Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Seropositivity Among Medical Students in Copenhagen

Background Health care workers are at a higher risk of getting infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) than the general population. Knowledge about medical students’ exposure to SARS-CoV-2 is lacking. Thus, we measured the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in a cohort of Danish medical students. Methods We invited all medical students at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) to participate. Students underwent venous blood sampling and a questionnaire about work-life behaviors possibly associated with SARS-CoV-2 exposure and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) symptoms. Samples were analyzed for total immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, and seropositive samples were screened for IgG, immunoglobulin M, and immunoglobulin A antibodies. We determined associations between seropositivity and clinical and social activities and self-reported symptoms. Results Between October 19 and 26, 1120 students participated in the questionnaire and 1096 were included. Of all included, 379 (34.58%) were seropositive. Seropositivity was associated with attendance at 2 parties at UCPH, on February 29 and March 6, 2020 (odds ratio [OR], 5.96; 95% CI, 4.34–8.24; P < .001). Four hundred sixty-one students (42.06%) worked with COVID-19 patients, which was significantly associated with seropositivity (OR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.03–1.85; P = .033). The symptom most associated with seropositivity was loss of smell and/or taste (n = 183 of all, 31.35%; OR, 24.48; 95% CI, 15.49–40.60; P < .001). Bachelor’s students were significantly more likely to be seropositive than Master’s students (42.28% vs 16.87%; P < .001). Conclusions Medical students have the highest reported seropositivity in the Danish health care system. In this cohort of students at UCPH, seropositivity was associated with social behavior markers and, to a lesser extent, with self-reported contact with SARS-CoV-2-infected patients.

Chaos Narrative and Experientiality in the Graphic Memoir

This article contributes to research on illness narratives. It revisits Arthur Frank’s notion of the chaos narrative and argues in favour of supplementing it with the concept of tellability, and with Monika Fludernik and David Herman’s postclassical narratological approaches to the definition of narrative that foreground experientiality and what it’s like. Furthermore, it is argued that tellability is recuperated at the discourse level in literary representations of the chaos narrative. Frank argues, that the chaos narrative cannot be represented, but in this article, the case is made that literature can mimick the chaos. It is suggested, to label this particular chaos narrative: The mediated chaos narrative. This is demonstrated in a reading of Danish cartoonist Thomas H. Nøhr’s graphic memoir entitled Cirkus, which chronicles his encounter with the Danish health care system after suffering from stress, depression and severe burnout. The graphic memoir can experiment with the affordances of its multimodality to support the focus on narrative experientiality and to draw attention to issues of social justice. To render the chaos of the experience, Nøhr examines how the affordances of graphic memoir enables one to experiment with narratological building blocks such as the distinction between the narrating I and the experiencing I and with Gérard Genette’s three categories of time: order, duration, and frequency.