Belated Finding

Four weeks ago I was relieved that our hand sanitizer purchase from Costco was not on the list of nine that the FDA had warned against. They had contained methyl alcohol that is harmful to humans and can be absorbed through the skin.

On Tuesday the FDA added dozens more to the list, which now included our recent purchase as I discovered this morning. At 12:45 pm PDT Costco advised us of the recall via telephone. We've stopped using the sanitizer and will soon return it.

Comments:

Powerful inventory control systems permit sellers to match buyers and products, which can each number in the many thousands, even millions. Such tracking is understandably feared for privacy reasons, but in this case provided a substantial benefit.

Partial recalls can mistakenly cause consumers to believe that products not on the list are safe. After the first announcement on July 3rd we used the sanitizer liberally, to our possible detriment as it turned out.

Would it have been better to have halted all sanitizer sales until more could be known? That would have been consistent with the policy we seem to be following for COVID-19, that is, stop everything until we figure out more.

Such decisions are way above my pay grade but I often wonder if we could have trusted people to make their own decisions by putting all of the incomplete and sometimes contradictory information out there rather than make them act or not act "for their own good". Some people will make unwise choices, which are indeed costly, but taking away their choice has costs, too.