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For more than 50 years, Cor-nelia Vertenstein, 92, has taughtpiano lessons from her home inDenver. Every week, through allthose years, a parade of childrencame to her door, books in hand.

They practiced for an hour atthe Chickering & Sons piano thatMs. Vertenstein and her formerhusband, both Holocaust sur-vivors from Romania, bought for$600 in 1965, two years after land-ing in the United States.

And when the children left, atleast the little ones, Ms. Verten-stein gave them a sticker for en-couragement. They gave her ahug.

The coronavirus has put an endto those visits. But Ms. Verten-stein would not let it put an end tothe lessons. And she certainly

would not let it cancel spring reci-tals.

“I believe strongly in continu-ity,” Ms. Vertenstein said. “My stu-dents learn to be persistent inwhat they are doing. I try to teachthem not only how to learn, buthow to work.”

Friends call her Nellie, she said,but most students and parents re-spectfully call her Dr. Vertenstein,a nod to her doctorate in musicand her formal manner. She hasbeen teaching piano since she was

Her ‘Kids,’ Turning Living Rooms to Recital HallsBy JOHN BRANCH

Cornelia Vertenstein, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, has been giving piano lessons remotely.RACHEL WOOLF FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

No Hugs, but the SameDevotion to Classics

Continued on Page A14

When the top-ranked MayoClinic stopped all nonemergencymedical care in late March, it be-gan to lose millions of dollars aday.

The clinic, a Minnesota-basedhospital system accustomed totreating American presidents andforeign dignitaries, saw revenueplummet as it postponed lucrativesurgeries to make way for coro-navirus victims. The hospital net-work produced $1 billion in net op-erating revenue last year, but nowexpects to lose $900 million in2020 even after furloughing work-ers, cutting doctors’ pay and halt-ing new construction projects.

The future offers little relief, at

least until the pandemic subsidesand the economy recovers. TheMayo Clinic will have to rely moreheavily on low-income patientsenrolled in the Medicaid program,as others will be hesitant to travelacross the country, or the world,for care. “It’s uncontrollable,” saidDennis Dahlen, the clinic’s chief fi-nancial officer.

The American health care sys-tem for years has provided manyhospitals with a clear playbook forturning a profit: Provide surg-

Virus Devastates Business ModelFor Hospitals Both Rich and Poor

By SARAH KLIFF

Continued on Page A12

Disruption May ReduceAccess for Americans

ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Rusty Spur Cafe & Saloon in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Thursday, a day before the state’s shelter-in-place order expired. Page A8.Reopened? Yes. Back to Normal? No.

The coronavirus pandemicdealt another crushing blow to re-tailers in April. Now the questionis what the sector will look like asthe economy reopens — and howmuch permanent damage hasbeen inflicted.

Retail sales fell 16.4 percent lastmonth, the Commerce Depart-ment said Friday, by far the larg-est monthly drop on record. Thatfollowed an 8.3 percent drop inMarch, the previous record. Totalsales for April, which include re-tail purchases in stores and onlineas well as money spent at bars andrestaurants, were the lowest since2012, even without accounting forinflation.

Some of the declines in individ-ual categories were staggering.Restaurants and bars lost halftheir business over two months.At furniture and home furnishingsstores, sales were off by two-thirds. At clothing stores, the two-month decline was 89 percent. In-creased sales from online retailersdidn’t come close to offsetting thedownturn elsewhere.

April could prove to be the bot-tom for sales. The March figureswere helped in part by panic buy-ing, and stores were generallyopen for the first half of the month.Most states have begun to lift bar-riers to commerce and movement,and many economists expectspending to rise in May as peopleventure out.

But in contrast to the nearlyvertical drop, any rebound islikely to be gradual. Big states likeNew York and California remainlargely under lockdown, and busi-nesses face significant restric-tions elsewhere. Even as busi-nesses reopen, there is no guaran-tee that customers will return innumbers previously seen.

And the financial system maybe an added source of vulnerabil-ity as the economic downturnplaces strains on households andbusinesses, the Federal Reserve

said Friday.“It’s probably fair to say the

worst is over in terms of a col-lapse, unless there are waves ofnew outbreaks,” said Jim O’Sulli-van, chief U.S. macro strategist forTD Securities. “But how fast doesit come back? The short answer isnone of us really know.”

The downturn appears to haveleft lasting scars on a retail indus-try that was already struggling. J.Crew and Neiman Marcus havefiled for bankruptcy protection,followed Friday by J.C. Penney, a118-year-old chain with more than800 stores and nearly 85,000 em-ployees.

Surveys show that many Amer-icans still fear the virus and are

wary of crowded places. Epidemi-ologists and public health officialssay those concerns are wellfounded: Anthony S. Fauci, thegovernment’s top infectious-dis-ease expert, told a Senate commit-tee this week that rushing back tonormal life could “trigger an out-break that you may not be able tocontrol.”

Even if Americans feel comfort-able returning to stores, they maynot have as much money to spend,since millions have lost their jobs.

“Consumers are definitely feel-

COLLAPSE IN SALESIS THE WORST EVERFOR U.S. RETAILERS

Gradual Rebound May Follow Reopeningbut Shoppers Are Shifting Habits

By BEN CASSELMAN and SAPNA MAHESHWARI

–16.4%16

12

8

4

0

4%

RECESSION

’07 ’10 ’13 ’16 ’19

APRIL ’20

Source: Census Bureau. Seasonally adjusted.THE NEW YORK TIMES

Monthly percentage changes

–

+

–

–

–

Retail and Food Services Sales

Continued on Page A11

WASHINGTON — EducationSecretary Betsy DeVos is usingthe $2 trillion coronavirus stabili-zation law to throw a lifeline to ed-ucation sectors she has longchampioned, directing millions offederal dollars intended primarilyfor public schools and colleges toprivate and religious schools.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief andEconomic Security Act, signed inlate March, included $30 billionfor education institutions turnedupside down by the pandemicshutdowns, about $14 billion forhigher education, $13.5 billion toelementary and secondaryschools, and the rest for state gov-ernments.

Ms. DeVos has used $180 mil-lion of those dollars to encouragestates to create “microgrants”that parents of elementary andsecondary school students canuse to pay for educational serv-ices, including private school tu-ition. She has directed school dis-tricts to share millions of dollarsdesignated for low-income stu-dents with wealthy privateschools.

And she has nearly depleted the2.5 percent of higher educationfunding, about $350 million, setaside for struggling colleges tobolster small colleges — many of

DeVos FunnelsRelief to ReviveStalled Agenda

By ERICA L. GREEN

Continued on Page A14

Even by President Trump’sstandards, it was a rampage: Heattacked a government whistle-blower who was telling Congressthat the coronavirus pandemic

had been misman-aged. He criticizedthe governor ofPennsylvania,who has resisted

reopening businesses. He railedagainst former President BarackObama, linking him to a conspir-acy theory and demanding heanswer questions before the

Senate about the federal investi-gation of Michael T. Flynn.

And Mr. Trump lashed out atJoseph R. Biden Jr., his Demo-cratic challenger. In an interviewwith a supportive columnist, Mr.Trump smeared him as a dodder-ing candidate who “doesn’t knowhe’s alive.” The caustic attackcoincided with a barrage of dig-ital ads from Mr. Trump’s cam-paign mocking Mr. Biden forverbal miscues and implying thathe is in mental decline.

That was all on Thursday.Far from a one-day onslaught,

it was a climactic moment in aweeklong lurch by Mr. Trumpback to the darkest tactics thatdefined his rise to political power.

Even those who have grownused to Mr. Trump’s conduct inoffice may have found them-selves newly alarmed by thegrim spectacle of a sitting presi-dent deliberately stoking thecountry’s divisions and pursuingpersonal vendettas in the midstof a crisis that has Americans

A PresidentRiles a NationAmid a Crisis

This article is by AlexanderBurns, Maggie Haberman, Jona-than Martin and Nick Corasaniti.

Continued on Page A21

POLITICALMEMO

President Trump lashes out.DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Evil.” “Lunacy.” “Shameless.”“Sick and twisted.” China has hitback at American criticism overits handling of the coronaviruspandemic with an outpouring ofvitriol as acrid as anything seen indecades.

The bitter recriminations haveplunged relations between Chinaand the United States to a nadir,with warnings in both countriesthat the bad blood threatens todraw them into a new kind of ColdWar.

A cycle of statements and ac-tions is solidifying longstandingsuspicions in Beijing that theUnited States and its allies arebent on stifling China’s rise as aneconomic, diplomatic and militarypower.

Hard-liners are calling on Bei-jing to be more defiant, embold-ened by the Trump administra-tion’s efforts to blame China forthe mounting death toll in theUnited States. Moderates arewarning that Beijing’s strident re-sponses could backfire, isolatingthe country when it most needsexport markets and diplomaticpartners to revive its economyand regain international credibil-ity.

The clash with the UnitedStates over the pandemic is fan-ning broader tensions on trade,technology, espionage and otherfronts — disputes that could inten-sify as President Trump makeshis contest with Beijing a theme ofhis re-election campaign.

“We could cut off the whole rela-tionship,” Mr. Trump said in an in-terview on Fox Business onThursday.

While the hostility has so farbeen mostly confined to words,there are warning signs the rela-tionship could worsen. The tradetruce that Mr. Trump and his Chi-nese counterpart, Xi Jinping,reached in January could fallapart, despite recent pledges tokeep to its terms. Other tensions,including those over Taiwan andthe South China Sea, are also flar-ing.

“After the pandemic, the inter-national political landscape willtotally change,” Wu Shicun, presi-dent of the National Institute forSouth China Sea Studies, said in atelephone interview. “The con-

Rift ThreatensU.S. Cold WarAgainst China

By CHRIS BUCKLEYand STEVEN LEE MYERS

Continued on Page A6

By examining the containment resultsof nations led by women, it seems acertain leadership style offers promisefor a risky era. The Interpreter. PAGE A4

When Women Are in Charge Some borrowers struggling with pri-vately held mortgages are being toldthey can skip payments, if they makethem up all at once. PAGE B1

Mortgage Relief, or Is It?

Some lucky concertgoers in Stuttgart,Germany, experienced live music for thefirst time since lockdown in a series ofone-on-one recitals, over six feet apart,in an eerily empty terminal. PAGE C2

ARTS C1-7

Solo for Flute and Airport

Motorists wait for days to buy subsi-dized gas for next to nothing, but it isincreasingly scarce. PAGE A19

INTERNATIONAL A18-19

A Pump Paradox in Venezuela Sales at Frieze New York, the city’s firsttest of whether a gathering forcedonline by the pandemic could survive,proved surprisingly robust. The artmarket may never be the same. PAGE C1

Solid Prices at a Virtual Art Fair

Hundreds of thousands of New YorkCity residents from the wealthiestneighborhoods fled the city as the pan-demic hit, an analysis shows. PAGE A16

Rich Were First to Leave

In six weeks, Tom Moore, 100, raised$40 million for the British health serv-ice. The Saturday Profile. PAGE A18

Centenarian’s Charity FeatSome in both parties believe PresidentTrump can defy political gravity, a viewat odds with recent trends. PAGE A20

NATIONAL A20-23

‘What About 2016?’: The Myth

Bret Stephens PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

The league’s owners will vote Tuesdayon new incentives for teams that hireand retain nonwhite coaches and gen-eral managers. PAGE B12

SPORTSSATURDAY B10-14

New N.F.L. Push for Diversity

The 118-year-old chain’s collapse repre-sents the biggest retail casualty so farof the coronavirus pandemic. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-9

Bankruptcy for J.C. PenneyThe House legislation has no chance ofadvancing in the Senate, but leaderscalled it their opening offer on the nextround of pandemic relief. PAGE A10

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-17

$3 Trillion Aid Bill Passes

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,695 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2020

Today, partly sunny, not as warm,high 78. Tonight, partly cloudy, low54. Tomorrow, sunshine then clouds,showers possible late, cooler, high66. Weather map is on Page C8.

$3.00