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The week before Thanksgiving, Barbara O’Donnell came down with a wretched cough. “It was just really bad, and it was constant,” says O’Donnell, 62. “I would turn purple,” gasping for breath. She could barely walk up the hills near her home outside of Philadelphia. Though she is a smoker, she was healthy and strong — “I don’t get the flu, ever” — and had never experienced anything like this before. (Judkis, 5/6)

Even before the coronavirus hit, cystic fibrosis meant a cold could put Jacob Hansen in the hospital for weeks. He relies on hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes to stay healthy because he also has cerebral palsy and can’t easily wash his hands from his wheelchair, but these days shelves are often bare. For millions of disabled people and their families, the coronavirus crisis has piled on new difficulties and ramped up those that already existed. (Whitehurst, 5/6)

Home schooling, the new parental chore brought about by coronavirus lockdowns, is being handled disproportionately by women, according to a new poll by Morning Consult for The New York Times. Fathers don’t necessarily agree — nearly half of those with children under 12 report spending more time on it than their spouse — but just 3 percent of women say their spouse is doing more. Eighty percent of mothers say they spend more time on it. (Miller, 5/6)

When everything began shutting down back in March, Steve Wiens thought he would be leading church via Zoom for two, maybe four, weeks. Members of his church, Genesis Covenant in Robbinsdale, Minn., rose to the challenge. They celebrated the Eucharist from their kitchens, with coffee and doughnuts, Capri Sun and Oreos. They divided themselves into small groups across town to keep tabs of who needed groceries or supplies. (Dias, 5/7)

San Francisco is using private donations to deliver alcohol, tobacco and medical marijuana to a few dozen people dealing with addiction as they isolate or quarantine in city-leased hotel rooms during the pandemic, officials confirmed Wednesday. There are about 270 people, mostly homeless, staying in hotel rooms to recover from COVID-19 or to wait out possible exposure to the virus. Nearly a dozen people have received alcohol and more than two dozen have received tobacco, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. (5/7)

Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. (Steinberg, 5/7)

Black people make up a disproportionate share of the population in 22 percent of U.S. counties, and those localities account for more than half of coronavirus cases and nearly 60 percent of deaths, a national study by an AIDS research group found. The study also found that socioeconomic factors such as employment status and access to health care were better predictors of infection and death rates than underlying health conditions. (Williams, 5/6)

Dr. Richard Besser, the former acting director of the​ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during part of the first term of the Obama administration, said that he worries as states continue their push to reopen communities of color will begin to see more “bad outcomes” since the virus disproportionately impacts them. “I worry, though, that as states start to open up, their economies, get more people back to work, which is something everyone wants to see happen,” Besser, a former medical editor at ABC News, said on the 'Powerhouse Politics' podcast. (Cunningham, 5/6)

In hospitals around the world, doctors are shaking their heads in disbelief as they watch Covid-19 patients who should be comatose or "seizing" from hypoxia -- a lack of oxygen in the body's tissues -- check social media, chat with nurses and barely complain of discomfort while breathing. Some have dubbed them "happy hypoxics," a terrible misnomer for what could be a long, slow recovery -- or worse. The proper medical term is "silent hypoxia." It happens when people are unaware they are being deprived of oxygen and are therefore showing up to the hospital in much worse health than they realize. (LaMotte, 5/6)

When he arrived at the bedside, the emergency physician found a problem he could only half-solve. He could check the patient’s oxygen level and listen to her breathing. He could evaluate whether she needed to be put on a ventilator. But he couldn’t bring back the family member she’d just lost to Covid-19, nor could he promise she would be fine now that her own coronavirus symptoms were worsening. (Boodman, 5/7)

Earlier this month, Dia Sue-Wah-Sing faced a dilemma. The 41-year-old living in Toronto had a history of kidney stones. She had been feeling some renal colic symptoms recently, a type of pain that can indicate the stones are worsening. But during the coronavirus pandemic, routine medical appointments get a little more complicated. Was it worth it to go in? "It was a solid 'maybe,'" she said. (Prior, 5/7)

Up to 1 in 7 women are diagnosed with postpartum depression, according to the American Psychological Association, while up to 4 in 5 experience feelings of sadness euphemistically referred to as the “baby blues.” These women in need are frequently left to navigate mental health problems on their own. A 2013 survey sponsored by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that 63 percent of respondents with indicators of depression never received treatment. And a bad situation is now getting worse. During this pandemic, new mothers are feeling especially isolated, scared, and overwhelmed, says Ann Smith, board president of the nonprofit Postpartum Support International. (Lipson, 5/6)

Doctors and scientists are discovering two common characteristics among many of those who are losing their battle with COVID-19 — they are overweight or obese and suffer from a chronic disease. Ninety four percent of deaths from COVID-19 are in those with an underlying age-related chronic disease, mostly caused by excess body fat. (Mark Hyman and Dariush Mozaffarian, 5/7)

Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, laid out "10 plain truths" about Covid-19 on Wednesday as he spoke at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the pandemic response. "In my 30 years in global public health, I've never seen anything like this," Frieden, who now serves as president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, said. "It's scary. It's unprecedented." (Kim and Watts, 5/6)