Mark Mothersbaugh nearly died from COVID-19. FaceTiming with his family kept him alive

LOS ANGELES - As Mark Mothersbaugh lay in a Cedars-Sinai hospital bed in early June after contracting the novel coronavirus, a ventilator tube snaking into his throat to help him breathe, the Devo cofounder and acclaimed film and TV composer came to believe that he was recovering from a vicious beating in downtown Los Angeles.

"There's a bookstore I love there where I get stationery supplies, and in my mind I had been there," Motherbaugh, 70, said last week, sitting on the patio of the Hollywood Hills home he shares with his wife, Anita Greenspan, and two teenage daughters. "I was convinced for about two weeks that I had been hit by a brick by somebody in Little Tokyo."

Wearing chrome-framed eyeglasses, his nose and mouth covered by a black mask branded