For the poor, coronavirus symptoms may include hunger, abuse and childcare crises

What are the symptoms of COVID-19? And for whom?

Put yourself in the place of a 40-year-old woman with a husband, five children between the ages of 3 and 11, and her 72-year-old mother in her family home.

Your husband worked as a cook for $11 an hour before COVID-19 hit. His restaurant has been closed since mid-March. You worked on a cleaning crew in a hotel for $10 an hour. You have been furloughed. Unemployment pay is far from enough for your family’s needs. The incentive check is long gone.

You try to clean houses but can make at most $100 a week. Your husband searches for work but says that unemployment is so high and fear of the virus so great that there are not any jobs. Your car has been repossessed, so it is hard for him to look.

Your savings are gone, and your families have no more money to lend you. You are facing eviction, and no extended family member has the space to take you in. For the first time in your life, you must rely upon a food bank. Your husband is delaying a needed surgery, and you are late to get a mammogram.

Your children have been out of school since mid-March. You cannot afford internet access and a tablet for school. How will they learn if schools don’t reopen this fall?

Your mother is going to move to be with your sister in Houston to lessen your burden. But who will take care of the children when you and your husband find work?

Your husband is sullen and emasculated. You are depressed and resentful. Your children are anxious and looking for reassurance. So, your husband drinks a lot of beer as anesthesia. He escapes to his friends’ houses, abandoning you at home every night.

One night he comes home drunk at 3 a.m. You call him worthless and a failure. He calls you a nag and worse. You’re both screaming, and the children are crying. He punches you in the face. He drags you into your bedroom by your hair. Your 11-year-old son tries to rescue you, but your husband slings him across the room, breaking the boy’s wrist. Your husband runs away.

A neighbor takes you and your son to the ER. Your son tells the nurse the truth, but you are afraid to be honest with Child Protective Services and the police. The CPS worker says you must not allow your husband back into the home. But how can your children survive without your husband when jobs come back?

The CPS worker refers you to the Methodist Justice Ministry to file for a protective order, a divorce and child support. CPS threatens to take your children away if you fail to follow through.

Is there no chance for a return to the way things were before the pandemic? Your husband crossed a wide, deep line. You have some wrenching decisions to make.

This is the kind of plight that has been brought to us at the Methodist Justice Ministry daily since COVID-19 hit. For 14 years, our lawyers have been filing without charge lawsuits to protect victims of family violence and child abuse. And we have provided free licensed professional counseling, emergency financial help, support for hard decision-making and friendship.

Just since mid-March, we have received more than 300 new requests for legal and financial help in these kinds of situations — requests that we recognize as symptoms of the virus just as surely as a pulmonologist recognizes shortness of breath.

For the poor, COVID-19 symptoms include hunger, eviction and homelessness, loss of ability to find work and get to work, neglect of medical needs, lack of childcare and education, and inability to provide for children.

Terrible family stresses leading to alcohol abuse, family violence and child abuse. Anxiety, fear, and anger are sometimes stronger than human frailty. And just as the medical symptoms need treatment, so do these dangerous outcomes for poor families.