Lessons learned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are too plentiful to list. But one of the most important take-aways from the virus outbreak — and one we are again facing with the current amoxicillin shortage — is that America must reduce its reliance on other non-domestic supply for life-saving medical countermeasures (MCMs) like antibiotics, which harms both preparedness and our day-to-day healthcare delivery.
We may have "learned" this lesson, but we have failed to implement remedies accordingly. Americans are still forced to rely too heavily on foreign manufacturers for medicines and raw materials, leaving us vulnerable to the next pandemic and risking further damage to supply chain operations or worse, opening us to manipulation by those wishing us harm. We have focused for years on identifying necessary preparedness tools, but we haven't considered how many of those are simply not available domestically.
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