> “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.