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Comment by pitched | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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