The version of Official shortage notices that circulates here is a simplification of a simplification. It is not wrong, but it has lost the conditions under which it holds, and those conditions are where the interesting cases live.
Official shortage notices and what they authorise — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.
Official shortage notices — I have the observation and I do not trust my interpretation of it, so I am posting the observation and holding the interpretation back.
Numbers, method and the conditions under which they were collected are below. Interpret them however they warrant.
Dose hold versus tapering: if a temporary shortage forces a gap, holding your dose and resuming when supply returns is different from gradually tapering. The two are different decisions.
This follows post #3 rather than contradicting it.
Shortage predictions: regulators and suppliers issue shortage alerts before they become acute. Checking the regulatory website for shortages gives you advance notice.
I read post #3 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Compounding during shortages: some jurisdictions allow pharmacy compounding when a marketed product is in shortage. That permission is jurisdiction-specific and time-limited (usually for the duration of the shortage).
The rule of thumb is fine; the edge cases are where it earns its keep.
Adding a note of thanks rather than an opinion. I did not know most of that.
Supply interruptions: official shortage notices are published by regulatory agencies. That is the correct primary source rather than pharmacy rumors or forum discussion.
Everything in post #7 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
What I would want before treating Official shortage notices as settled: the method, the sample, and whether anyone tried to find the opposite result. Two of the three are usually missing.
Narrowing post #7, because the general version has more than one answer.
Where a shortage forces a gap, the pharmacokinetics mean a missed week is a perturbation rather than a reset, which is worth knowing.
Posted with less confidence than the sentence structure implies.
This follows post #8 rather than contradicting it.
Worth separating Official shortage notices as a question about the compound from Official shortage notices as a question about the documentation. They get answered by different people and only one of them is answerable here.
Shortages end and the notices are updated. Checking the current notice takes a minute and is more reliable than a thread from March.
Regional differences during a shortage are large, and a supply position in one country says nothing about another.
Switching presentation or strength during a shortage is a prescribing decision rather than a substitution anybody should improvise.
Second-hand, so weight it accordingly.
Stockpiling in response to a shortage worsens it, which is true and is a poor argument to make to somebody who has run out.
Shortage status determines what compounding is permitted in some jurisdictions, which links two questions that otherwise seem unrelated.
Pharmacy-level availability varies enormously during a shortage, so two honest accounts from the same city can be opposite.
I have left out the parts I could not verify.
Manufacturer allocation decisions during a shortage are commercial and are rarely explained, which is frustrating and is not evidence of anything.
This has been discussed before and I could not find the thread, so, again.
On post #19 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
Managing an unplanned gap: if a shortage causes a gap in treatment, the questions are how long the gap will be and how that affects your condition. Discussing with your clinician is prudent if the gap is weeks or longer.
I would treat the number as indicative rather than as a measurement.
The most useful contribution is a link to the current official notice rather than an account of one pharmacy.
I have separated what I observed from what I concluded, which does not always happen.
Planning around a known shortage window is easier than reacting to one, and the notices give advance warning more often than people expect.
Post #23 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
On Official shortage notices I would separate what is worth knowing from what is worth acting on. The first list is long and the second is short, and conflating them is how threads get heated.
Same experience here, different supplier, so it is at least not unique to one of them.
I read post #23 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Shortages end and the notices are updated. Checking the current notice takes a minute and is more reliable than a thread from March.
That is the version I would defend. It is not the version I started with.
Post #27 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Where a shortage forces a gap, the pharmacokinetics mean a missed week is a perturbation rather than a reset, which is worth knowing.
Nothing above should be read as advice about what anyone else should do.
Summarising the Official shortage notices thread so far, since it is long and the answer is buried: the first reply has the method, the fourth has the correction to it, and the rest is people agreeing at length.