Taking Care at Work: Gender, Coping, and Anti-Violence Work During COVID-19

COVID-19 transformed frontline anti-violence workers' organizational routines by transitioning to virtual formats, decreasing face-to-face interactions, and shifting client needs. To address ever-changing workplace stressors, service providers adapted and/or modified coping mechanisms. In this paper, we analyze interviews with 23 anti-violence workers in the US Great Plains region, focusing on tactics used to avoid burnout and meet client needs. We discuss how workplace pace, direct-action coping practices, and a lack of inter/intra-agency social support impact how workers do their necessary jobs. Though some challenges were pervasive pre-pandemic, anti-violence workers' experiences also highlight how "post-COVID-19” workplaces must adequately support staffers. © The Author(s) 2023.

ThEpiCAP-Study: Intrapandemic changing Etiology of CAP in Adults Admitted to Hospitals in Thuringia/Germany in 2021

The last both authors contributed equally Purpose To design clinical and public health policies, including immunization, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical to monitor not only infections due to SARS-CoV-2 but other pathogens as well. We evaluated interim results from the first year of a multi-site study of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and early onset hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) in Germany to assess the contribution of different pathogens over time. Methods This multicenter trial is being conducted from January 2021 to December 2023 at three hospitals in Thuringia: Jena University Hospital (1396 beds), SRH Hospitals Gera (951 beds) and Suhl (653 beds). Adult hospitalized patients with CAP/early onset HAP are identified by a screening algorithm which includes assessment by a study physician. Study procedures included: health data collection, urine specimens (using S. pneumoniae serotype-specific urinary antigen detection assays (UAD-1/2) and BinaxNOW), and nasopharyngeal swabs (analyzed by multiplex microbiological analysis), disease severity assessments, mortality (follow-up to day 90), pathogen spectrum, and quality of life (follow-up to day 180). Results Within the first year (2021), 760 patients (58 % male, 70 % >= 60 years) were enrolled. ICU admission occurred in 16.1 % of cases, and 9.2 % required mechanical ventilation. Pathogens were identified for 553 cases. SARS-CoV-2 was identified in 78.4 % in the first half of the year while S. pneumoniae was detected in 6 cases (2.1 %;2/6 as a co-infection (0.7 %)). Other respiratory viruses were detected in 18 of 338 cases, of which 15 (4.2 %) were coinfections with SARS-CoV-2. In the second half of 2021, SARS-CoV-2 was identified in 58.3 % of cases, however, other pathogens occurred more frequently including S. pneumoniae 10.2 % (n/N = 34/333;13/34 as a co-infection with SARS-CoV-2 (3.9 %)) and other respiratory viruses 11.4 % (n/N = 41/360;11/41 as a co-infection with SARS-CoV-2 (3.0 %)). Influenza was not detected. Conclusion While SARS-CoV-2 remained the most common pathogen among patients with CAP/early onset HAP during the study year, other pathogens reemerged during the second half of 2021. Correspondingly, co-infections with SARS-CoV-2 increased, with pneumococci as the leading pathogen.

Estimating a COVID-19 Crisis Effect Using AI Techniques

In December 2020, the OECD released guidance on certain aspects of transfer pricing in view of the disruptive situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The comparability analysis was addressed therein as one of the main focus areas with regard to benchmarking and the collection of other quantitative evidence usually employed by corporate taxpayers in their transfer pricing documentation. As the burden of proof remains with the taxpayers and the question which quantitative approaches they could adopt has become highly relevant, this article provides some concrete examples for industry practitioners and other interested stakeholders demonstrating which kind of statistical methods and artificial intelligence-supported quantitative approaches can be employed to deliver robust empirical evidence ex ante for taxpayers' compliance with the arm's length principle in their intercompany transactions during a crisis situation like the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. © IBFD.

Patients with COVID-19 versus non-COVID-19 community-acquired pneumonia

Background: SARS-CoV-2 has emerged as a novel pathogen of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Aims and objectives: We aimed to compare characteristics, clinical outcomes and pneumococcal identification in patients with COVID-19 vs non-COVID-19 CAP. Method(s): EGNATIA is an ongoing, prospective study of adults >=19yo hospitalized with clinical and radiographicallyconfirmed CAP in Greece. The primary objective is to estimate the proportion of CAP due to pneumococcal serotypes included in 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13). Pneumococcus was identified using serotype-specific urinary antigen detection assays (UAD 1/2), BinaxNow and conventional cultures. Testing for SARS-CoV-2 was performed as per national guidelines. Result(s): We compared 202 patients with COVID-19 pneumonia during Apr2020-Mar2021 vs 1033 patients with nonCOVID-19 CAP during Nov2017-Oct2020. Patients with COVID-19 were younger (median age 68.8 vs 75.8 years) and had fewer comorbidities (67.8% with >=1 underlying condition vs 79.2%) than non-COVID-19 patients. Patients with COVID-19 less frequently reported past pneumonia episodes (0.5% vs 7.7%) but were more frequently nursing home residents (13.9% vs 6%). Patients with COVID-19 had less severe pneumonia presentation (CURB 65 3-5 6.4% vs 30.5%;PSI IV-V 41.1% vs 55.2%) but required mechanical ventilation more frequently (7.4% vs 1.9%) and had a longer hospital stay (mean 17.4 vs 9.6 days). In-hospital mortality was similar between the 2 groups (7.9% in COVID-19 vs 8.9% in non-COVID-19). Pneumococcus was identified less frequently in patients with COVID-19 vs non-COVID-19 CAP (4% vs 11.1%). Conclusion(s): Significant differences were identified in patients with COVID-19 vs non-COVID-19 CAP.

Iris in, Iris out: Reflections on the production, exhibition and viewing of a bisected-eyeball hand-puppet

This article reflects upon my short visual recording Eyedrops: A Monoculogue (2021). It describes the thinking process of creative avoidance (both making something new, but recycling ideas and materials which already exist, both in the mind and close to hand);pleasure in making (the haptic joy of production);considerations of performance;being audience to one's own work when exhibited alongside other work responding to the same initial call;re-presenting the work in a workshop context. While it draws upon interdisciplinary theoretical writing to provide phenomenological and ekphrastic considerations of the work, moving between the three-point dynamic which links and divides viewing positions: the image (screen), subject (eye) and the object (puppet), it employs an immediacy of writing, which resists the usual considerations of academic scholarship in a move to free up thinking and to expose the emotional and experiential, questioning what it is to 'see'. © 2022 Intellect Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Classroom Communities, Pandemic Portals: Rethinking Solidarity Through Pedagogy and Practice

The P-16 classroom, already a space of potential conflicts and contradictions, gained new levels of complexity with the overlapping crises of 2020 onward: the COVID-19 pandemic;police brutality and corresponding "summer of abolition;” book and mask bans;and anti-critical race theory and anti-social emotional learning legislation. In this paper, we respond to these crises with collaboration through the concept of interdependency. Using disability and transformative justice organizer Mia Mingus's definition of interdependency, we argue that an interdependent classroom can be a way out of narratives of atomized disconnection. Interdependency sees an individual's survival as inherently connected to a larger community, emphasizing solidarity over the illusion of independence. Inspired by duoethnographic methods, we share our own reflections as students and teachers in classrooms where connection may or may not have been present. We find that, though we cannot go back to "normal,” we can go forward into new classroom context where white supremacist ideologies do not shape students' and teachers' shared learning experiences. Instead, interdependence can serve as a form of creative resistance to the more implicit forms of harm embedded in educational experiences, opening up platforms to counter marginalization and speak against what has been traditionally silenced. © 2023 American Educational Studies Association.

Supervisory forward guidance: the effectiveness of the 2020 euro area supervisory capital relief on the bank credit supply channel

We investigate the effectiveness of the euro area's single supervisory mechanism's capital relief measures in response to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, in terms of large non-financial corporations' lending outcomes. Using a granular borrower level dataset and controlling for the policies of other euro area authorities, bank characteristics and demand effects, we find that the lifting of the pillar 2 guidance (P2G) capital recommendation had a considerable statistically significant impact in supporting bank credit supply. The results are attributed to both, the capital made available and announcement effects. The latter are generated by the communication of supervisory plans and the fact the P2G was not designed to be ex ante "releasable ". The announcement of granted supervisory flexibility seems to have reduced uncertainty surrounding forthcoming regulatory responses in the beginning of the pandemic and acted as a de facto "supervisory forward guidance " in support of bank business decisions. Going forward we propose the creation of a formal supervisory forward guidance strategy, to complement the existing communication channels, to the benefit of banks' and market participants' decision making during both normal and crisis times. Our work therefore contributes to the literature threefold: (i) it introduces a novel granular supervisory dataset at the borrower level, (ii) it is one of the first papers to take a euro area supervisory perspective in analysing the effectiveness of capital relief measures at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and (iii) it proposes a new supervisory policy instrument, the "supervisory forward guidance " with the goal of informing and steering banks' and market participants' expectations in order to prevent distress episodes.

N-chlorotaurine is a very promising antiseptic treatment option for multiresistant bacteria, fungi and for viruses including SARS-CoV-2

Objectives: Lung infections with multiresistant pathogens are a major problem among patients suffering from cystic fibrosis (CF). N-chlorotaurine (NCT) is a long-lived oxidant generated in activated cells of the innate immune system, namely neutrophilic and eosinophilic granulocytes and monocytes. NCT acts as an antiseptic agent that can be synthesised chemically and showed good tolerability when inhaled via a nebulizer (1). NCT demonstrated rapid in vivo activity against SARS-CoV-2, influenza A viruses, and RSV as well as for C. albicans, E. dermatitidis, P. aeruginosa and MRSA (2,3). Methods: We evaluated 10 patients with CF who inhaled 5 ml of 1% NCT via a nebulizer twice daily. Results: All 10 patients tolerated the inhalation well. The duration of inhalation was between 4 weeks and 3 years. Targeted pathogens were S. apiospermum, A. xylosoxidans, P. aeruginosa, MRSA and SARS-CoV-2. Patients improved clinically after starting to inhale 1% NCT (Sputum production, sputum color, exacerbation rate, need for intravenous antibiotics, expectoration). Conclusions: NCT is a safe, well-tolerated, endogenous, inhaled substance with broad-spectrum activity against pathogens supported by anti-inflammatory properties. It might be a significant step forward for treatment of multiresistant bacteria and fungi. In addition, NCT has a high activity against COVID-19 and other viral infections of the lower airways. References 1. Arnitz R, et al. Tolerability of inhaled N-chlorotaurine in humans: a double-blind randomized phase I clinical study. Ther Adv Respir Dis. 2018 Jan 1;12:175346661877895. 2. Lackner M et al. N-chlorotaurine, a novel inhaled virucidal antiseptic is highly active against respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), November 2020, DOI:10.21203/rs.3.rs-118665/v1, License CC BY 4.0. 3. Gruber M et al. Bactericidal and Fungicidal Activity of N-Chlorotaurine Is Enhanced in Cystic Fibrosis Sputum Medium. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 2017 May;61(5):AAC.02527-16.