They Celebrated Basketball and a Birthday. Then Came Coronavirus.

“Three good friends — it’s been a rough week, to say the least,” Cain said on Thursday.

He was home, alone, in Syracuse, N.Y., quarantined from the outside world. The worst of the symptoms had subsided, he said.

“I haven’t heard of anybody else dying at this point, knock on wood,” he said. “But every time you see the phone now, when it’s certain people at certain times …”

The thought dangled. “It’s a mental thing now,” he said.

As the coronavirus has spread around the globe, scientists and politicians have urged or forced social distancing. Highly contagious, the virus can slip easily from one person to the next, even if there are no symptoms. It is how Covid-19 spread from Wuhan, China, in the first place — a small outbreak became a pandemic because people traveled and gave it to one another.

A market in Wuhan. A nursing home near Seattle. A party in Connecticut. Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

A birthday party in Scarsdale, perhaps. It is not known if they got disease there or were already infected, but its toll has devastated their tight-knit group.

New York had its first case on March 1. Suburban New Rochelle soon was locked down by a cluster of cases. There was the introduction of elbow bumping, then there were plans to close restaurants. On March 11, after a basketball player tested positive, the N.B.A. suspended its season. An announcement that schools in New York City would close came on March 15.

But on March 14, a Saturday, there would be a party, in anticipation of Cain’s birthday three days later. Mom’s Cigar Warehouse has a private room that can accommodate 70 people, and at that point there were no restrictions in New York on gatherings of that size.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/sports/basketball/coronavirus-college-basketball-players-ncaa.html