U(D54G1D)y+#!"!]!$!z There is nothing investors hate more than uncertainty. Right now, that is all there is. Uncertainty about the severity and duration of the coronavirus outbreak, ripping around the world at something like light speed. Uncertainty about how the global economy will fare as fac- tories, airports, stores, schools, entire cities shut down. Uncer- tainty about the ability of govern- ments to contain the disease and the power of central banks to counter its economic fallout. Un- certainty about how long all this uncertainty will last. The growing fears have caused financial carnage. The S&P 500 in- dex has dropped 12 percent since Feb. 19, the sharpest dive in nine years. The plunge has obliterated roughly $3 trillion in wealth. In the past two weeks, even de- cent days have been tinted with a scary aura. On Friday afternoon, the S&P was poised to lose more than 2 percent, before the index pared its losses amid a blizzard of buying in the moments before the closing bell. (A similar last-minute surge the previous Friday made an awful week a little less bad.) For all the heartburn-inducing turmoil, the S&P ended this week essentially flat. Market records have been fall- ing like dominoes. The Dow Jones industrial average, for example, had its biggest single-day point decline (1,191 on Feb. 27) and its biggest gain (1,294 on Monday). Behind the turbulence are con- fusion and anxiety, and a sense that the modern world is in an un- precedented situation. “There’s no playbook for this,” said Derek Devens, a portfolio manager at the fund company Neuberger Berman. “That’s been really hard for people to digest.” The financial mayhem extends beyond the stock market. Many companies are essen- tially frozen in place, unable to predict how the coronavirus might affect their businesses. Their immediate task is to figure out how to keep operating while making sure their employees are safe. In Silicon Valley, Apple and Twitter told people to work from home. In New York, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase dispatched small parts of their trading desks to the suburbs so they would have backup crews to keep business running in an emer- gency. With the global economy now poised to shrink, demand for oil is declining, causing the price of crude to crater. As investors flee from risk, gold prices have soared. The safest assets out there — bonds issued by the United States government — have shot higher in price. For the first time, the in- terest rates on 10-year Treasury note shriveled this week to less than 1 percent, falling on Friday to a record low of 0.71 percent. A sudden global disease out- break is not the kind of risk that many market players were trained to react to. Few investors are epidemiologists. The most so- phisticated financial models and the fastest-moving trading algo- Rising Virus Fears Leave Trail of Wall St. Carnage Uncertainty Abounds as Recent Decline in Markets Erases $3 Trillion in Wealth This article is by David Enrich, James B. Stewart and Matt Phillips. Source: Refinitv THE NEW YORK TIMES –60 –50 –40 –30 –20 –10% 0 Current downturn –12.2% 2008-9 financial crisis downturn –56.8% 100 50 0 200 150 300 250 350 Number of trading days since each downturn’s peak The current downturn from the S&P’s peak a few weeks ago is almost as steep as it was during the financial crisis of 2008-09. Change in the S&P 500 since each downturn’s peak Continued on Page A10 IDLIB, Syria — Before the war in Syria, Idlib city, with its tree- lined avenues and white-stone buildings, was known for its calm, provincial air. Today it overflows with families who fled the war in other parts of Syria, swelling the population to nearly a million people. Some shelter in bombed-out buildings. Those who can’t find shelter are camped in the soccer stadium, and more line up outside for food handouts. Residents are so used to the shelling that no one even flinches at the sound of an explosion. But for Syria’s last rebel-held city, the worst is yet to come. To the north, nearly a million people are living along roadsides and in olive groves in what is al- ready one of the worst humanitar- ian disasters of Syria’s brutal nine-year war. To the south and east, Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes are closing in, now just five miles away. When they reach Idlib city, its million residents are likely to flee, dou- bling the number of displaced peo- ple in the north. Dr. Hikmat al-Khatib, an ortho- pedic surgeon, urged his parents to move to a town to the north. But when it was bombed his mother decided to stay put. “Her words shocked me,” Dr. al- Khatib said. “The only choice is to wait for death.” I made a rare visit into Idlib with a photographer and inter- Syrians Whose ‘Only Choice Is to Wait for Death’ By CARLOTTA GALL A father and son in a sports stadium being used as an emergency shelter for displaced families in the rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria. IVOR PRICKETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Idlib Is Bracing for the Worst as al-Assad’s Forces Close In Continued on Page A7 Bernie Sanders was several takes into a video delivering a message he desperately needed to convey last fall — that he was healthy enough to soldier on after his heart attack — when his team realized something was not click- ing. You have to tell people how you really feel, one aide chimed in, ac- cording to a person who worked on the shoot. The heart attack not only deepened your commitment to health reform, the aide said; it was personal. Public introspection is not Mr. Sanders’s go-to move. But he gave it a shot. Near the end of the sev- en-minute video posted on his In- stagram account in October, after swipes at “corporate media” and a pitch for “Medicare for All,” the candidate haltingly admitted that his hospitalization had indeed prompted him to take stock. “Look, I go around once, I have one life to live,” an ever-so-slightly choked-up Mr. Sanders said into the camera, standing in a red- walled room at his house in Bur- lington, Vt. “What role do I want to play?” Mr. Sanders had always known what role he wanted to play: him- self. “How’d he handle it?” a top po- litical aide, Jeff Weaver, said when asked how his friend had dealt with the health crisis. “He’s Rough Around the Edges and Staying That Way By GLENN THRUSH and SYDNEY EMBER Senator Bernie Sanders has said he’s not one for pleasantries. JORDAN GALE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A15 In a fresh episode of Saudi pal- ace intrigue, Crown Prince Mo- hammed bin Salman has detained three members of the royal family, including a brother of the king and a former crown prince who had been potential obstacles to his power. The detentions were the latest demonstration of the crown prince’s willingness to take ex- traordinary measures to quash any perceived rival. Crown Prince Mohammed first demonstrated his iron grip on the kingdom in 2017 by locking up hundreds of royal relatives and wealthy Saudi businessmen in a Ritz-Carlton hotel. The next year he gained inter- national notoriety by presiding over the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul — an assas- sination that American intelli- gence agencies believe the prince ordered. And he has refused to back down from a five-year military in- tervention in Yemen that has mired the Saudis in a bloody stale- mate and produced a humanitar- ian disaster. The detentions come at a time when fears about the impact of the coronavirus have slashed the price of oil, the main source of the Detaining Relatives, Saudi Prince Clamps Down By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and BEN HUBBARD Continued on Page A7 President Trump claimed again on Friday that anyone who needed a coronavirus test “gets a test.” But from Washington State to Florida to New York, doctors and patients are clamoring for tests that they say are in woefully short supply, and their frustration is mounting alongside the grow- ing number of cases around the country. In California, where thousands are being monitored for the virus, only 516 tests had been conducted by the state as of Thursday. Wash- ington health officials have more cases than they can currently process. And in New York, where cases have quadrupled this week, a New York City official pleaded for more test kits from the C.D.C. “The slow federal action on this matter has impeded our ability to beat back this epidemic,” the offi- cial said in a letter Friday. More than 300 cases have been confirmed, at least 17 have died, and thousands are in self-quaran- tine. Public health officials are warning that no one knows how deeply the virus will spread, in part because the federal govern- ment’s flawed rollout of tests three weeks ago has snowballed into an embarrassing fiasco of na- tional proportions. The latest two deaths were an- With Test Kits in Short Supply, Health Officials Sound Alarms This article is by Katie Thomas, Sarah Kliff and Nicholas Bogel- Burroughs. Continued on Page A11 The smoke produced by the blazes that ravaged Australia may ruin entire vintages, winemakers say. PAGE A4 INTERNATIONAL A4-12 ‘Like Licking an Ashtray’ Instead of the French coast, surfers in 2024 will head to Tahiti and some of the world’s most dangerous waves. PAGE B9 SPORTSSATURDAY B9-12 Olympians Face ‘Wall of Skulls’ Lisa Nandy, running to lead Labour, offers a different set of party priorities. The Saturday Profile. PAGE A6 Speaking to Britain’s North A union said a policy that diverts mi- grants to Guatemala illegally sends vulnerable people to a place where they are likely to be persecuted. PAGE A13 NATIONAL A13-19 Asylum Officers Object to Deal A collection of online stores offer mur- der for pay. Researchers say they are schemes, but people who want someone dead aren’t listening. PAGE B1 BUSINESS B1-8 Hit Men for Hire? It’s a Scam A Hillary Clinton documentary revisits some much-told history but has insight about the public fixation on her. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-8 A Warrior Under Her Armor Green Bank, W.Va., has a telescope so big it needs near radio silence, a techno- logical curb that has created a strange kind of modern childhood. PAGE A18 Face in Books, not Facebook An analysis of the primary results so far shows Michigan might not be as favorable to Bernie Sanders as it was four years ago. PAGE A16 No Lock on Michigan Target-date funds hold your invest- ments steady amid your impulses to react to market changes. PAGE B1 Protecting You Against You Facing the effects of climate change, Shinnecock Indians use nature-based solutions to protect their land. PAGE A20 NEW YORK A20-21 Fighting Nature With Nature In Stephen Curry’s return from a long injury absence, Golden State lost a finals rematch to Toronto. PAGE B9 Curry Back; Warriors Aren’t Charlie Warzel PAGE A24 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A24-25 A nearly $200 million renovation has shut the famed theater for two years, the first closing in its history. PAGE C1 Sydney Opera House Silenced FESTIVAL CANCELED South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, was scuttled over virus fears. PAGE A10 CALIFORNIA Twenty-one people on a cruise ship off the coast tested positive for the virus. PAGE A12 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump on Friday pushed out Mick Mulvaney, his acting White House chief of staff, and replaced him with Represent- ative Mark Meadows, a stalwart conservative ally, shaking up his team in the middle of one of the biggest crises of his presidency. Mr. Trump announced the change on Twitter after arriving in Florida for a weekend at his Mar- a-Lago estate, choosing to make one of the most significant switches he can make in his White House on a Friday night when most of the country had tuned out news for the weekend. As a conso- lation prize, the president named Mr. Mulvaney a special envoy for Northern Ireland. Mr. Trump’s decision to push out Mr. Mulvaney came as the president confronted a coro- navirus outbreak that has unset- tled much of the country, threat- ened the economy and posed a new challenge to his re-election campaign. But the decision was seen as a long-delayed move cleaning up in the aftermath of the Senate impeachment trial as he shuffles his inner circle for the eight-month sprint to Election Day. In taking over the White House, Mr. Meadows, 60, a retiring Re- publican from North Carolina, be- comes Mr. Trump’s fourth chief of staff in 38 months, the most that any president has had in such a short time. His arrival almost surely signals more changes to follow, as most of Mr. Mulvaney’s deputies and others on his team are expected to leave, too, possi- bly including Emma Doyle, his top lieutenant, and Joe Grogan, the domestic policy adviser. Hope Hicks, one of Mr. Trump’s most trusted advisers, returns on Monday in a new role working for Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Mr. Mulvaney, who technically re- tained his post as budget director while serving as acting chief of staff, will surrender that, too, and the acting director, Russell T. Vought, appears poised to take the job permanently, an appointment he has quietly lobbied for over MULVANEY OUSTED AS CHIEF OF STAFF Freedom Caucus Founder Elevated in Shake-Up By PETER BAKER Continued on Page A14 VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,625 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 2020 Late Edition Today, windy, turning out sunny, high 45. Tonight, clear, chilly, low 34. Tomorrow, mostly sunny, chilly start, milder afternoon, high 58. Light wind. Weather map, Page B12. $3.00