Yuki Noguchi

Alexea Gaffney battles health issues every day on multiple fronts. As an infectious disease doctor in Stony Brook, N.Y., she treats patients who have COVID-19. And two years ago, at age 37, she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

As a result, the physician and single mom, who is also home-schooling her 8-year-old daughter these days, is still under medical treatment for the cancer. And that makes her more vulnerable to the virus.

Blake Blackmon and his fiancée, Jessica Cournoyer, recently welcomed their second child, a cherubic-cheeked good sleeper name Beau. He entered the world last month after a quick labor, arriving almost before nurses were ready.

"As soon as the first push happened, she said, "No, no, no, stop, stop, stop! Baby's already crowning," Blackmon recalls a nurse telling Cournoyer. A team of nurses rushed in.

Audrey just turned 18 and relishes crossing into adulthood: She voted for the first time this year, graduated high school and is college-bound next month. The honors student typically wakes up "a bundle of nerves," she says, which had fueled her work volunteering, playing varsity sports and leading student government.

But for years, she also struggled with anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder — all of which drove her to work harder.

Two decades of life experience made a mental-health activist of Kai Koerber. When he was 16 and a student at a Parkland, Fla., high school, a gunman killed 17 people, including one his friends.

"I really did suffer a domestic terrorist attack, and that's not something that happens to you every day," Koerber says.

Fewer patients in recent months have been showing up for drug and alcohol treatment at REACH Health Services in Baltimore. But Dr. Yngvild Olsen, the medical director there, suspects it's not for good reasons: Some have likely relapsed or delayed drug and alcohol addiction treatment, while others likely fear infection and have stayed home.

During lockdown, Kiesha Preston has heard from many people facing physical, psychological and/or sexual abuse that the violence against them is escalating without reprieve.

As the country went into quarantine in March, many of Joseph DeSanto's opioid-addicted patients in Orange County, Calif., told him their supply was drying up because drug dealers in the area were worried about a border shutdown and were retreating to their hometowns in Mexico.

"So we lost a lot of our larger dealers that supplied the smaller dealers," says DeSanto, an addiction specialist.

Mental health specialists are working now to bolster the resilience of Americans who are suffering from feelings of despair — in hopes of preventing increases in suicides among people who are under increased pressure during the coronavirus pandemic.

Time is of the essence, public health researchers say. Experience with past natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, shows that a rise in suicide often happens in the months after the immediate physical dangers of the disaster have passed.

"Let's see – it's not that bad; 37 degrees," Candace Grenier says, reading the thermometer outside a window of her Anchorage home.

When the temperature gets above freezing, it's a good day. Not just because it feels better, but it's also good for the electric bill and because Grenier can no longer justify paying $50 to $70 to get her driveway plowed.

The dental practice where she has worked for two decades shut down in mid-March, just before her son, Ryeder, also lost his job at an auto body shop.

Normally, Laura Mayer helps the most acutely suicidal callers find the nearest hospital emergency room. But in a pandemic, that has become a crisis counselor's advice of last resort.

"It's a difficult decision because we do know that by sending them into an overburdened health care system, they may or may not get the treatment that they need," says Mayer, who is director of PRS CrisisLink in Oakton, Va., which also takes calls for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. "The resources may or may not be there, and we're exposing them to the illness."

DJ Haddad's virtual beer pong event for employees is the stuff of legend, drawing in 50 of his employees and lasting an epic seven hours.

Keeping up employee morale during a worldwide pandemic is a challenge, he says. Haddad is keenly aware of that as CEO of Haddad & Partners, an advertising company in Fairfield, Conn. "Everybody's on edge, like, 'Are our clients going to start slowing down or are they going to start pulling projects?' "

Dyan Navejar supports eight people on a weekly wage of $480. She's the only one in her family who's still able to work.

That's because she can do it from home, answering customer calls as a call center operator in Lexington, Ky. Her husband lost his job as a dishwasher at a restaurant.

Navejar's pay isn't nearly enough to both make rent and also feed five children and one grandchild, all living in one house. So they sometimes eat variations of the same things, like hot dogs, to try to conserve their cash.

The scene at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx is unlike anything psychiatrist Bruce Schwartz has seen. Everyone, even interns and nurses in training, have been tapped to tend to the flood of COVID-19 patients, who are crashing and dying at rates comparable to the front line of a battlefield.

Updated on April 13 at 5:06 p.m. ET

Forget living paycheck to paycheck. Many families have lost work during the pandemic and are running out of cash as they wait for unemployment checks and government rescue money to arrive.

These are highly unusual times, and family budgeting recommendations are also unconventional.

Kathy Hauer, a financial planner based in Aiken, S.C., says she's telling people to do things she has never recommended before: "Defer as many payments as possible and worry about it later."

Psychiatrist Philip Muskin is quarantined at home in New York City because he's been feeling a little under the weather and doesn't want to expose anyone to whatever he has. But he continues to see his patients the only way he can: over the phone.

A springtime stroll, baking bread or binging shows can be a tonic for a life lived in lockdown. But some workers doing their jobs remotely are carrying on by partying on, virtually.

Normally at this time of year, DJ Haddad and his co-workers run raucous rounds of college basketball competitions. "We're really missing March Madness — it's kind of a big thing on our team," says Haddad, CEO of Haddad & Partners, an advertising company in Fairfield, Conn., with nearly 70 employees around the world.

These are anxious times for people like Melvin Rodrigue, who lived through Hurricane Katrina. It destroyed his home and shut down his famed Galatoire's restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

This is far worse, he says.

"I think Katrina is going to prove to be a cakewalk compared to this," Rodrigue says. Insurance paid for his losses then. This time, it won't.

Like so many other parents around the country, I was transitioning to full-time remote work last week while preparing to support my family through a crisis.

That's when my 10-year-old son, Kenzo, came home with a large, Ziploc bag full of school supplies.

It included an iPad with various apps to enable him to attend class virtually, where his teacher will take attendance at 8 a.m. Tiny icons representing his teacher and classmates will appear in the corner of the screen. She can address the class, hear students respond and track their assignments.

The handshake, a staple of business meetings, is under siege. The coronavirus is reshaping social and workplace norms, so keeping one's distance is now the polite thing to do.

Mike Sandifer, a Realtor based in Bethesda, Md., is practicing this new, emerging etiquette. He typically offers an "elbow bump," nudging people gently with his arm. But Sandifer has to fight the deeply ingrained instinct to extend his hand.

Early one morning last week, Cindy Ruiz joined the ranks of newly remote workers, now millions strong. The financial data firm where Ruiz works in sales closed its office after reports of coronavirus cases near San Mateo, Calif.

For many, the widespread embrace of remote work is a welcome change they've always wanted. They're reacting on social media the way kids celebrate snow days: No commutes! Flexible schedule! Home-cooked lunch!

Mike Bowen's been a very busy man.

He's executive vice president of Texas-based Prestige Ameritech, one of the few manufacturers of respirators and surgical face masks still making them in the United States.

"I've got requests for maybe a billion and a half masks, if you add it up," he says. That's right — 1.5 billion.

Since the coronavirus started spreading in January, Bowen says he's gotten at least 100 calls and emails a day.

"Normally, I don't get any," he says.

Updated at 6:52 p.m. ET

The U.S. health care system is trying to be ready for possible outbreaks of the new coronavirus, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned communities this week to prepare for the kind of spread now being seen in Iran, Italy, South Korea and other areas outside the virus' epicenter in China.

Companies around the world are embracing what might seem like a radical idea: a four-day workweek.

The concept is gaining ground in places as varied as New Zealand and Russia, and it's making inroads among some American companies. Employers are seeing surprising benefits, including higher sales and profits.

Updated at 9:51 a.m. ET

The Diamond Princess cruise ship has become a symbol of a global health nightmare. To date, 175 cases of the coronavirus — the infectious disease the World Health Organization is now calling COVID-19 — have been confirmed aboard the ship.