[HN Gopher] Health Canada reveals causes of kids' Tylenol and dr...
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       Health Canada reveals causes of kids' Tylenol and drug shortages
        
       Author : walterbell
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2022-11-28 02:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thestar.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thestar.com)
        
       | MBCook wrote:
       | > "This is an absolute failure from the government leadership."
       | 
       | I've heard this line before. I think I heard it during the TP
       | shortages in early Covid.
       | 
       | And I kind of wonder what the government is supposed to do. They
       | don't manufacture the product. They don't sell it. They don't
       | distribute it.
       | 
       | Were they supposed to see whatever initial thing happened to
       | shorten supply coming? The article doesn't say what that was so
       | it's hard to speculate.
       | 
       | Were they supposed to have a stockpile in case panic buying ever
       | started? Should they do that for everything "critical"?
       | 
       | Should the government have said "stop panic buying"? They
       | probably did. That wouldn't do anything anyway.
       | 
       | Pass the "That's too much children's Tylenol act of 2022" to
       | limit purchases? Isn't that kind of micro-managing?
       | 
       | I guess I'm not not sure what a non-authoritarian government
       | without a command economy should be doing. Unless there were
       | warnings like "In two years we'll have to close the plant at X
       | and there won't be enough Y anymore", how could they prevent
       | this?
       | 
       | Exactly what "leadership" was needed?
       | 
       | When the baby formula shortage happened in the last year because
       | a plan had to be shut down for safety, would that be the
       | government's fault for not realizing there wasn't enough extra
       | production in case such s situation arose?
       | 
       | Note: This article is the first I've heard of this children's
       | Tylenol shortage. So I'm speaking a bit more generally.
        
         | pitched wrote:
         | I heard that the government decided to limit imports of
         | children's Tylenol, to better support domestic manufacturing
         | initiatives. There were some delays in bringing production up?
         | If I understand this article right, the government has just
         | announced it's allowing imports again to help with this
         | shortage.
         | 
         | So I think what they mean by blaming government officials was
         | that maybe their plan to limit imports was too aggressive?
        
           | MBCook wrote:
           | If that's the case I can at least see why it would be
           | considered the government's fault.
           | 
           | Maybe it's just that I don't like the "leadership" thing. It
           | seems like code. If you're mad they lowered imports, say
           | that. If you're mad they did get domestic production up fast
           | enough, say it. If you're mad they didn't increase imports
           | when it was clear the domestic production wasn't doing
           | enough? Say it.
           | 
           | "Lack of leadership" just seems to mean "you did a bad job or
           | screwed up" most of the time. But I'm a way that is
           | acceptable to some hypothetical political speech censor. Like
           | how they couldn't say 'pregnant' on I Love Lucy and had to
           | use euphemisms.
        
       | brutus1213 wrote:
       | Hospital in question was SickKids. I reread the articles from
       | 2022 .. it was poorly phrased IMHO.
        
       | warbler73 wrote:
       | There's no shortage outside Canada.
        
       | WirelessGigabit wrote:
       | Check kid's dose on the internet. Take an adult tablet and cut it
       | in (usually) half. And you're good.
        
       | pitched wrote:
       | Sounds like they're saying the shortage is driven by panic
       | buying? The ethical issues aside, would increasing the price help
       | with something like this? As a way to make sure more of the small
       | supply is going to people with a real need instead of personal
       | stockpiles?
        
         | MBCook wrote:
         | Would there be an issue of people panic buying _more_ to stock
         | up in fear the prices would go up further and they'd be priced
         | out by the time they truly needed it?
        
           | pitched wrote:
           | What about printing some very tight (a week or two away)
           | expiration dates on the boxes? Ethical issues of wasting
           | medicine aside, might that prevent people from stockpiling or
           | being more free with donating to neighbours with sick kids?
        
         | dpbriggs wrote:
         | I think it's more likely that would price out poor people in
         | need. Those who could afford it will stock up "just in case"
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-28 05:02 UTC)