Coronavirus Gives Schools a Lesson in Fear

  • No infection, but plenty of panic, at one Philadelphia school
  • Petitions elsewhere seek to close districts and universities

A woman wears a facemask a she picks up a child at a school in Alhambra, California.

Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

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By the time the good news arrived from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was too late.

A teenage exchange student, in Philadelphia for two weeks from China, had fallen ill and then tested negative for the coronavirus. But anxiety had already proved the stronger contagion.