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For months, President Trump minimized the threat of the virus and eschewed basic safety precautions like wearing a mask or maintaining six feet of distance from other people. And at several events last week, White House staff members defied recommendations — from scientists, local authorities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — on curbing infection, even after the president tested positive. Here’s a look at some of the ways Mr. Trump and his staff members ignored basic guidelines. (Leatherby, Schoenfeld Walker, Buchanan and Keefe, 10/8)

About 35 years ago in New Orleans, a young lawyer for Shell Oil Company received an opportunity that should have been a triumph: a prestigious transfer to the main office in Houston, and a significant raise. On paper, the promotion was a stroke of good fortune for the father of six. In reality, it was devastating. He broke the news to his wife in the driveway of their home. “This is awful,” he told her. “A move to Houston means life for our family will never be the same.” The family’s life in Louisiana revolved around an unusually tight-knit young Christian community. Members worshiped and socialized together for several hours every Sunday. They often shared the same houses, or the same neighborhoods. Some consulted leaders on everything from their household budget to whom they should marry. (Graham and LaFraniere, 10/8)

Annamarie Eggert has voted in every presidential election since 1948, when she cast her ballot for Harry S. Truman. Now she is 94 and ailing, but she is determined to vote in this one, too. Mrs. Eggert, a Biden supporter in York, Maine, has expressive aphasia, a condition that has made it difficult for her to talk. “We — need — to get Trump out of there,” she said, each word painstakingly coaxed from her lips. “Come hell — or high water, I will — vote.” (Hafner, 10/7)

Nurse Sandra Oldfield’s patient didn’t have the usual symptoms of COVID-19 -- yet. But then he tested positive for the virus, and it was clear that Oldfield -- a veteran, 53-year-old caregiver -- had been exposed. She was sent home by Kaiser Permanente officials with instructions to keep careful notes on her condition. And she did. “Temperature 97.1,” she wrote on March 26, her first log entry. Normal. She and her colleagues said they had felt unsafe at work and had raised concerns with their managers. They needed N95 masks, powerful protection against contracting COVID-19. Kaiser Permanente had none for Sandra Oldfield. Instead, she was issued a less effective surgical mask, leaving her vulnerable to the deadly virus. (Linderman and Mendoza, 10/7)

Nearly two dozen people critically ill with the novel coronavirus were recently being treated at Tampa General Hospital, 10 of them on ventilators. More than a dozen others with noncritical cases filled beds in a dedicated ward. In the emergency room, someone sick with the virus showed up about every hour. This is what a lull looks like. Florida was a hot spot of the coronavirus pandemic this summer. More than 722,000 Floridians have so far been infected with the virus — with a daily high of more than 15,000 cases reported July 12. The state’s intensive care units, including those at Tampa General, were pushed to the brink as the virus spread out of control. (Hauslohner, 10/7)

Even when there isn't a pandemic, finding the right doctor can be tough in rural eastern Ohio. Reid Davis, 21, and his mother Crystal live in Jefferson County, which hugs the Ohio River near West Virginia. Their home is surrounded by farms, hayfields and just a few neighbors. "To the nearest hospital, you're talking about 50 minutes to an hour," Reid Davis says. Davis' mother has rheumatoid arthritis, a severe autoimmune condition, for which she sees a specialist. That doctor prescribes an injectable medication and also works on her joints to ease inflammation and pain, he says. (Stone, 10/7)

The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough? The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough? (Peeples, 10/6)

Elle Fleenor didn’t know a soul when she first set foot on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis — wearing a mask, of course — and hunkered down for two weeks of quarantine. She attended orientation and lectures on Zoom, picked up food from the dining hall to eat in her room, and barely interacted with anyone beyond her dorm building’s walls. Ms. Fleenor, a first-year student from Scottsburg, Ind., knew college wouldn’t be what she had imagined. But she wasn’t prepared for how the precautions her school was taking to slow the spread of the coronavirus would complicate her efforts to make friends, and how isolated that would make her feel. (Fazio, 10/8)

The pandemic has laid bare gender inequities across the country, and women in academia have not been spared. The outbreak erupted during universities’ spring terms, hastily forcing classes online and researchers out of their laboratories. Faculty with young or school-aged children — especially women — had to juggle teaching their students with overseeing their children’s distance learning from home. Multiple studies have already shown that women have written significantly fewer papers than their male counterparts during the pandemic. (Kramer, 10/6)

When Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier embarked on the project that would change science and medicine in incalculable ways, their intentions were much more muted. Theirs was a basic research inquiry into bacterial immune systems, not an attempt to develop a new tool to manipulate the genetic code. (Joseph, 10/7)

His life began as the last embers of the civil rights movement were flickering out. Its horrific, videotaped end ignited the largest anti-racism movement since, with demonstrators the world over marching for racial justice in his name. During the 46 years in between, George Perry Floyd came of age as the strictures of Jim Crow discrimination in America gave way to an insidious form of systemic racism, one that continually undercut his ambitions. Early in life, he wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. Then, a pro athlete. At the end, he just longed for a little stability, training to be a commercial truck driver. (Olorunnipa and Witte, 10/8)

Whatever happened to secondary sex characteristics? You know, those shapes and appendages we develop after puberty as an anatomical signage, an aid to evolution. Kardashians aside, the cultural appetite seems to be waning not only for visible gender difference but also the exaggerated tell. This is perhaps one of the reasons behind the continued success of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” where skilled performers wildly exaggerate the markers of gender as if to remind us that among the most determined holdouts for the preservation of all-but-extinct forms of femininity are men. (Trebay, 10/7)