Economic Distancing: A day after President Trump’s bungled attempt to calm the national coronavirus jitters, the Dow Jones took a 10 percent nose dive, losing 2,352 points while America grinds to a halt with closures and cancellations announced too fast to keep up with them.

  Disneyland and Disneyworld are closing; the NCAA called off its March Madness basketball tournament as well as all winter and spring championships; Major League baseball stopped spring training and delayed opening day; the curtains are down on Broadway; the National Hockey League season has been put on ice; Princess Cruise lines won’t leave the docks for 60 days; Congress is closing the Capitol to the public until April 1. The list goes on.

  Even the local CBS News in New York is being reported from Los Angeles because the 57^th Street broadcast center is being disinfected. The Evening News is coming out of Washington. 

  It’s all to create “social distancing,” keeping people away from each other so they don’t pass along the coronavirus. 

  The economic fallout is enormous. The Dow Jones this morning is at 21,200, down nearly 30 percent from its historical high just a month ago. It’s back to where it was in January 2017.

  With all this going on, President Trump tweeted last night that, “Just had a great conversation with Prime Minister Abe of Japan. I told him that the just completed Olympic venue is magnificent. He has done an incredible job, one that will make him very proud.” It was a perfect conversation.

Statistically Speaking: President Trump asked reporters yesterday, “What is the number as of this morning? Is it 32 deaths? Think of it, United States because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point.” Actually it was at least 38 at that point, but who’s quibbling? Today, it’s at least 40 dead in the US.

  Trump never misses a chance to say he does a great job. Today there are at least 1,663 cases in the US despite the President’s claim that the virus is under control and his statement Wednesday night that, “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States.”

  China still leads with 3,056 deaths followed by Italy, 827, and Iran, 429.

  Among the newest cases is Sophie Trudeau, wife of the Canadian prime minister. Australia’s minister for Home Affairs, who met last week met with Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and senior adviser, has contracted the virus.

  The numbers in the US might be higher if adequate testing were deployed in the field, but medical professionals say not enough tests are available and have not reached the level of hospitals and doctors.

  The President’s claim that “anyone who wants a test can get a test” is just not true. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost expert on epidemiology, testified before Congress yesterday that, “The system is not really geared to what we need right now. That is a failing.”

  The light on the horizon might be developments in China, ground zero for the pandemic. After fighting back with mass quarantines and area closures, new cases in China are beginning to taper down.

Red Card: The president of the United States Soccer Federation abruptly resigned last night, taking personal responsibility a legal brief that criticized the skills and abilities of women players. Carlos Cordeiro said he was responsibility for the federation’s strategy in fighting a lawsuit by the women demanding pay equal to the men.

  Using abbreviations for the men’s and women’s teams, the filing said, “the job of MNT player carries more responsibility within U.S. Soccer than the job of WNT player.” 

  Not satisfied with merely annoying the women players, the federation’s lawyers went on to insult them saying a male player “requires a higher level of skill based on speed and strength.”

  In the 29 years of the women’s soccer World Cup, the Americans have won four times, the most of any country. In 70 years, the American men have never won the World Cup.

The Obit Page: J. Seward Johnson, the sculptor of human figures that convinced you they were real, has died at age at age 89.

  Among his works were figures of surfers at a Florida beach, Marilyn Monroe with her dress billowing, and a student eating a sandwich on a curb in Princeton, NJ, where Johnson had lived. A statue of a businessman sitting on a bench with an open briefcase survived among the rubble of the World Trade Center.

  Johnson was a member of the family that founded the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company. He was in the news later in the 1980s when he and his five siblings sued to overturn their father’s will in which a vast fortune was left to the former maid, Barbara Piasecka Johnson, the senior Johnson had married late in life.

  The kids got some money, but the maid got most of it. As one wag put it, “Barbara came to clean house, and took it literally.”

The Way We Roll: As the coronavirus epidemic escalated in the US, hand sanitizers disappeared from the shelves of groceries and drugstores. People have also bought a lot of water and some canned foods in case they need to hunker down at home. But one of the mysteries of the rising panic is that people are hoarding toilet paper, even though coronavirus is not an intestinal disease. It’s as if the entire country plans to sit out the pandemic.

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