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Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert has caught a lot of flack in recent days after he tested positive for COVID-19.

Los Angeles Lakers guard Danny Green, however, doesnt think thats very fair.

I dont think he should be blamed or bashed as much as he is, Green said in a FaceTime with Bleacher Reports Taylor Rooks on Saturday. I mean, it could have happened to anybody.

Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday night. The NBA quickly suspended the season indefinitely just moments later, which sparked a domino effect in the sports world. Before long, nearly every other sports league in the country had postponed, canceled events or suspended operations.

Gobert has drawn a lot of criticism, too, as he was reportedly careless in the locker room in recent days and even made a point to touch every media members microphone and recorder on Monday to make a joke about the virus.

[ Coronavirus: How the sports world is responding to the pandemic ]

He has since apologized and attempted to make things right, even donating $500,000 to Jazz arena workers and other coronavirus-related services in Utah, Oklahoma and France.

I feel like people are blaming him for a lot of things when obviously he was a little careless at times, but who's to say thats necessarily the reason why thats happened? Green said, via Bleacher Report. He probably should have been more careful, but its not all his fault.

Danny Green stood up for Rudy Gobert on Saturday after the Jazz center was the first NBA player to test positive for the coronavirus. (Omar Rawlings/Getty Images)

While Green obviously doesnt want anyone to be infected, he actually thinks that Gobert catching the coronavirus ended up being a good thing not just for the sport, but for everyone in general.

If nothing else, Gobert becoming infected opened peoples eyes to how serious this pandemic actually is.

And even if Gobert hadnt have caught the coronavirus, somebody else would have.

This was going to happen regardless of whether it was going to happen to him or somebody else, Green said, via Bleacher Report. Somebody in the NBA was going to catch the virus and give us a wakeup call.

I think it was needed. It was necessary for us not just for the basketball world but for the rest of the world to take it seriously But this wouldnt have happened if Rudy [hadnt] caught it. So Im glad that things happened the way he did.

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Danny Green defends Rudy Gobert after coronavirus diagnosis: It could have happened to anybody - Yahoo Sports

As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States continues to rise and a flood of cases in other countries show the potential danger in a surge of infected patients, hospitals across the country are preparing for the worst.

Dr. Jeffrey Smith, chief operating officer for Cedars-Sinai, the esteemed Los Angeles medical center, told Yahoo News that his hospital is already starting to scale up its coronavirus response, although Los Angeles has only around 40 confirmed cases. That number is expected to increase rapidly in coming days, and Smith said Cedars-Sinai was sharing its best practices with other hospitals in the region.

He emphasizedthat containment measures including social distancing and cancellation of public events are crucial to avoiding a large spike in cases that could overwhelm the health care system.

Epidemiologists recognize that the coronavirus is likely to eventually infect a large swath of the population, and that older people in particular are likely to get sick, and some will die. The emphasis now is on slowing the spread to extend that outcome over weeks and months, giving hospitals and clinics time to prepare and avoiding a sudden surge in cases that could exceed their capacity.

The social engineering methods that were putting in place canceling schools, canceling large gatherings to decrease the rate of spread, thats really important to avoid a big rapid spike in cases, including critically ill cases that could tax our entire health system, including the availability of ventilators, patient rooms and critical-care resources, said Smith.

According to Centers for Disease Control projections from last month reviewed by the New York Times, 2.4 million to 21 million people in the United States could require hospitalization, with as many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people dying in an epidemic that could last for a few months or over a year.

On Thursday, Cedars-Sinai set up a screening area in the parking lot outside the emergency room. This is also when they started to see an increase in patients with respiratory problems coughing and shortness of breath that along with fever are the presenting symptoms of COVID-19. Smith said that that allows them to keep the infected away from the general intake of those dealing non-coronavirus-related illnesses.

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In order to protect staff members, patients who are suspected of having the virus are given masks to reduce the spread of droplets that could transmit the disease. Smith said that the mask supplies are an ongoing challenge.

Weve been working with local and federal officials to gain access to potential stockpiles to make sure we have an adequate supply, said Smith. One of the things that weve done is were managing the distribution of the personal protective equipment very tightly so that people arent hoarding or potentially stealing it. We make sure the people who need to have the equipment really do have it and we want to make sure that it is being used in the appropriate circumstances but not being overused by the patients where its not necessary.

The CDC has already allowed hospitals to relax their protocols for use of protective masks allowing medical personnel to use regular surgical masks in some situations, owing to a shortage of the more protective N95 masks. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said up to 5 million of the masks in the National Strategic Stockpile could be past their expiration dates.

The hospital is also keeping a log of every staff member who enters or exits the room of a suspected coronavirus patient, to ensure that quarantines are imposed when necessary, and only when necessary. Smith said theyre attempting to secure additional staffing, but there are problems outside the hospitals control, including school closures, which put pressure on staff members to find childcare.

At present, tests take 24 to 48 hours for results, and the hospital is only testing patients who are most at risk. To avoid its emergency department being overrun, Cedars-Sinai is screening patients by phone and if their symptoms suggest they are infected,they are referred to a central testing area at a clinic the hospital commandeered to further reduce the potential for transmission of the virus.

Experts warn that the U.S. needs to prepare for a worst-case scenario similar to the experience of Italy, where the health system is running out of hospital beds for patients sick with COVID-19. While most coronavirus infections are mild and do not require hospitalization, severely affected patients may require weeks on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. Care for patients with non-coronavirus-related ailments may suffer.

The Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins University estimated last month that the U.S. has a total of 160,000 ventilators deployed in health care facilities, with at least an additional 8,900 in the national stockpile. In an interview Thursday night, Seema Verma, administrator of the White House Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, refused to answer questions about whether the country had enough ventilators.

The stockpile is there and we hope that it is adequate, Verma told CNN on Friday. But I think it is important to know thats why were focusing so much on the prevention of this and trying to mitigate the spread so we dont create a situation where our whole health care system is unduly stressed.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, called Vermas comments stunning and nonsense.

We are so incredibly underprepared for a major onslaught to hospitals, which is basically now inevitable, Redlener said. We have to look at Italy and see what happened and I think were actually in worse shape. We dont have enough hospital beds, we dont have enough ICU beds. And by the way, even if we had the 100,000-plus ventilators that we actually need, we dont have the staff to operate them.

The potential deluge of patients is something that worries Smith, who said that social distancing and bans on large gatherings are critical in avoiding the breakdown of the health care system.

We are really concerned when we talk to colleagues in Italy or other European countries to hear about some of the hard choices theyve had to make in rationing care in certain circumstances, said Smith. Were working really hard to make sure were able to provide care for all patients and thats going to require a significant community-wide effort. Were not even close to that point yet and were working hard never to get there but that would be our concern: At some point, wed have to make some very difficult ethical decisions about who would benefit from care.

Some areas of the country could already be dealing with the worst: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff said Friday night that a Seattle-area hospital sent out a note to staff that it was suspending elective surgery along with a warning that "our local COVID-19 trajectory is likely to be similar to that of Northern Italy. Kristoff added that the hospital is down to a four-day supply of gloves.

Smith said there are plans in place at Cedars-Sinai if the surge comes, including co-locating coronavirus patients in certain areas of the hospital, canceling elective surgeries that would free up staffers from departments and further reducing outpatient care not related to the virus. He said they have an adequate number of ventilators now and are working to make sure they have a line to governmental caches if necessary. Theyre also taking precautions with visitors, blocking anyone showing signs of coronavirus, which can be distressing for those wanting to spend time with loved ones, particularly those who are older or otherwise physically compromised.

Concerns of a systemic breakdown due to a spike in patients is shared widely. An analysis published by Harvards T.H. Chan School of Public Health on the potential demand faced by U.S. hospitals found that, in order to accommodate an outbreak similar to the one in Wuhan, the U.S. would likely need three times the number of unoccupied intensive care unit beds that are typically available here now.

Plans are urgently needed to mitigate the effect of COVID-19 outbreaks on the local health care system in U.S. cities, the authors of the analysis concluded.

I think cities need to act to reduce social distance, promptly isolate cases and/or quarantine contacts before hospital capacity is reached, because by the time maximum capacity is needed, it means in the next 5 to 7 days the hospitals are going to expect double the number of severe patients, Ruoran Li, a graduate student at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and one of the authors of the analysis, said in an email to Yahoo News. So prepare now to avoid surprises.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some major health systems, such as the Ohio-based Cleveland Clinic, have contingency plans in place to increase bed capacity to accommodate a potential influx of coronavirus patients, including suspending elective procedures and using either a nearby hotel or field hospital to set up additional hospital beds.

On Thursday, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics announced new measures to address growing numbers of coronavirus infections as an example of steps many hospitals may need to take. These include arranging video visits for patients with flu or coronavirus-like symptoms, and dedicated screening clinics in which patients can be tested after their video consultations. New visitor restrictions have also been put in place at all University of Iowa health care facilities, limiting visitors to two healthy adults per patient and prohibiting any visitors who exhibit flu-like symptoms and urging people with various other symptoms to postpone visits. Additional measures to conserve personal protective equipment for staff, such as face masks, gloves and hand sanitizer, have also been implemented.

Worst-case scenarios may be avoided, if government leaders, health care professionals and everyday citizens take appropriate measures. Joe DeRisi, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at University of California-San Francisco, told Yahoo News, The introduction of human behavior modifications [social distancing], possible drugs, and even vaccines may alter the course of this pandemic significantly, thus making any sort of predictions a constant moving target.

While Cedars-Sinai is financially stable, Smith said other hospitals are likely to need government intervention because the things they do to make money elective procedures and outpatient appointments are being cut to make time for the costly fight against the pandemic. Thats the reality for Cedars-Sinai and every other hospital treating this disease: If experts are correct and social distancing prevents a spike in cases that overwhelms the system obviously desirable the U.S. could still be dealing with coronavirus infections for months to come, as infections spread more gradually, but inexorably, through the population.

This certainly is very stressful for our caregivers, although were highly trained and skilled and take care of sick patients all the time, our staff is worried about their families, said Smith. Already, especially among our leadership and epidemiology staff and others who have been caring for these patients and making sure we have these systems in place, were getting exhausted already, so managing that energy level is really going to be important. Spreading that burden and taking care of each other is going to be really important throughout this.

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While the world tries its best to fight the recent coronavirus outbreak, model and actress Brigitte Nielsen says shed be willing to get infected on purpose for a price.

Nielsen joined the panel of The Talk as a guest co-host on Tuesday and weighed in on the recent news that a medical testing company in London, Hvivo, is looking to pay volunteers around $4,500 to participate in a vaccine trial that would require them to be infected with a strain of coronavirus.

If I was in my 20s [and] feeling healthy I would definitely be a guinea pig, said Nielsen.

She continued, In my 20s I could need the money and I feel like if youve gotta get infected, do it when youre overlooked by doctors.

Panelist Marie Osmond echoed Nielsens sentiment.

I would have in my 20s, she said. I would do that just to help other people, I would.

Viewers headed to Twitter to weigh in on Nielsen and Osmonds willingness to take one for the team, with some saying they didnt exactly feel the same way:

But others wrote it didnt seem like a bad offer:

Watch Meghan McCain say the media treated Elizabeth Warren differently because she's a woman:

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Brigitte Nielsen says she would purposely be infected with coronavirus if she got paid: 'I would do it' - Yahoo Entertainment

The NCAA took the drastic step of closing the NCAA mens and womens basketball tournaments to the public.

The governing body made the announcement Wednesday afternoon as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus.

NCAA president Mark Emmert said in a statement:

The NCAA continues to assess the impact of COVID-19 in consultation with public health officials and our COVID-19 advisory panel. Based on their advice and my discussions with the NCAA board of governors, I have made the decision to conduct our upcoming championship events, including the Division I mens and womens basketball tournaments, with only essential staff and limited family attendance. While I understand how disappointing this is for all fans of our sports, my decision is based on the current understanding of how COVID-19 is progressing in the United States.

Emmerts statement came after the NCAA issued a statement saying that it recommended against sporting events being open to the public.

The mens Final Four is currently set to be held at Atlantas Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which seats over 70,000. The NCAA could move the games to a smaller venue because the stadium would be virtually empty. The first- and second-round games, which begin on March 19, are set to proceed as scheduled in the host cities.

CBS and Turner plan to broadcast the tournament as originally scheduled.

We support the NCAAs decision to proceed without fans at the tournament venues. We will continue with our plans to fully produce and cover the entire event, CBS Sports and Turner Sports said in a joint statement.

In the hours after the NCAA made its decision, the Big Ten and Big 12 both announced that they will limit access to their tournaments starting Thursday. Both conference basketball tournaments began with fans in the stands on Wednesday evening.

The Big Ten specified that attendance will be limited to student-athletes, coaches, event staff, essential team and conference staff, TV network partners, credentialed media, and immediate family members of the participating teams.

The Big 12 will take a similar approach, commissioner Bob Bowlsby told reporters.

The ACC, AAC, SEC, Big East and Pac-12 followed suit hours later.

The Big West and MAC made the decision to hold their tournaments without fans Tuesday. The Ivy League opted to cancel its mens and womens postseason basketball tournaments altogether. The move meant the Yale mens team, the regular-season winner of the league, will represent the Ivy League in the NCAA tournament. Princeton will represent the womens side.

Emmerts statement also came hours after Ohio banned gatherings of large groups. The NCAAs first four games of the mens tournament are scheduled to be held in Dayton on Tuesday and March 18, and would have been played under a state decree for no general fan attendance without a move by the NCAA.

The city of Houston canceled the remainder of the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show on Wednesday after a man who tested positive for the coronavirus attended a barbecue at the event. The city is set to host the South Regional finals of the mens tournament on March 27 and 29.

The NIT will also be held without fans. The consolation tournament for the mens basketball teams who missed out on the Big Dance is run by the NCAA.

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The NCAA is the first sports governing body to make a widespread decree to play games without fans. While local government orders will impact NBA games in San Francisco and MLB games in Seattle, the college governing body could be the first of many entities to institute its own rules to help contain the virus as it spreads across the country.

A view of the March Madness logo on center court before of an NCAA Midwest Regional Sweet Sixteen game in 2019. (Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Nick Brombergis a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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NCAA tournament games will be played with no fans in the stands, just 'essential staff' and select family members - Yahoo Sports

The capitalistic system as it stands has been incredibly kind to perhaps one of the very best turnaround CEOs of the last decade, former Best Buy head honcho Hubert Joly. But even he acknowledges that changes to that system are long overdue.

Milton Friedman is dead, Joly told Yahoo Finance in an interview.

Continued Joly, We need companies to pursue a noble purpose and good things for other stakeholders, the customers, the suppliers, the vendors, the communities the environments. Shareholders profit is an outcome and thats a revolutionary approach.

Joly is an interesting test case on a different kind of capitalism getting the job done. Now executive chairman of Best Buy (Joly will hand the position over to former Dominos Pizza CEO and board member Patrick Doyle in June), the French-born Joly never seemed to be the typical CEO who sits in the ivory tower and bark orders to underlings and store associates. Joly ceded the CEO role to Corie Barry in June 2019 after a seven-year run. Instead, Joly always came across based on my knowledge of covering Best Buy and in talking with various sources as quite engaging, a champion of hourly store workers and a deep believer in that doing things right would lead to a stock price that heads up and to the right.

Now that Joly has a touch more time on his hands (he is on the boards of Polo Ralph Lauren and Johnson & Johnson, and is writing a book), he has tossed his hat into the ring of top executives calling out capitalism as in badly need of reform.

In August 2019, the influential Business Roundtable ignited a firestorm by doing away with its shareholder comes first mantra. The new mantra is that companies should put shareholders on par with other stakeholders like suppliers and average employees.

"We know that many Americans are struggling. Too often hard work is not rewarded, and not enough is being done for workers to adjust to the rapid pace of change in the economy. If companies fail to recognize that the success of our system is dependent on inclusive long-term growth, many will raise legitimate questions about the role of large employers in our society," a statement from the Business Roundtable stated.

Hubert Joly just got the job done at Best Buy. Bottom line. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Samsung)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, now former chairman of the Business Roundtable (Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has taken over), threw his weight behind the statement. "The American dream is alive, but fraying," Dimon said.

A host of other big-name leaders also threw their weight behind the view capitalism must reform in Yahoo Finances coverage of the 2020 World Economic Forum.

To say Jolys refreshing approach to driving shareholder returns worked is a gross understatement. So as far as I am concerned, his views are dead on the mark. Something has to change in Corporate America.

Jolys tenure atop of Best Buy was not just marked by saving a retailer under siege from Amazon and its own internal missteps, but re-imagining the business from end to end. Some of the highlights include significantly improving customer service (adding more staff to the stores, for example), pricing matching online rivals, reducing the likelihood of broken TVs upon delivery to the store from the warehouse, adding branded shops from Samsung and driving a successful launch of a buy online, ship from store.

Towards the end of his CEO reign, Joly pulled the trigger on a transformational $800 million acquisition in Great Call that brought Best Buy into senior living care. Heck, even Geek Squad is easier to use.

Billions of dollars in expenses were slashed despite a lack of rampant store closures. Joly boosted sales, boosted profits even more and perhaps boosted employee morale even more than both of those percentage changes on a financial statement. A lot could be said for all of those achievements in an often thankless retail sector being upended by digital shopping.

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Former Best Buy CEO: Companies should 'pursue a noble purpose and good things' - Yahoo Finance

The stock market has been obliterated. And indeed there is enough blame to go around.

One could blame the growing coronavirus pandemic and Chinas failed containment measures. Blame could be thrown to an impotent response by the Trump administration. You could even cast some shade at the Federal Reserve for not pulling out the bazooka to clobber the rapidly spreading risk asset selloff.

This week alone, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shed more than 4,000 points and is now in bear market. The S&P 500 is in bear market after a disastrous Friday session. Indias Sensex is in bear market. The MSCI All Country World Index is in bear market. Perceived safe-haven stocks such as Pfizer, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Apple, American Express and JPMorgan continued to be dumped hand over fist by freaked out investors.

The fact is the bear market is here its alive and hungry to eat up more of your portfolio (what is left of it). Several pros talk with Yahoo Finance about what they are currently telling anxious clients.

We see that with our clients right now, there is so much fear the phones are off the hook these days, Sun said on Yahoo Finances The First Trade. I dont think it [coronavirus] is fully priced into markets right now, there is a lot more we dont know.

Sun says her clients have a lack of confidence in the government right now.

There is total panic here. Clients fall into two categories. The first being I am a little bit older, closer to retirement, and they are really panicking because their portfolios are down heavy. Our younger clients have time on their hands and maybe its a time to add more to invest for retirement which I am not ready for.

Sun says the situation in markets is on the chaotic side currently, and pulling the trigger on buying stocks at cheaper prices isnt necessarily the right attack plan.

We are saying [to clients] indeed there is very little visibility, and that is part of what the market is reacting to. So we do expect a bit of a longer period here in the markets. It doesnt mean it goes down everyday, it goes up a lot one day and down a lot the next day without a very clear trend until we get more visibility.

In terms of do I need to do anything right now completely depends on how portfolios are positioned to start the year in terms of time horizon. But overall we are advising clients to be prepared for a difficult short-term here so adding protection whether its cash, Treasuries, gold, and safe-haven currencies. But also positioning for an eventual rebound.

Santos does believe stocks will rebound in 2021.

The problem is, if you are asking someone to take a leap you are not telling them how deep the hole is. We dont know, this is a health care crisis at its core. I think the reason you are seeing response from central banks and in the presidents speech last night, its not a solution yet to the health care crisis.

What we are looking for is not a certain number for jobless claims or the unemployment rate moving up or down, its really when do we start seeing a slowdown in the number of new coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe. And until we see that, I dont think we will be increasing risk at all. At the same time, we came into this relatively defensively positioned in the credit and equity markets so I dont get the sense our portfolio managers are paring back risk even more. But are we bottom feeding and trying to search for name that have been beaten up in energy, industrials and materials not until we see there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

On a day where we are having such large down movements, you want to be extremely cautious. I am not sure we would go [into the market] today. We would really like to see how things shake out through the day when we have more information coming out of the administration or central banks.

Programming note: Yahoo Finances The First Trade will be live on Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET with the best markets analysis and investing insight in the game. Its time to protect your money, and we have your back.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and co-anchor of The First Trade at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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How to invest when the coronavirus pandemic and Trump send the Dow crashing: experts - Yahoo Finance

I remember the Crash of 1987. I was a 27-year-old reporter at Fortune Magazine at the time, and thirty-three years later that day still sticks with me.

Of course the reason I bring this up is because today, Thursday March 12, 2020, we just suffered through the biggest stock market decline since that crash, October 19,1987. The latter now immortalized as Black Monday, with the Dow (^DJI) declining 509 points or 22.6%

Today the Dow fell 2352.6 points or 9.99%. It doesnt have a name yet, (Nasty Thursday?) and maybe never will, but it already lives in infamy.

Black Monday was different from today in all kinds of ways. For one thing there was no Internet, so there was less information sloshing around and it traveled slower. Still, we could watch the market action minute-by-minute on tickers, Quotron machines and the Financial News Network.

At the end of the day, I remember older writers walking out of their offices in a daze. I was stunned too. I felt like someone had hit my head with a board. You could almost see the smoke drifting through the halls of the old Time Life Building on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan.

Hey, you think today is bad. Black Monday was TWICE as bad!

After work I had a number of beers at a Wall Street bar with my friend George who worked on the options desk at Drexel Burnham Lambert.

It was program trading dude, he told me. Huh? Never heard of it.

The New York Stock Exchange trading floor is jammed with traders in this October 19, 1987 file photo as stocks plunged in the biggest one-day selloff in history. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

And he explained to me how a bunch of computer guys at Drexel (and other places) would buy a basket of 500 stocks that matched the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and then pair trades between the basket and the index.

And the whole thing went way the hell out of whack, he told me.

Later it was confirmed that program trading, among some other factors, was in fact a culprit. And because of early computer trading, and the carnage created by Black Monday and its aftermath, the NYSE instituted circuit breakers.

Which brings us back to today, because those same circuit breakers have only been employed twice since then. On Monday of this week. And today, Nasty Thursday.

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Here's what connects the Crash of 1987 with the Crash of 2020 - Yahoo Finance

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

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Financial market stress that has been building for weeks reached a new fever pitch on Monday.

The stock market was halted Monday morning after the S&P 500 dropped 7% in the opening minutes of Mondays session, triggering a market-wide circuit breaker that resulted in a 15-minute pause in trading. The last market-wide circuit breaker was triggered in December 2008 during the depths of the financial crisis.

And so as confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to rise and measures are taken to limit travel, commuting, and the economic status quo fails to hold, the outlook for the global economy continues to darken.

Financial markets have adopted a crisis posture, leaving strategists and economists now braced for a downturn and potential recession in the first half of the year.

We have not been bearish on the economy in years (maybe mid-2012), but it is hard to be bullish right now: the spring of 2020 is not going to be pleasant, said Neil Dutta at Renaissance Macro in a note to clients published Monday.

The economy appears [to be] hitting a dead-spot in March as the coronavirus spreads and as social distancing and self-quarantine measures take hold, Dutta writes. This will cascade across the services economy and weigh on economic activity how long remains to be seen.

This dead-spot has pressed the Federal Reserve into action, with the central bank cutting interest rates by 50 basis points last Tuesday. Rates markets now assign a greater than 60% chance that the Fed cuts rates by 100 basis points at its meeting next week, according to data from the CME Group.

The Trump administration, however, has been more cautious than the Fed in its initial response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Last week, the White House passed an $8.3 billion spending package last week, though the president continued on Monday to downplay the severity of the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump in a tweet blamed Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the Fake News for Mondays drop in the market, and in a separate tweet said nothing is shut down while comparing the coronavirus to the common flu. Last week, the World Health Organization said COVID-19 is a more severe disease than the seasonal flu, and warnings from U.S. officials have been repeatedly contradicted by Trump.

Trump, not Powell, is behind the curve, Dutta writes.

U.S. President Donald Trump walks toward the Oval Office after exiting Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The fiscal response has been [disappointing], Dutta adds. While the President recently signed an $8.3 billion emergency spending package, testing for the virus has been lagging...Treat this like a natural disaster.

And indeed, the Feds reaction to coronavirus has underscored for many economists the need for a bigger fiscal response from the government. Whether lawmakers will grow more aggressive in throwing money at economic and health care impacts from the virus remains to be seen.

Events in the past week have underscored the limits of monetary policy in addressing the crisis, said Ethan Harris, an economist at Bank of America Global Research.

The bottom line is that investors should not be counting on central banks to save us from the virus shock, Harris added. In this crisis, central banks are the last line of defense after health care policy and fiscal policy. Indeed, the Fed's emergency cut may have done more harm than good.

ByMyles Udland, reporter and co-anchor ofThe Final Round. Follow him at@MylesUdland

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During a trip organized by Saudi information ministry, a hole in a part of a separator is seen on the ground as worker fix the damage in Aramco's oil separator at processing facility after the recent Sept. 14 attack in Abqaiq, near Dammam in the Kingdom's Eastern Province, Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. Saudi Arabia allowed journalists access Friday to the site of a missile-and-drone attack on a facility at the heart of the kingdom's oil industry, an assault that disrupted global energy supplies and further raised tensions between the U.S. and Iran. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

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Oil prices recover as Trump and other world leaders plan stimulus [Yahoo Finance UK]

Chinas inflation slows as coronavirus locks down economy [Bloomberg]

Coronavirus response: Washington debates a big coronavirus stimulus [Yahoo Finance]

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Why Trump is behind the curve on coronavirus: Morning Brief - Yahoo Finance

1. Yahoo Sports likes this free agent fit for Buffalo

NFL free agency is getting closer and closer to starting. Yahoo examined 20 of the most notable free agents on the market and paired them with their most logical landing spots. For Buffalo, it's a reunion with a player who was commonly linked as a trade candidate during the beginning of the 2019 season.

Lauded far more by advanced metrics than traditional counting stats, Jadeveon Clowney is going to find a big payday this March. Despite injuries and a low sack total, Clowney made his presence felt in big moments for Seattle. Pete Carroll and co. may well go hard to retain him but if he gets to the open market, someone will wave off the negatives with Clowney and fork over the cash.

Logical fit: Buffalo Bills

After making it to the playoffs in Josh Allen's second season, the typically conservative Bills now have all the incentive in the world to get aggressive this offseason and try to make it over the hump. Buffalo has the makings of a fine platoon in their edge defender ranks but Clowney would immediately give them a cornerstone presence. With the third-most cap space in the NFL and with Allen on a rookie deal, they have the money to burn.

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Bills Today | Yahoo Sports likes this free agent fit for Buffalo - BuffaloBills.com

BetMGM is aiming to boost customer acquisition through its Yahoo Sports partnership by tying the products together more seamlessly.

That means introducing a single wallet and single account across Yahoo Fantasy and BetMGM to ease cross-sell.

At present, customers for the so-called Yahoo Sportsbook in New Jersey are redirected to BetMGM and asked to create a new account.

That lack of a single wallet was a key reason some analysts suggested Yahoo players wouldnt convert as readily as FanDuels and DraftKings players.

A full shared wallet is still a ways off and pending regulatory approval, but thats the ultimate goal, GVC said. GVC is the co-parent of BetMGM operator Roar Digital.

Were looking for the deepest integration possible that fits our respective licensing statuses, said Adam Greenblatt, CEO of Roar.

Beyond just Yahoo Fantasy players, BetMGM is eyeing closer integration with Yahoo Sports and its 64 million monthly unique viewers.

The agreement with Yahoo Sports represents a significant step forward, said GVC in its FY19 earnings call.

The improved Yahoo integration is one of several customer acquisition strategies laid out today by GVC. The firm is also planning to integrate BetMGM with MGMs M life rewards system in April.

It means visitors to MGMs nine Las Vegas properties will be incentivized to download the BetMGM app and place a wager.

That could reach roughly 7 million visitors annually, with MGM properties accounting for 45% of rooms of the Las Vegas strip.

When those customers return to their home state, we can continue to market to them and they can become loyal customers, said Shay Segev, GVCs COO.

Segev said GVCs extensive experience would help the process with omnichannel operations in the UK in its Coral and Ladbrokes shops.

In Q4, Roar said it started to see the benefit of an established management team, efficient marketing and its proprietary tech.

Total gross gaming revenue was up 55% in Q4, while digital gross gaming revenue (68% of the mix) was up 137%. Similar growth was seen in New Jersey.

GVC results presentation

GVC was bullish on Roars prospects for 2020, saying it would be live in at least 11 states, equivalent to circa 20% of the US population.

That could include launches in Colorado, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Tennessee.

In fact, GVC said the launch in Michigan was imminent, with self-service betting terminals already being installed in the MGM Grand in Detroit in preparation for March Madness betting.

GVC took a $16 million loss from its share of the JVs 2019 result.That equates to a total loss of $32 million for the JV as a whole.

The operator also warned of a greater loss in 2020, equivalent to $26 million-$38 million per parent.

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BetMGM To Boost Yahoo Sports Cross-Sell With Shared Wallet - Legal Sports Report