teaching. Those two days gave me an opportunity to ask how my students and their families were dealing with the uncertainty. As their stories were shared, we discussed the possibility of shifting to online learning and decided that we could make it work if and when it became our new reality. That Monday afternoon, we received word that emergency remote learning would be our new reality. The Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced all schools and universities would close for an indefinite period fromTuesday, 10 March. The merry-go-round paused. Our department started planning and organizing the shift to emergency remote learning. Topics such as synchronous versus asynchronous classes, Zoom meetings and Google Hangouts dominated our conversations. The next day, COVID-19was officially declared a global pandemic. Seemingly overnight, our lives changed and our freedoms were denied. Everything shut down quickly. No movies. No shopping malls. No beaches. No gyms. No pools. No recreational outlets. No parks. No mosques. No shisha. No spas or salons. The only option, and rightfully so, was to practice social distancing and home isolation. It seemed as though the merry-go-round was stuck, and could no longer rotate. Despite its complexity, the combination of movement, lights, motion and music force the observer to calm down and enjoy the simplicity and fluidity of the moment. The perfect rotation of the circular platform in the middle of the carousel never misses a beat. The beauty of the staggered arrival of the first four Murano horses, ranging from blue, red, green, to amber steals one’s breath away. The following hashtags overtook our social media: #WashYourHands, #TogetherAtHome, #SafeHands and #YourSafetyIsMySafety. Along with the growth of such hashtags, the numbers and statistics of the infected and deceased grew exponentially. Likewise the quantity of misinformation and disinformation, a topic recently analyzed in my classes, was overtaking social media and other news outlets. Misinformation could cause the virus to increase its deadly spread. People began to question if this was actually a pandemic or an infodemic? Was the COVID-19 information impacting our minds more than our lungs?
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