Good morning. 😷 President Trump has suggested new guidelines to stem the spread of coronavirus, including avoiding groups of more than 10 people. San Francisco is on total lockdown and requiring everyone to stay home save for essential needs.

• Follow the NBC News live blog here.

Join the Market: 🗞️ Newsletter | 🎙️ Podcast

David Ramos/Getty

The Big Picture

'Social distancing' started long before coronavirus

Moving the Market: The coronavirus outbreak has forced many Americans to cut themselves off from society. Political leaders have called for "social distancing," and in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, so many businesses have shut down that public life has effectively stopped.

• This new state of physical isolation, while highly inconvenient, should also call attention to a deeper and far more troublesome form of social distancing that has been on the rise for several decades: psychological isolation.

The internet, social media and the always accessible smartphone did not create psychological isolation — Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" was published in 2000, and traced the breakdown in civic life to trends that began decades earlier (including TV) — but they may have accelerated it.

• Several studies have shown a rise in feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression due in part to social media. For some people, increased digital interaction has come at the cost of meaningful human interaction. Many are too distracted by their phones to connect with the people around them.

• Anecdotal evidence abounds: Strangers who sit in the same room and scroll through phones rather than talking to one another; friends who spend more time photographing their experiences than actually taking part in them; so-called activists who join movements via hashtag rather than more meaningful activism. The list goes on.

• In the short term, this psychological distancing has made us uniquely well-prepared for a physical quarantine. We have become so used to interacting via social media and getting our information and entertainment digitally that being quarantined isn't as disruptive as it may have been in, say, 1950 or 1990.

• In the long term, however, psychological isolation can be lethal. As Nicholas Kristof wrote in November, "loneliness increases inflammation, heart disease, dementia and death rates." One study he cites found that "social isolation is more lethal than smoking 15 cigarettes a day." It has also played a role in the opioid epidemic and led to increased suicide rates.

What's next: At the risk of being overly optimistic, I believe the physical isolation brought on by coronavirus will end up being a temporary antidote to our psychological isolation, if only because the ban on human interaction will make it all the more desirable.

• For the next several weeks, if not months, consumers are going to exhaust themselves with digital experiences — social media, streaming services, etc. — while being denied the analog experiences they have long taken for granted: social gatherings, dinner parties, civic activities, etc. (On the plus side, they will have an opportunity to reconnect with their immediate families.)

• By the time public life resumes, people may be more appreciative of those experiences and less likely to take them for granted. They may find, for at least a moment, that talking to people is more rewarding than scrolling through their phones, that experiencing life is more enjoyable than photographing it, and so on.

If this happens, if the winter of our social distancing inspires a spring of human interaction and a collective psychological reunion, it will probably only last for a few days or weeks. Even then, it will provide an ever so slight silver lining to the physical isolation that many of us are now being forced to endure.

🌁 Big in the Bay 🌁

Crisis call: Cisco chief Chuck Robbins held a recent call with executives from Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Netflix, etc., to "discuss ways they can use their money and vast resources to help fend off the coronavirus," CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports.

• The big picture: "The call is the latest demonstration that corporate America is escalating its effort in addressing the social, economic and health impacts of the rapidly spreading coronavirus."

Frederic J. Brown/Getty

The Next Crisis

Will WFH break the Internet?

Worst-case scenario: "As millions of people across the United States shift to working and learning from home... they will test internet networks with one of the biggest mass behavior changes that the nation has experienced," NYT's Davey Alba and Cecilia Kang write.

• The big picture: "That is set to strain the internet’s underlying infrastructure, with the burden likely to be particularly felt in two areas: the home networks that people have set up in their residences, and the home internet services... that those home networks rely on."

• "That infrastructure is generally accustomed to certain peaks of activity at specific times of the day, such as in the evening when people return from work... But the vast transfer of work and learning to people’s homes will show new heights of internet use."

What's next: "Verizon, Charter, Cox, Comcast and AT&T said they were confident they could meet the demands placed on their home internet services. ... They added that they were taking measures to help people who were working and learning from home."

Market Links

• Coronavirus rumors surge via text message (NBC)

• Andy Conrad launches Verily pilot in the Bay (WSJ)

• Tim Cook will pay a $1.2 billion fine in France (NBC)

• Bobby Kotick appoints a new comms chief (THR)

Rich Schultz/Getty

Sports Break

Roger Goodell cancels Draft

Talk of TV Land: Roger Goodell has cancelled the 2020 NFL Draft event in Las Vegas and placed an indefinite delay on off-season activities like travel by team personnel to meet with free agents.

• The big picture: The new measures raise the specter of a delay to the NFL season, which would be a major source of concern for the television networks that rely on the NFL for ratings and ad dollars.

What's next: The cancellation of the draft will also mean lost revenue for host city Las Vegas and the networks (NFL Network, ESPN and ABC) that had been planning broadcasts.

Frederic Brown/Getty

Going Dark

The box office plummets

Talk of Tinseltown: "Cinemas, already contending with streaming services, are now facing the prospect of no audiences and no new films because of the coronavirus pandemic," NYT's Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling write.

• The latest: "Ticket sales in North America hit their lowest levels in more than two decades, generating roughly $55.3 million" over the weekend, Variety's Rebecca Rubin reports. "Box office numbers have not been this low since the Sept. 2000."

• Regal Cinemas, the second-largest movie chain in the U.S., is shutting down all of its locations. AMC Entertainment, the largest movie chain, has reduced its capacity for theatergoers by 50 percent.

The big picture: The demise of movie theaters, which began well before the coronavirus pandemic, is accelerating as a result of social distancing. Meanwhile, streaming services stand to benefit with more and more people being stranded at home.

• Media analyst Rich Greenfield predicts that "most of the global exhibition business will be in bankruptcy by the end of the year.”

What's next: Universal Pictures has decided to make some of the movies currently in theaters available to rent on demand. Films like "The Invisible Man," "The Hunt" and "Emma" will be available for digital rental for $19.99, starting Friday.

🏫 What's next: Remote learning. Schools are scrambling to offer students new ways to learn from home.

See you tomorrow.