MONTREAL Sometimes during the first wave, Tania Muhanna, a patient attendant at a Montreal long-term care home, said she would lie down at the edge of a bed next to a resident who was sick and alone. The 44-year-old health-care worker said she got some “bizarre” looks from co-workers, “but I also got looks of appreciation and love and I wouldn’t change a thing. These people - they had nobody.” It was early in the pandemic, a time when it wasn’t easy to arrange communication between the residents and their family members on the outside. “It was absolutely terrifying. We have to go in with our game faces on, put on a brave face. The last thing you want to do is scare our patients, our residents,” Muhanna said.
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In its battle to conquer COVID-19, the world has become a sort of planetary petri dish, shining a light on all the wonders, and blunders, of science.
The disease was initially said to travel via droplets, until research on the nature of aerosol transmission emerged. Masks were discouraged in Quebec and in the west in general, even though they had been used elsewhere for decades. The virus was said to live on surfaces for up to nine days, spurring people to wash their cereal boxes or avoid shopping altogether. Now transmission by touch is far down on the list of potential vectors.