Each morning they awake with fingers curled inward, stiffened like claws. Their schedules are dictated by doctors’ appointments, physical therapy sessions and bouts of exhaustion. After weeks on ventilators, two siblings remain too weak to work even as their medical bills mount.

But at a table filled with several members of a tight-knit New Jersey family, the Fuscos, who lost five relatives to the coronavirus, the conversation repeatedly veers away from the chaos and pain of the last three months. They do not avoid talk of their family’s devastating collective loss. But they also speak of a new focus: finding a remedy for the disease that killed their mother, three siblings and an aunt.