This is called “Special English” aka “Simple English” or “Voice of America English”. It is meant to be very clear and straightforward to understand to minimize the possibility of miscommunication and make it so that non-experts of all backgrounds can take away the important messages. Given how important the medicine supply chain is to lots of people’s daily lives, I’m sure they didn’t want this page to seem understandable only by the educated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_English

There is not enough of a drug, according to a drug maker. There aren’t enough ingredients to make the drug. The missing ingredients are made at a place affected by the coronavirus.

Fortunately, there are different types of drugs that can help. We are making these other drugs available.

This is not an improvement at all. Try to read the original at a slow pace, it is very straightforward but still precise.

> an issue with manufacturing of an active pharmaceutical ingredient used in the drug

is WAY WORSE than

> there aren't enough ingredients for the drug

If they are trying to say there aren't enough ingredients to make the drug then the second way is better. But that isn't the same as what the original sentence said.

The phrase 'issue with manufacturing of' covers a much wider range of problems than a shortage. Maybe they have tonnes of materials and they just need a mechanic to fix the machine for example. No shortages of anything except people in the right place at the right time.

Yeah wtf, the original was not easy at all to read. Also re your version I would use medicine instead of drug to avoid confusion.

> Special English is a controlled version of the English language first used on 19 October 1959... World news and other programs are read one-third slower than regular English. (paraphrased from Wikipedia)

This is fascinating. I had trouble understanding the FDA's article until I slowed down and imagined a newscaster reading it. (It's still really hard to skim, though. Weird phrasing.)

I work for a health-related company, and to us it's called "Health literate."

But, you're right- the idea is to write as plainly and clearly as possible so the largest number of people can understand.

As for why the drug or manufacturer wasn't named, my guess is that it's so that there isn't a run on a particular medication causing unnecessary shortages.

Or price gouging by pharmacies that still have inventory?

That's interesting, thanks.

Non mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_English

It might be special but it's not simple; it's vague and overly verbose, such that important information is buried and ambiguity is amplified.

Is there anything similar in other languages? I would love to have a similar resource for my German learning.

The equivalent term is "leichte Sprache". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache

The websites of government agencies usually have a version in leichter Sprache, although it tends to be counterproductively hidden.

The NDR offers news using leichte Sprache: https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/service/leichte_sprache/

Edit: or any of the other sites on this list: https://bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/politik-einfach-fuer-alle...

Further edit: there's a Wikipedia category for simplified languages, which in addition to English and German also has Latin and French: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Simplified_languages

I'm also interested in this question of "Special $LANG" for other languages. For German learners, DW has a daily podcast Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten ("News read slowly"), which I have found invaluable.

https://m.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/nachrichten/s-8030

Linguistica 360 has news in slow ____ for a number of languages

https://www.linguistica360.com/

I'm glad to see this posted. When you dumb down the vast majority of media that your population consumes and make all of it essentially predigested, the average person becomes substantially less able to parse technical literature or think critically, because in the majority of the media they consume there is little required in the way of thinking.

Making things accessable to the common denominator has a generally negative effect on society IMO. This is one major reason why our U.S. schools have been falling behind for decades - they are too focused on not leaving the poor performers behind, at the cost of limiting the achievement of those above the average.

I'm honestly _more_ concerned that the FDA is dumbing things down so much that smart people have trouble understanding it.

I didn’t realize anybody here was having trouble understanding it. It looks like regular English but with no pronouns.

I had a lot of trouble understanding it until I read it 5 times. All the words just turn to soup in my brain as I read them... It's like the information density of the text isn't high enough to keep my attention or something.

The first sentence in particular has a very "the department of redundancy department" structure. Also took me a few tries to realize what it was actually saying.

FDA has an entire drug shortage database that is updated daily and publicly accessible. There are tons of drug shortages at any given time, and most of them go back to API (Active Pharm Ingredients) - the raw active chemicals produced in bulk, that are then put into pills, injection solutions etc.

You could probably figure it out from there. My guess is it would be irresponsible for them to name the Mfgr in the press release, particularly if it were a publicly traded company and people are going to jump to uninformed conclusions.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/drugshortages/

Supply chain security has also been a major focus at FDA over the last ~5 years, basically to ensure there are not "choke points" with respect to approved medicines:

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-supply-chain-security-act-dsc...

So in general, I appreciate their transparency on this since they have been building up regs around this very type of issue for awhile.

> My guess is it would be irresponsible for them to name the Mfgr in the press release, particularly if it were a publicly traded company and people are going to jump to uninformed conclusions.

Not only could it harm the company, it could be bad for patients. Naming it could cause a run (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_run) on the drug, and if some people hoard it, there will be other people who are unable to get it.

And even worse than the hoarders: the sudden appearance of "entrepreneurs" smelling easy profit.

Price gouging? Of drugs? In the United States?

Right. It's business as usual.

I guess I'm grumpy today, after looking at the prices of respirators and antiseptics in Poland being already 10-20x the usual, and growing. And we don't even have a confirmed case just yet (doesn't stop the media from reporting a new "first case" every day for the past two weeks).

Also this morning I've seen an ad on our local equivalent of Craigslist; somebody is trying to sell a pre-packaged web store for selling face masks, complete with a bunch of legit-sounding domains (using phrases "medical respirators", "anti coronavirus respirators", etc.) and three contracts to wholesalers of surgical masks, for roughly $1k total. Note: surgical masks. The ones that are worn to prevent accidental exchange of bodily fluids between patient and the surgeon. The ones that are completely ineffective against airborne viruses.

I really feel that some people need to have cooperation and civil behavior beaten into them.

I deal with protecting myself medically daily. If you want to chat about your concerns, you are welcome to email me.

Not medical advice per se. I'm not a doctor. I'm just someone continuing to rudely fail to die instead of going along with politely dying according to schedule so other people can feel like they are smart and know things.

(This comment will self destruct in the near future.)

Thank you.

Still, what can I say about my concerns? I'm scared. For myself, my wife, our infant, our families. In this island of emptiness in the middle of red dots the Europe is on COVID-19 maps, we're all just nervously waiting for the first real case. Personal protection goods are already gone, people are slowly realizing that maybe it's about time to start stockpiling food. We've stocked ourselves up with ~two weeks worth of long-life consumables. Going to extend it over the weekend to a month's reserve. Our infant already has 2+ months supply. I try to be calm, but it's getting harder.

I don't know what I'm afraid more of at this point - of the virus, or of the quarantines and panic that will follow.

I don't rely on standard personal protection goods.

I'm not really comfortable talking about what I do rely on in public. There's a very long history of people being incredibly ugly to me, outright accusing me of being insane and of making up stories out of a sick need for attention. I've literally been accused of having Munchausen.

Though we don't interact often, you've been uncommonly kind and respectful to me in a sea of what often feels like outright abusive and sadistic behavior.

So if you are interested in talking with me privately about what I do in hopes of expanding your options and trying to protect you and yours, I'm willing to chat and leave it completely up to you whether or not you use any of that information.

Consider it to be an offer of a personal favor. If you don't think I can possibly help you, it's okay. Maybe you honestly don't recall my diagnosis or understand what that's supposed to mean.

I'm sorry you are under so much stress.

I'm writing you an e-mail parallel to this comment. I've been reading your comments on this site for years now - they often stand out as particularly insightful - so I do remember some of the context.

It's important to remember that the big concern with the coronavirus isn't that it's unusually severe, it's that it's unusually transmissible. In particular it becomes contagious before it becomes symptomatic.

So if they fail to contain it, you'll be more likely to get it than to get the flu, but not especially more likely to die if you do get it. And even less likely in either case if you're currently healthy.

There isn't much reason to be concerned about quarantines either. The point of a quarantine is to limit the spread of the virus. When there are only a small number of cases, using extraordinary quarantine measures is justified because there is the potential to stamp it out entirely. If too many people get infected, there is no longer any hope of that and continuing the extraordinary measures is impractical. You shut down an airport when a city is infected, you don't shut down every airport when every city is infected. So if it spreads, you fall back to the ordinary measures. Wash your hands, if you get sick go to the doctor and not to work, get vaccinated once they have a vaccine etc. It's not good but the world doesn't shut down.

Around 10% of people get the flu every year. If this is equally severe but more contagious, maybe it's twice as bad, or five times as bad. It seems pretty implausible that it could be much more than ten times as bad.

An advantage we have here is that February is over. Flu season is ending rather than beginning in the northern hemisphere (and it's still several months off in the southern hemisphere). So if they can keep it somewhat contained as things warm up, it shouldn't spread as fast in the spring.

Don't panic.

They also have to tread a very fine line where these companies are "required" to self report important details that would damage a "brand". By not naming names they maintain the trust which increases the prospect of getting the important information we all need. (and that is not X.inc's next quarters earnings)

California looks set to explode into another Italy scenario as local, human-to-human transmission now appears to be taking place in Solano County, where a woman now critically ill with the coronavirus previously exposed dozens of hospital workers in two hospitals. She was not tested for 11 days because the CDC’s testing flow chart excludes the testing of people who contract the virus in America and who didn’t visit China.

The Governor of California stated yesterday that California has only around 200 test kits for the entire state. To this very day, there is virtually zero testing of anyone happening in the entire United States — a fact that many people still are unable to believe (they remain in total denial). The SF Chronicle also confirms this story.

According to a highly disturbing Wall Street Journal story (https://www.wsj.com/articles/whistleblower-says-federal-empl...) federal employees who ran the quarantine sites in California and elsewhere failed to wear proper protective equipment (PPE) and also weren’t trained in how to handle people exposed to the virus. Most disturbingly, as the WSJ subhead says, “Employees weren’t tested for virus before leaving California quarantine sites on commercial flights.”

I am astounded by the frequency of idiots in key decision making positions globally.

A lot of the US problems around covid handling seem to be coordination related. There used to be coordinating personnel specifically for that at the NSC. But that has been slashed over the last few years.

That kind of short sightedness drives me nuts.

Maybe in purpose to avoid drugs related panic purchases.

This is what I'd expect having worked for ~10 years in pharma. These companies are very sensitive to announcements like these because they can be misinterpreted by the public/media. They'll be trying to find some alternative options and the details of the shortage will become evident from other sources eventually.

Why publish anything then ?

Because otherwise once shortages begin they'll be accused of a "cover-up"?

Well, we know that there is a disruption and that as far as the FDA knows it's just the one report so far.

In an administration that frequently gets involved in cover-ups, you can't fault the FDA for trying to disclose as much as they can without causing new problems.

Plus the press release goes on to detail many other areas of FDA's regulatory domain that are also helpful.

This this other comment (not mine) detailing these FDAs transparency re drug shortages:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22445961

So they can't say you they didn't tell you anything

> This almost read like a bot wrote it...

Particularly with reference to "a human drug"

> Particularly with reference to "a human drug"

Veterinary drugs are a thing, and it appears the FDA regulates them, too:

https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/resources-you/fda-regu...

Human drug it’s just a drug. Only if it’s not ‘human’ you have to specify.

That's certainly true if you're an ordinary person.

If you're the person who writes press releases for an organization which regulates both human and animal drugs, then you have a reason to be specific.

Purchasing over the counter animal drugs for use in humans is somewhat common in prepper communities. Perhaps the wording was aimed at them.