How Coronavirus Is Affecting Our Lives

The coronavirus has resulted in countless changes to daily life, with schools being closed, travel being upended and sporting events being canceled or postponed. Taking a look at how the global pandemic has affected various aspects of life in the United States reveals the unique nature of this crisis.

• The N.C.A.A. men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are canceled. Broadway is going dark. Disney parks are closing their doors for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks. Our entertainment options are rapidly changing.
• Starbucks, a business built on being a place for crowds to gather, is trying to find its footing as people stay home.
• Makeup is suddenly a complicated item when you are not supposed to touch your face. And if you think you’re cleaning your phone correctly, you’re probably wrong.

What happens when the Broadway curtain doesn’t go up?

At 6 p.m. on most nights in the Theater District, lines are beginning to form outside the city’s Broadway houses and snake around the corners. Ticket-holders are chatting excitedly as purses are poked and prodded by security. Ushers are getting ready to open the doors.

But on Thursday evening, only a few hours after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced new restrictions on public gatherings, the coronavirus made the scene was very different.

Tourists’ eyes widened as they learned through the glass of the box-office window that the show they had been waiting for was shut down in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. A few patrons cried outside the theaters. Families stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out what to do with their evening in New York.

“I’m trying to make the best out of a bad situation,” said Leah Collins, a 10-year-old musical theater enthusiast who had taken the train with her father from Boston that morning to see “Hamilton” on Thursday and “Dear Evan Hansen” on Friday.

Just a few hours earlier, at 2 p.m., Governor Cuomo had made the announcement that restrictions affecting Broadway shows would go into effect at 5 p.m. But the news didn’t travel fast enough for everyone. Signs explaining the refund processes were posted on doors, and staff members were stationed at the entrances to break the news to audience members.

Lisa Bankard and her family of four had driven three hours from their home in Baltimore to see “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” When she tried to pick up the tickets, she learned that the two-part play they had been anticipating since they Christmastime, when they bought the tickets, had been canceled.

Some patrons found an opportunity to share their distress with new friends.

Theater lovers from different parts of the world met outside “Beetlejuice” at the Winter Garden Theater; they had all been devastated to learn that the show would not go on as planned. Three had flown from Uruguay to experience New York theater for the first time; two had traveled from Michigan; and one (wearing a full-blown Beetlejuice costume, complete with green hair dye) came from New Zealand.

By 7 p.m., their show’s curtain time, they were instead sitting together on the red staircase near the TKTS discount booth. They considered themselves a support group for disappointed Broadway fans.

“We all created a little friendship over it,” said Melissa Figliuolo, 20, a student at Wayne State University in Michigan and a member of the makeshift support group. “We’re bonding over our sadness.”