They had about four minutes. The phone …

They had about four minutes. The phone call, from an official with the Oklahoma State Department of Health to a member of the Utah Jazz, was unambiguous: Rudy Gobert, the Jazz’s All-Star center, had tested positive for the coronavirus, the rapidly-spreading precursor to the condition known as COVID-19. An extremely contagious virus for which there is no vaccine, COVID-19 had already killed thousands of people in China, and was quickly working its way through Italy, where it would kill thousands more. Yet on March 11, the United States was, relatively speaking, still open for business.