In January, when Loren first told her students about an unknown virus that was infecting thousands of people in China, her students stared at her. That sounded bizarre and otherworldly to them—an invisible body that attacks and kills people in Asia? What did that have to do with them? They had a hard time comprehending it, and not just because all of Loren’s students have moderate to severe autism. Most Americans, including Loren herself, didn’t yet take COVID-19 very seriously at the time.

On a typical day, République’s Gothic-style dining room hums with the din of clinking glasses, scraping forks, and conversations over eclectic fare such as kimchi fried rice with beef short rib and heirloom tomato salad. As an all-day restaurant in Los Angeles that shifts from morning pastry pick-ups to business lunch breaks to celebratory dinners, silence is a rare guest at République—until a pandemic completely shut down the city’s dining scene. 

On a drizzly Tuesday morning in South Los Angeles, the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center mobile clinic had two tents set up for their walk-in patients: One for incoming patients and another to isolate patients who show symptoms of COVID-19 such as coughing, fever, and shortness of breath. Most of these patients are homeless. 

On Sunday, my fiancé, David, and I sent an email to our wedding guests and informed them that we are canceling our wedding on April 25. The last few weeks, we had been watching the increasingly alarming news about COVID-19 with dread coiling in our guts, wondering how this virus will impact what’s supposed to be the happiest day of our lives. We, like the thousands of other engaged couples across the nation, faced an agonizing dilemma: Do we cancel or postpone our wedding and potentially lose tons of money, or do we continue with our plans and lose valued guests? 

By early March the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 respiratory disease had spread to more than 110 countries and topped 118,000 cases worldwide. Three-­quarters of its 4,000 deaths had occurred in China, but non-China cases began multiplying.

COVID-19 first struck the United States in the Seattle area. After the first deaths came at a nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., in late February, authorities decided to close schools in an “abundance of caution.” 

Like many of the other half-million Californians  driving Uber and Lyft, Freddy Perez liked earning some extra cash as a rideshare driver to supplement his main income. He worked about 30 hours a week subcontracting as a fenestration testing technician, so on his off days, he would pick up Uber or Lyft passengers in his 2012 Honda Insight, earning about $18 to $20 an hour.

Since I started reporting on homelessness three years ago, I’ve been learning a lot about poverty—who it affects, why it happens, and how it keeps someone there for a long, long time. One common thread I’ve seen among people experiencing homelessness is a lack of social support. Without consistent, empowering, dignity-giving help, it’s almost impossible for someone to lift themselves out of poverty, because the entire system works against them.