Posting this under the heading it deserves: Official shortage notices and what they authorise Everything below is what sits behind that.
Trying to work out what would count as evidence on official shortage notices, before collecting any. This is the part I usually skip and it is the part that makes the rest useful.
If two explanations predict the same observation, observing it does not help. So: what observation would separate them?
Right — I had this wrong and I am glad to have read it before it mattered.
Shortages end and the notices are updated. Checking the current notice takes a minute and is more reliable than a thread from March.
I would rather say I do not know than round it up to an answer.
Regional differences during a shortage are large, and a supply position in one country says nothing about another.
That much is documented. The rest is how I have interpreted it.
Whatever the answer on official shortage notices turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, invite the correction.
On post #6 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
Shortage status determines what compounding is permitted in some jurisdictions, which links two questions that otherwise seem unrelated.
Where I would look next, rather than where I would stop.
Official shortage notices is a good example of a question where the honest answer is boring and the interesting answers are unsupported. I would go with boring.
Where I have landed on official shortage notices, having got it wrong once in public: the direction is clear, the magnitude is not, and anyone quoting a precise magnitude has borrowed it from somewhere that did not measure it.
Worth separating two things that post #10 runs together.
A shortage of one presentation is not a shortage of all of them, and the published notices are specific about which.
This settles it for me, at least until somebody posts a reason it should not.
The question underneath official shortage notices is usually "how would I tell?" rather than "what is true?", and that one has a method attached to it.
Write down what you would expect to see under each hypothesis before you collect anything. If they predict the same observation, collecting it will not help.
Taking post #17 at face value and following it one step further.
Shortage predictions: regulators and suppliers issue shortage alerts before they become acute. Checking the regulatory website for shortages gives you advance notice.
Where a shortage forces a gap, the pharmacokinetics mean a missed week is a perturbation rather than a reset, which is worth knowing.
Two claims get bundled together under official shortage notices and they need separating. The descriptive one — this is what was observed — is usually well supported. The causal one — this is why — usually is not.
Almost every disagreement in threads like this one dissolves once you say which of the two you are making.
Shortage-driven price movement is real and is a separate question from availability.
Post #20 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
Supply interruptions: official shortage notices are published by regulatory agencies. That is the correct primary source rather than pharmacy rumors or forum discussion.
Correct me on the arithmetic if it is wrong; I would rather know.
Speaking only to official shortage notices as I have actually seen it, rather than as it is usually described: the effect is real, it is smaller than the thread suggests, and the variance between people is larger than the effect.
On post #24 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
I disagree with the framing of official shortage notices above, and I think it is a substantive disagreement rather than a terminological one. Setting out why, so it can be checked.
The reasoning depends on an assumption that is doing a lot of work and is never stated. If the assumption holds, the conclusion follows. I do not think it holds generally.
Taking post #27 at face value and following it one step further.
International supply chains: a shortage in one country does not mean shortage in another. That is why ordering from multiple suppliers before a shortage gets bad is prudent if you can.
Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.
Post #28 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
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.
That is the shape of it. The detail is where I would expect to be corrected.