When "Enough" Sounds like "I Love You, Neighbor"

My neighbor knocked on the door today to tell me from across the hall that he convinced his doctor to give him a prescription for the combination of hydroxychloroquine (and Zithromax) that Fox News has been talking up based on anecdotal evidence and some really shady trials.    He wanted me to do the same because he is my neighbor, knows I'm in more than one high-risk group, and cares about me.  He also hasn't talked to many people in a while, so I let him talk about the benefits and the deep state medical conspiracy keeping this treatment away from people for a while.  Then I sincerely thanked him for being concerned for me and wished him well and went back to working from home.  And being very concerned. 

It's not really (or at least just) that this treatment hasn't been proven to be safe and effective for treating this illness that concerned me.  It's not just that people desperate for a cure will buy things (possibly from the internet or the black market due to pharmacy shortages) that will kill them.  It's the further scarcity that could happen that has me most concerned. 1  2

He assured me that it's readily available and cheap because that's what Fox News told him, so it shouldn't be a problem for the Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis (and Malaria) patients who need it to have it.  However, the anecdotes I've been reading online have been from Lupus, autoimmune diseases, and Rheumatoid Arthritis patients who can't get their prescriptions refilled right now or in the possible future due to a shortage.

Yesterday the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services said the drugs could be stockpiled in the Strategic National Stockpile and could “be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with Covid-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.”

I am not sure where my healthy but elderly neighbor falls in that wording, but he didn't get his from that stockpile, just from an unethical or worn-down-by-badgering doctor.  All I could think of after he got done proudly telling me how far he had to go to find a pharmacy that had any of these drugs he doesn't need that other people do need, is, "I wonder if this will cause a shortage that will cost people's lives."

If all of these healthy people convince their doctors to give them this thing they don't need, will there be enough of this thing for the people who do need it right now, people who are dying right now?  

Isn't this just another variety of hoarding?  Another way we are selfish and think about what we tthink we need to do to make sure we have enough no matter what even if we take what someone else needs away?  Like the people buying the groceries that WIC-dependent people have to buy when they could buy something else or make do with what they have already hoarded?  Like the people who bought 8 months of toilet paper in a panic, leaving none left for people who have none?

Maybe I'm overreacting.  Maybe the supply chain has fixed itself since those articles I came across the last couple weeks.  Maybe there is plenty to go around like my neighbor said Fox News told him.  Just like toilet paper still missing weeks later from empty shelves. 

Maybe people won't have to miss work and paychecks they are still lucky enough to have due to pain and debilitation. 

Maybe they won't have flare-ups that cause them to go to the hospital and be exposed to this illness when they are already immuno-compromised. 

Maybe people in hard-hit areas won't die because of those 5 doses my neighbor hoarded. 

Maybe my elderly diabetic father won't die because of those 5 doses my neighbor hoarded.  Or my immuno-compromised niece.  Or one of my other neighbors on this planet. 

Maybe hoarding what we don't need now against possible need later will have no consequences in this case. 

But maybe it will. 

And if it will, doesn't that mean I have a moral responsibility to my neighbors and my community to prevent that if I can?

So I am not going to talk to my doctor.  She would not be on board with this anyway because she is kind and compassionate and ethical. 

I just hope that if I do catch this illness and am in the hospital on a ventilator (if one is even available) dying, that there is enough of this scarce, potentially-lifesaving option available for me because it hasn't all been swallowed up by people who are well but incapable of foreseeing the consequences their hoarding can have for their neighbors.  Or their grandfathers.  Or their relatives with cancer.  Or that middle-aged lady with asthma and a sketchy immune system across the hall.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but just in case I'm not, let's all take a deep breath and say ENOUGH hoarding.  

If you bought too much toilet paper and don't need it, you can always give it to someone else, but prescriptions legally don't work that way.  Let's leave the medication in the hands of the professionals to make sure it's there for people who need it when they need it (including maybe you or someone you love) and not sitting in the cabinets of healthy people who just want to feel like they have some control in this currently scarier world we're all in together right now.

Let's love our neighbors by saying ENOUGH.