As a doctor, I’m disappointed in my colleagues for ignoring Long COVID. I made a resource to educate them and the public.

Back in early 2020, the news of the strange illness causing terrible pneumonias in China saddened me, but I believed I was safe in Canada. Within weeks, there was a reckoning: thousands were dying on my doorstep, too.

 

Directors of an independent living residence at the start of the pandemic asked me to become the residence’s COVID-19 advisor. They had no qualified medical staff, despite supporting elderly residents. Back in those early days, anyone with a medical qualification was commandeered to help in any way they could.

Confronted with the task of providing guidance to the nonmedical staff taking care of these residents, I decided to learn everything I could about the pandemic. At that time, about 1,000 papers were being published every month detailing research into every aspect of the coronavirus. Of course, I couldn’t read all of them, but I read as many as I could and built a breadth and depth of evidenced-based knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. I wrote up the protocols and during my tenure as COVID-19 Advisor for this residence, we kept COVID out.