Meg and I had rather a hectic start to our day yesterday morning. The manager of the care agency who regularly puts himself 'on shift' turned up with two shadowing workers. One of them was his own son who he was introducing to the business with selected clients. The other care worker was new to the agency but not to the care world and had previously worked as a psychiatrist nurse and evidently knew what he was about - for example, he immediately identified the weighted blanket for what it was. The prospect of three males getting Meg ready in the morning was potentially, and sometimes on occasion, overwhelming but Meg coped with it all fairly well. I intimated to the second shadow worker that I thought he had done a very good job and he evidently had the right skill set, eg by talking to Meg whenever he was going to perform a particular procedure and explaining what was taking place. Then, as you might imagine, illness had struck the agency and they were short staffed again so I was asked if I could be the second double-up worker for the lunchtime and the tea-time calls today to which I agreed, as these are somewhat lighter than the getting up/putting to bed calls at the beginning and end of the day. As we were eating breakfast this morning, our senses were assailed by the events unfolding in South Korea.South Korea's president faces impeachment after his shock declaration of martial law unleashed a political crisis Protesters are rallying in Seoul calling for President Yoon to step down The president had said martial law was needed to guard against 'pro-North Korea forces' - but analysts say move was in response to political pressure He backtracked last night after clashes between protesters and soldiers and a rushed vote by MPs to block the order. So we witnessed the extraordinary sight of a quasi-coup that lasted only a few hours. Once the South Korean President had imposed martial law, then troops arrived to occupy the parliament building. But one way or another they were resisted both by Opposition MPs and by members of the public who effectively caused the military units to depart. So we witnessed the way in which 'people power' can work in practice and with the odd sight of the military first occupying the parliament building and then leaving to go home. It looks as though the South Korean president, who is enormously unpopular, may be impeached within the day and possibly he will be gaoled and/or forced to flee.
After we had breakfasted, Meg and I got muffled up and we made our way onto the High Street, picking up our newspaper en route. Although I am rather sceptic about buying vitamins if you have a good healthy diet and get outdoors, nonetheless I felt some Vitamin might be handy. The official Government advice is that everyone should consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement during the autumn and winter whereas one can rely upon sunlight in the Spring and Summer seasons. So we popped into two outlets that sell health related products and cosmetics to see what they had to offer in the Vitamin D line. This is where the story becomes really confusing. The advice I have gleaned from the web is that elderly adults should be taking 20 micrograms of Vitamin D per day but I finished off buying two plastic containers of pills. The first contained Vitamin D of the strength of 75 micrograms which is three and three quarter times the recommended dose - 100 micrograms being the level at which excessive use of Vitamin D is contra-indicated. The other container, though, had Vitamin D combined with calcium and each tablet here contains 2.5 micrograms which is one eight of the recommended dose. Even more disturbing to the uninitiated is that the fact that one container of Vitamin D tablets was offering pills that were formulated as being 30 times the strength of the other. I am not surprised that doctors are very often skeptical about the value of vitamin supplements and I how well informed are members of the public who buy these products? I did a modicum of research and found the following which I reproduce below. 'To summarise, current evidence suggests that nutritional supplements do not improve health. Despite there being clear regulation preventing a manufacturer from making false claims, people are still being grossly mislead and duped in to spending absurd amounts of money on nutritional supplements. This is achieved through a combination of clever marketing, unethical advertising, and the wide spread of online misinformation. There appears to be a general lack of desire or interest in regulating online misinformation, and so the responsibility is now on exercise professionals to ensure that their clients receive accurate and reliable information. We must question whether a supplement really is effective before buying it, and better educate ourselves and our clients on how to spot misinformation online. Finally, we must call out companies who are breaching industry regulation standards and deliberately misleading people for simple profit.' So I have learnt something today, after all. Whilst out on the road, I also bought two fine (i.e. not chunky) long sleeved jumpers of the kind that I particularly like. One of these is to be worn as a normal jumper but the other as night wear to help to supplement my normal pyjamas, particularly when the nights are cold. These have been put into a 30 degree wash and I shall see if my experimental jumper works as intended when I get to bed later in the evening.
I have read that levels of influenza are rising rapidly across the UK and particularly amongst school children. Why this is of interest to us is that this will directly impact the families of the carers who, when they report ion as sick, are more than likely reporting upon the illnesses of their own children. Meg and I have are vaccinated up to the hilt and will always continue to be so but I suspect that I detect in the culture a certain weariness and almost cynicism about the necessity to be vaccinated and there is the concept of 'herd immunity' which in the case of measles is about 95% but as a general rule-of-thumb should be above 70%. The medical epidemiologists have to make an educated guess as to which variant of the flu virus one should be vaccinated against and there are indications from the other side of the world (Australia) that the efficacy of this year's vaccination might have declined from the 50% of last year to the 35% of this year. But even if one is infected with the virus, the symptoms should probably be a lot less severe and the risk of complications so much the less.
© Mike Hart [2024]