Economic Collapse Blog: Serious Shortages Of Amoxicillin, Augmentin, Tamiflu, Albuterol And Tylenol Have Erupted in US

In the article Very Serious Shortages Of Amoxicillin, Augmentin, Tamiflu, Albuterol And Tylenol Have Erupted All Over The United States Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog brings together articles from several sources reporting on drug shortages in the US.

Hospitals are filling up all across America, and there are extremely alarming shortages of some of our most important medications. Health authorities are warning that RSV, the flu and COVID are combining to create a “tripledemic”, and there are simply not enough medications to go around. Personally, I am most concerned about RSV. It is spreading like wildfire from coast to coast, and we are being told that very young children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. I wrote an entire article about the RSV outbreak earlier this month, and since that time things have gotten even worse. Our medical system is being absolutely flooded with sick kids, and this has caused very serious shortages of amoxicillin, augmentin, tamiflu and albuterol…

America is facing a shortage of four key medications used for common illnesses in children as virus season comes back in full force.

Officials have declared a shortage of first-line antibiotics amoxicillin and Augmentin, which are used to treat bacterial infections. Tamiflu, the most common flu medication in the US, and albuterol, an inhaler for asthma and to open airways in the lungs, are also in short supply, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

But we haven’t even gotten to the heart of flu season yet.

In fact, the beginning of winter is still about a month away.

So what will things look like by the time we get to the middle of January?

At this point, things are already so bad that we are also starting to see a very serious shortage of tylenol…

A children’s Tylenol shortage currently affecting Canada has carried over into the United States, pharmacists in multiple American cities have warned.

The drug’s short supply, experts say, stems from a recent spike in pediatric sickness as seasonal bugs come back with a bang after being suppressed during COVID-related lockdowns.

This is nuts.

In all my years, I have never heard of a shortage of tylenol in the United States.

Unfortunately, we now have millions of people with compromised immune systems all over the country, and so RSV and the flu are hitting us extremely hard.

One doctor told CNN that “I’ve never seen anything like this”…

“In my 25 years of being a pediatrician, I’ve never seen anything like this,” pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Stacene Maroushek of Hennepin Healthcare in Minnesota told CNN. “I have seen families who just aren’t getting a break. They have one viral illness after another. And now there’s the secondary effect of ear infections and pneumonia that are prompting amoxicillin shortages.”

The reason for shortages is due to increased demand, especially with a surge in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and flu cases. The combination of RSV, flu and COVID circulating has been called a “tripledemic.”

This is going to be one long winter for our medical system.

As I mentioned earlier, hospital beds are rapidly filling up all over the nation…

These surges have filled children’s hospitals across these states. The Children’s Hospital of Alabama, the state’s largest pediatric hospital located in Birmingham – 91 per cent of beds are filled, according to official figures.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which includes the largest children’s hospital in Tennessee, is at 98 per cent capacity as of Tuesday.

And as I discussed in my article about RSV earlier this month, there are some hospitals that have already filled up all of their beds.

Of course most children that get sick don’t end up in the hospital.

Most of them just stay home and are cared for by their parents until they recover.

In October, more Americans missed work to take care of sick children than ever before…

More than 100,000 Americans missed work last month – an all time high – because of child-care problems, many of which come down to sick children and sick daytime caregivers.

Sadly, we will almost certainly set another new all-time record this month.

It sure would be nice if the federal government would step in and help to ensure that everyone has enough medications to give to their children during this medical emergency.

But instead of doing that, the Biden administration has decided to give another 4.5 billion dollars to Ukraine…

The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and in coordination with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of State, is providing an additional $4.5 billion in direct budgetary support to the Government of Ukraine. The funding, which will help alleviate the acute budget deficit caused by Putin’s brutal war of aggression, was made possible with generous bipartisan support from Congress. The Government of Ukraine will receive the funding in two tranches before the end of 2022.

In addition, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just announced that the Ukrainians will be receiving another 400 million dollars in military aid…

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new $400 million military aid package to Ukraine on Wednesday.

The package will include “additional arms, munitions, and air defense equipment from U.S. Department of Defense inventories,” Blinken said in a statement, which didn’t provide many specifics on the weapons heading to Ukraine. It is the 26th time the administration is using the presidential drawdown authority, which allows the United States to take from its stockpiles and provide those weapons to Ukraine.

Rather than giving so much money to the Ukrainians, why can’t we spend it on some antibiotics for our children?

It seems to me that our priorities are really messed up.

The RSV outbreak that we are witnessing right now is really serious. If you have young children, you will want to closely monitor developments in your local area.

After a couple of really tough years, a lot of people had been hoping that we would experience a “return to normal” in 2022.

But as I keep warning my readers, we have now entered an era of great pestilences.

This year we have seen the bird flu kill tens of millions of our chickens and turkeys, a global monkeypox epidemic has spread all over the globe, and now RSV and the flu are ripping across the nation.

We really are living in unprecedented times, and the challenges that we are facing are only going to get even greater as the months roll along.

Economic Collapse Blog: America’s Cities Are Being Turned Into Crime-Ridden War Zones

The other day we posted an article saying that America has already collapsed. Here, Michael Snyder at the Economic Collapse Blog writes America’s Cities Are Being Turned Into Crime-Ridden War Zones, And Murder Rates Are Way Up Again In 2021.

The wealthy are reveling in their giant mountains of money, but meanwhile our society is literally coming apart at the seams all around us. The stock market has been hovering near all-time record highs, and for those at the very top of the economic pyramid these may seem like the best of times. But for most Americans, the “good old days” are a long distant memory. More than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed over the past year, poverty is absolutely exploding all around us, and crime rates are shooting higher at an unprecedented rate. In fact, one study of 34 big U.S. cities found that their murder rates rose by an average of 30 percent in 2020…

A study by the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice found that murders increased by 30% across 34 large U.S. cities.

In some areas, carjackings, robberies, shootings, sexual assaults and violence have become so common that it seems like the crime literally never stops.
Unless you have a death wish, there are certain parts of Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore that you should never enter night or day. If you doubt me, just go wander the streets of the worst neighborhoods of those cities and see what happens to you.
This was supposed to be a year when crime rates began to return to normal, but instead they are on the rise again. One study that looked at 37 large U.S. cities found that murder rates are up by an average of 18 percent so far in 2021…

The big increase in the murder rate in the United States in 2020 has carried over to 2021.
A sample of 37 cities with data available for the first three months of this year shows murder up 18 percent relative to the same period last year.

What is truly frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get in America from here on out.
So if murder rates are spiking this much under relatively good conditions, what will our cities look like when things get really crazy?
Some of the crimes that we are witnessing are almost too horrible for words. For example, just consider what just happened to a 12-year-old boy in Miami…

A suspect in a black car kidnapped the boy at about 2 a.m. early Saturday morning from a Miami street, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department.
He drove a few blocks, raped the boy, and then shoved him out of the car and drove off, police said.
A good Samaritan on a bike near the scene of the crime came to the boy’s rescue. He was bleeding from the head and said he had been shot.

How sick do you have to be in order to do something like that?
Sadly, I could write about nightmarish crimes such as this every single day of the week if I wanted to, because they happen constantly.
Much of the crime boom is being fueled by gangs. There are more than 100,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago alone, and a steady stream of illegal immigrants ensures that the gangs will always have an influx of new recruits.
Securing our borders would go a long way toward solving this problem, but we refuse to do that.
Just recently, a sheriff in Texas took a reporter from the Daily Mail down to “the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande”…

The crossing point is on private property where an abandoned house sits on a quiet rural street that runs parallel to the Rio Grande, about 5 miles out of town from Del Rio, Texas, 150 miles southwest of San Antonio.
Law enforcement has nicknamed it ‘Border Lawn.’
‘It’s the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande,’ Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

When the river is low, immigrants can wade across the Rio Grande in about five minutes.
Authorities know that hordes of people come across the border at this spot each week, but they won’t stop it.
Of course any immigrants that are detained need to be held somewhere, and facilities at the border are already packed beyond overflowing. In particular, the infamous facility in Donna, Texas is already holding more than 10 times more migrants than it was designed to hold…

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding facility in Donna, Texas, is supposed to house no more than 250 migrants during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday, the tent complex was holding more than 4,100 migrants, including 3,200 unaccompanied children, according to Oscar Escamilla, a Border Patrol official in the Rio Grande Valley who briefed reporters during the first press tour of a CBP facility under President Biden.

So much of the immigration debate is focused on the unfortunate children that are being held in places such as this, but that is just a drop in the bucket.
Each week, thousands of grown men illegally cross the border without being detained at all. Many of those grown men end up in our core urban areas, and with few legitimate employment prospects available many of them turn to crime.
In an article that I published yesterday entitled “We Have Never Seen A Home Buying Frenzy Quite Like This”, I discussed the fact that we have seen a mass exodus from our core urban areas over the past year. Millions of Americans have been looking to buy homes in desirable rural and suburban locations, and this has pushed housing prices into the stratosphere.
Today, I came across another example of this phenomenon. 122 offers were made on a 1,400 square foot home that was listed for sale in Citrus Heights, California in just one weekend…

A Citrus Heights home in a quiet cul-de-sac received 122 offers in one weekend on the market.
The 1,400 square feet home has three bedrooms, two baths and a spacious backyard with a swimming pool and an asking price of $399,900.00.

Could you imagine paying $400,000 for a house that is just 1,400 square feet in size?
The real estate agent that listed this property was astounded to receive so many offers, because it wasn’t underpriced at all…

“People would think that it was underpriced. It was not underpriced. It was straight on with the comps,” said Deb Brittan, the listing agent for the property. “I had hoped, I thought, maybe if we get 20 offers that would be amazing.”

As for the couple that sold the house, they don’t need it anymore because they are moving to Idaho.
As conditions in the United States continue to deteriorate, we will continue to see people flock to rural and suburban communities at an unprecedented rate.
So if you are planning to move, I would not wait.
Millions of Americans have already been priced out of the market, and the feeding frenzy is not going to subside any time soon.

Economic Collapse Blog: Why Are So Many Americans Stockpiling Guns, Silver And Food Right Now?

Michael Snyder at the Economic Collapse blog asks Why Are So Many Americans Stockpiling Guns, Silver And Food Right Now?

We were told that 2021 would be the year when everything starts to get back to normal. But that hasn’t exactly been the case, has it? It has been just over a month, and there is still chaos everywhere. We have seen a wild riot at the U.S. Capitol, civil unrest has been erupting in major cities from coast to coast, millions of people have filed for unemployment benefits, a president was impeached, and a crazy ride on Wall Street made “GameStop” a national phenomenon. That would normally be enough for an entire year, but we are still in the first week of February.

All throughout history there have been critical turning points when events have greatly accelerated, and it appears that we have reached one of those turning points.

In fact, this may be turn out to be the biggest turning point of them all.

Millions upon millions of Americans can sense that big trouble is ahead. For many, it is like a “gut feeling” that they just can’t shake.

Just a few days ago, my wife met a woman from the west coast that just moved here. This woman and her husband were desperate to leave California, and they felt very strongly that they should move somewhere safe.

What makes her story remarkable is the fact that my wife and I have heard similar stories from others countless times over the past 12 months.

Our nation is being shaken in thousands of different ways, and so many of us can feel that things are building up to some sort of a grand crescendo.

So that is why so many Americans are stockpiling guns, silver and food right now.

They want to be ready for what is ahead.

2020 was a record year for U.S. gun purchases, but instead of slowing down in January, gun sales went even higher…

According to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check (NCIS) data, 4.3 million firearm background checks were initiated in January. That’s the highest number on record, and up over 300,000 in comparison to December 2020. Three of the top 10 highest weeks are now from January 2021.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s adjusted background check figure of 2 million, reached by subtracting out background code permit checks and permit rechecks and checks on active concealed carry permits, was a jump from its adjusted figure of 1.1 million in January 2020.

One of the biggest reasons why people feel a need to be armed right now is because crime rates have been absolutely skyrocketing.

In particular, murder rates in our major cities rose by an average of 30 percent last year…

Murder rates in nearly three dozen American cities exploded in 2020, rising 30 percent over the previous year, resulting in 1,200 more deaths from murder last year when compared to 2019, according to a new study examining possible connections between crime, the coronavirus pandemic and protests against police brutality.

‘Homicide rates were higher during every month of 2020 relative to rates from the previous year. That said, rates increased significantly in June, well after the pandemic began, coinciding with the death of George Floyd and the mass protests that followed,’ states a report from the National Commission of COVID-19 and Criminal Justice (NCCCJ), titled Pandemic, Social unrest and Crime in US Cities.

We have never seen an increase of that magnitude from one year to the next, and the brutality of some of these murders has been off the charts.

For example, the recent murder of two women in California deeply shocked people all over the nation…

A brother of up-and-coming rapper Uzzy Marcus was arrested in California following an eight-hour standoff with police and charged with murdering two women, whose lifeless bodies were captured in an Instagram Live video.

Raymond Weber, 29, was taken into custody by police in Vacaville at around 8.30am on Saturday and was then booked into the Solano County Jail on two counts of first-degree murder and multiple other felonies, including domestic assault.

In addition to the straight up crime we have been witnessing, endless political violence has also made some of our largest cities almost unlivable at this point.

I honestly do not know why anyone would want to live in downtown Portland or downtown Seattle now. Of course conditions are not much better in the core areas of many of our other major metropolitan areas.

Meanwhile, our economy continues to be greatly shaken and recent volatility in the financial markets caused a massive run on physical silver…

U.S. bullion broker Apmex warned of delays in processing silver transactions because of surging volumes.

Other U.S. dealers, including JM Bullion and SD Bullion, warned customers of shipping delays of five to 10 days. Everett Millman at Gainesville Coins in Florida said they were expecting shipping delays, perhaps until perhaps mid-March, for some products like Silver Eagles and Silver Maples.

Things have calmed down a bit after the craziness of the past few days, but people are going to continue voraciously buying silver.

Precious metals have been a safe haven all throughout human history, and that is especially true during highly inflationary times.

And as I have written about extensively, we are moving into very highly inflationary times.

In addition to gold and silver, Americans have also been feverishly stockpiling food…

Wise Company estimated in 2018 that Americans were buying between $400 million and $450 million worth of emergency food supplies per year. And, while Wise declined to release any specific revenue figures, Eriksson tells CNBC Make It that the company saw its food sales surge by “probably five or six times” in 2020 amid the pandemic.

In the long run, I would argue that food is more important than guns or silver, because you can’t eat guns or silver when you are hungry.

And yes, things will eventually get that bad.

Most people don’t understand the specifics of what is coming, but what they do know is that they have a gnawing feeling deep inside that they can’t shake that really bad things are on the horizon.

I would strongly encourage you to use this current period of relative stability to get prepared for the very uncertain times that are ahead of us.

Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, and our society will soon be turned completely upside down.