH, said the factories would “enable a greater number of people to continue to take the right action to protect themselves.”

A group of immigration lawyers, judges and prosecutors called for immigration courts to be temporarily closed. “This is a real crisis. We all have the same interests and the same concerns,” said the leader of one union representing immigration prosecutors.

The cruise ship industry is in chaos with ships stranded offshore searching for places to dock. On Sunday, Celebrity Cruises announced it is suspending operations; its ship the Celebrity Eclipse is stuck off the coast of Chile.

Rafa Rivas / Getty Images

IN OTHER NEWS

Plantations are learning to talk about slavery

But do visitors — often there to see the sprawling gardens and beautiful homes, or to attend a wedding — want to hear about the monstrous things that made them possible? The tourism and events businesses at plantations in the South often clash pretty directly with attempts to present an honest history of what actually happened there.

Clarissa-Jan Lim visited three popular Southern plantations to see how they talked about their history of slavery. Visitors “avoid that subject matter as much as possible,” one guide who leads a tour focused on the topic told her. “It puts them in an uncomfortable place. We are folks who want to be comfortable, that’s a natural instinct. Dealing with the atrocities of the past takes us away from that, and slavery is one of those atrocities.”

Plantation guide Joseph McGill (Clarissa-Jan Lim for BuzzFeed News)

THE CASE FOR HAVING A QUIET NIGHT IN

Go out now and you might feel guilty later

Alex Campbell, BuzzFed News’ UK Investigations Editor, played soccer in a London park on Friday, then went out for dinner and drinks on Saturday.

Then, he writes, “I woke up on Sunday morning and learned that someone I knew — someone I spend a lot of time around and had had a beer with on Thursday — was displaying all three of the most telling symptoms of the virus: fever, coughing, shortness of breath. He hadn’t yet been tested, but someone at his gym had, and came up positive. All of a sudden, I had to stare something straight in the face: I might have it, and might have infected the other patrons of the wine bar, the servers, or even my friends.”

Alex has a warning that’s worth hearing. “If you do go out, and you do risk infecting somebody else, you may feel the guilt — and the fear — that I’m struggling with right now. Trust me, it’s not worth it.”

Your goodness means everything right now,

Tom