Health Canada reveals causes of kids’ Tylenol and drug shortages | Hacker News Reader

Health Canada reveals causes of kids’ Tylenol and drug shortages

thestar.com

21 pointswalterbell13 comments

> “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.

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?

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.

Indeed, oddly enough the government actually 'doing' something like attempting to encourage more domestic production is forward thinking about how to not have shortages in future should there be disruptions in trade. So this is good I think. But that it didn't work perfectly and caused a shortage is bad of course. My question is why didn't local production increase? Was it because the timeline was too short and there was no way to do it, or did local producers simply choose not do it. If the latter, then I would support national domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities. It would have the added benefit of being able to make out-of-patent drugs which are all bought but the national system anyway.

Check kid's dose on the internet. Take an adult tablet and cut it in (usually) half. And you're good.

That is what I do all the time. Even for the infant one it is just a lower dosage of a kids one.

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?

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?

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?

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"

Same thing in Europe, and everyone is complaining. What I don‘t get, it‘s just acetaminophen, so buy a normal, dissolvable tablet, adjust the dosage, problem solved?

Hospital in question was SickKids. I reread the articles from 2022 .. it was poorly phrased IMHO.

There's no shortage outside Canada.

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