If you create an account the corona virus articles are free.
if you block third party scripts (from nyt.com in this case) it just shows the whole article
Tracking you makes it very much not free.
You can block those trackers.
If this is what u mean U saw, "Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode.", then u could be in a private browsing-mode, and hence u could not go further than first para.
Edit: spelling