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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We will talk about plenty of politics later in the show today with Senator Gillibrand and others like about the Trump tax returns and the January 6th committee report being released today, Congressman-elect George Santos of Queens and Nassau County, have you heard this yet, found by The New York Times to reportedly have lied about major things on his résumé, like made stuff up, where he went to college, where he worked, plus a claim on this show that four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub massacre, The Times couldn't find any record of anybody from there being his employees, and more.

We will look into that. We'll start today not on the political side but on the personal side. We have pediatrician Judith Flores with us. Parents, we're going to ask you to help each other out on the phones. Do you know what we're talking about yet? There is now such a shortage of children's over-the-counter cold and flu medicines that stores like Walgreens and CVS are rationing how much you can buy, and that's when you could find them at all, with the tripledemic raging, children's Tylenol and Motrin and other such things.

Listeners, help us report this story and give some advice if you have any to your fellow parents out there, or even if you're not a parent, to the parents out there. 212-433-WNYC as we'll open our phones from the start, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. With us now is Dr. Judith Flores, pediatrician here in New York City, board member of the National Hispanic Medical Association, and fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Thanks for coming on, Dr. Flores. Welcome back to WNYC.

Dr. Judith Flores: Oh, you're most welcome and happy solstice.

Brian Lehrer: And to you. That's right. Officially, this afternoon, I think 4:48 PM, the shortest day of the year and the moment of the solstice today. Can you tell us exactly what the shortage is of as you understand it?

Dr. Judith Flores: Well, it's interesting. I've been in practice for quite a long time. I'm into my 30th year. This is the first time that I've had to bargain for over-the-counter medication. It is quite serious. It probably has to do with two things. One is chain supply, which we all know about, but the other one is people got very concerned, especially parents, about running out of medications for their children. There's been a lot of hoarding just like we saw in the beginning of the pandemic with other items. Some things are not available because individuals have had to take in or thought they really needed to stockpile. That, I think, is what's coming around with the pharmacies trying to limit the amount you can get.

Brian Lehrer: Can you go down the list of products or types of products that are most in short supply?

Dr. Judith Flores: Well, yes, I think one of the things that-- obviously, all the medications to relieve fever and pain in children, in particular, there's more availability in adult like acetaminophen, Tylenol, Motrin, Advil, those things that we use for children are down. In addition, cold preparations are down. For my purposes as a physician, as a pediatrician, I'm having a hard time getting amoxicillin, which I really, in this season, need because it's the medication that I use most commonly for complications like ear infections. I use it for strep throat, which can be a serious condition with long-term effects, and also for any kind of lung disease. I'm really sitting and playing-- I did it Saturday. I played with the pharmacist calling musical pharmacies trying to get what I need and the doses that I need.

Brian Lehrer: We actually did a separate segment recently on the shortage of prescription drugs, including amoxicillin and albuterol. Terrible that that's in short supply for people with asthma or other similar breathing problems.

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, it is.

Brian Lehrer: Now comes this story about over-the-counter medications also being in short supply. Are the reasons the same?

Dr. Judith Flores: There may be slightly different for the antibiotics, and I'm sure that we could get into that a little bit more. Some of it is under production that we've seen recently, but I'm really not sure what's going on there in detail.

Brian Lehrer: Can we take adult products, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, all these things, cut them down to a children's dose, estimate the milligrams, third of the tab or whatever it is, and give it to our kids?

Dr. Judith Flores: Well, I want to give a caution to that. First of all, I think we should understand that fever in a well person, individual, well person, usually, over the age of two is probably good for the body in order to fight infection as long as it doesn't make the person too uncomfortable, they don't have any underlying illness, and I said, very age-specific. Chasing a fever sometimes can itself be a problem. Because when we get too aggressive with managing fever and we try to bring it down too quickly, whether with home remedies or with antipyretics like acetaminophen or ibuprofen, we may actually cause a problem in a younger child.

My advice usually is have a thermometer. Take the temperature. Bring it down gradually. That's probably more important. The other thing you mentioned about the pills and cutting the pills, I would not do that unless I were experienced. I think we can get into trouble with overdosing. What I'm doing is, and I'm advising parents to do, is to first seek the generic brand. Quite a few stores still have generic ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, really?

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, I can find that much better than I can find the name brand.

Brian Lehrer: Acetaminophen is Tylenol.

Dr. Judith Flores: Acetaminophen is Tylenol. Ibuprofen is Motrin. In children, we don't use Advil, but it's Motrin basically for children and Advil for us. Adult doses of acetaminophen and Motrin are much more readily available. If your child is of age, being able to take a pill, which is usually over five, I would go for that. I would go for the appropriate adult doses. I wouldn't cut down medications.

I would be a little more wary of doing that. We can overdose children. We can get into trouble with them, especially children under five and, more importantly, children under two, so I'd be careful. When they're eligible to take a pill, I could crush the pill or let them drink the capsule and use that. That, I've been doing quite a bit. I've always moved from liquids to tablets a lot faster because I know that they're more available.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, and it's the liquids that are most in short supply, right?

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, the liquids and the suspension. For example, if you want to get amoxicillin in a pill, you probably could get your 250, 500-milligram tablet or capsule, but try to get a suspension. I as a physician start negotiating with the pharmacist as to, "What do you have available? How can I get the adequate dose for this child?" The powder is really what's most in demand.

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca in Hawthorne, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi, thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for calling. You have kids three and five, I see.

Rebecca: Yes, and we just got over influenza A, all four of us, my husband and myself and my two kids. This one was hard. This one was really difficult to get over and we're still coughing. We were able to get over-the-counter medications Tylenol and ibuprofen, but our pediatrician had advised us, use warm baths to bring the fever down first. We also dressed them lightly in cotton clothes when their fevers were getting a bit too high. My kids love ice pops. I made them. I offered to make them with Pedialyte or Kinderlyte, but they just wanted plain ice. I broke out the popsicle mold and I just made plain ice pops for them. They loved that and that helped bring their fevers down too.

Brian Lehrer: Those are such good natural remedy solutions. You said warm bath with the fever. Why not a cool bath?

Rebecca: Our pediatrician had advised us to not go too cool because it would shock them.

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca, thank you. Thank you. Great stuff. Parents, who else wants to share your tips if you can't find the over-the-counter medications, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer, or share where you can find them. I know all the parents' Facebook pages and everything are going crazy with, "Oh, there's a store three blocks from here on the--" Do any of that. 212-433-WNYC with pediatrician Dr. Judith Flores. Doctor, you wanted to react to Rebecca?

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, I wanted to say that that's a fantastic idea. I usually tell people just to take apple juice and make apple juice cubes for the kids and have them start drinking that. I think drinking and drinking is very, very important for any age, particularly for children, because when we get into trouble is when they get dehydrated. They're not drinking well. That's really when we can have more problems, especially with flu.

The other thing is even treatment for flu is limited. If I wanted to get somebody Tamiflu at certain ages, they run it up. Treatment for flu has to be very early anyway. It has to be within the first couple of days, so that's limited. Flu can last one to two weeks, especially we're in such a blue state now, and I don't mean politically. When you look at the Department of Health flu map, usually, there are patches of blue, patches of white. It's all blue. We have flu.

I'd say the most important thing is if you have not gotten your flu shot, please do not wait. This is not the time to hesitate. Six months are over. Get your flu shot. It will give you protection. It may not avoid you getting flu totally, but the flu you get is much milder. Especially when we lack medications and we're dealing with younger children, it's very, very important. She mentioned using--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. No, you go.

Dr. Judith Flores: No. Yes, she mentioned using baths. The only thing I would caution is exactly what her pediatrician said. We all belong to the same club. You don't try to bring a fever down too fast at all. You don't want a fever to climb too quickly or be pulled down too quickly because then you may have [unintelligible 00:11:47]. Especially in children under five, you may have a risk of seizure.

The other thing that we used to use, and I remember getting this when I was a kid, were alcohol baths all the time. That brings out fever, but it also can cause alcohol poisoning and can produce seizures if you bring the fever down too quickly. No alcohol baths and no cold water baths. Nice, warm, tepid baths or towels usually help.

Brian Lehrer: Tess in Stuyvesant Town, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tess.

Tess: Hi, thank you for taking my call. Like everyone else going through this right now, I have a seven-year-old home with the flu. We were, for the weekend, out in New Jersey at my parents' house. The local stores had nothing on the shelves, even the store brands. It's just completely barren. We came back to Manhattan. All the local stores again, the Walgreens, the CVS, just the local pharmacies, everything is empty. We were fortunate when we got back here is that we had our pediatrician when he was sick another time.

They'd called in an ibuprofen prescription into the pharmacy. It says Major is the name of the brand and it's children's ibuprofen, oral suspension. We were lucky that they'd given us two large bottles last time we were there. He didn't need that much. What it reminded me was the pandemic when all the Charmin was off the shelves. For office workers, there was a lot of whatever type of toilet paper was being made for office buildings. There was plenty of it because no one was going into the office. It is the type of thing where like he had a 104. We did need to give him medicine to bring down his temperature.

It seems like maybe some of the brands if you can get your pediatrician to call in his prescription that there might be more of that. Then also with the bath, I was going to say, because along with the fever, there's a lot of head congestion and cough, which he's experiencing now. The warm bath seems to be good for that for loosening up everything and letting him drain and then clearing out their heads a little bit. He said he didn't want the bath to be cool at all because they feel so chilled. Yes, a warm bath and if your pediatrician can call in a prescription was good for us.

Brian Lehrer: Tess, that's great advice. Thank you very much for sharing your story. I hope everybody's okay. Dr. Flores, any reaction to any of that?

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, she's absolutely right. First of all, you don't even need your pediatrician to call it in. If they can do you the favor, that's great. Generic, wherever you can find a generic. Also, look in your medicine cabinet. You might actually have something you can use. If a child is over five, you're very likely to be able to use, depending on their weight, the adult dose, one tablet of the adult dose.

I'm not going to give recommendations here on the radio and you should check with your medical team. Generally, over five, they have a weight and the ability to start taking a pill. I usually move to pills and adult dosages are much more available than child dosage. Again, go for the generic wherever you can and look in your medicine cabinet. You may actually have something you can use.

Brian Lehrer: On giving kids those baths, someone who may or may not be a producer of this show writes, "Pro tip. Some kids will hang out and play in the bath for a long while," [laughs] meaning it's a way to pass some of the time when your kids are sick when time can go so slowly, right?

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, exactly. It's all the preference of the child. Some children don't like it, so then you start using little towels, but I've never been a big fan of putting kids in baths, especially cold baths for a long time. It really doesn't help them that much. Whatever is the comfort level of your child, you just want to make them comfortable. I think the thing to remember is age. Age is critical.

If you're dealing with a child that's an infant, these things will help. The most important is to get eyes on that child. If the child is under three months, definitely, they should be seen by a pediatric practitioner. If the child is three months to six months, you might be able to call it in and find out what you're doing and how much medication you can give them, but always be very careful with very young infants.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking about the shortage in our area and lots of places around the country in children's over-the-counter medications. Very much in demand right now with the tripledemic raging. We're getting suggestions on where to find them, how to cope, what alternatives there are from pediatrician Dr. Judith Flores and from you on the phones. We'll get to some of you who are calling in with some natural remedies in just a minute.

We'll see what Dr. Flores thinks about some of those, but 212-433-WNYC is our phone number. All our lines are full right now. As people finish up, you could get in or tweet @BrianLehrer. I want to follow up on something that you said earlier about not cutting down the adult doses of some of these medications, even though the adult doses are apparently not in short supply in the pharmacies. You said there's a risk of overdose. I guess by that, you meant we may not cut them down accurately to the children's doses.

Dr. Judith Flores: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Is there an additional risk that sometimes the adult products and the children's products, even though they have the same brand name, don't have the exact same things in them and there are sometimes ingredients in the adult medications that we shouldn't be giving kids?

Dr. Judith Flores: Absolutely, especially if you're looking at cold preparations. If you look at something simple like acetaminophen, the danger there is how manufacturer makes the tablet. It's not always equal unless it's scored. It's not equal portions in each part of the tablet, so there's a little danger there. I would just work with somebody over the phone. Maybe your medical team persons, figure out which ones you can cut, which ones you can't.

The other issue is overdosing. The overdosing comes because we're using acetaminophen, then we're using a cold preparation that may also have acetaminophen in it. Some cold preparations are really not designed for children. They have a lot of extra ingredients, so reading the label very carefully when you start using adult preparations for children is very, very important. Quite a few of them contain good amounts of alcohol too.

You've got to really be careful when you're doing that, especially for children five and under. I would say once you're at the 9, 10-year mark, depending on the weight of the child, you've got a lot more leeway. When they're younger and really when they're younger is when they're in most need of comfort is you have to be very careful. You have to read things and maybe work along with somebody else before you cut things and decide if this is a good dose for a child.

Brian Lehrer: Would this be especially a risk with liquid medications as you were describing before rather than give a little kid a pill? Obviously, we all like to give a little kid something we can just give them a spoonful of. It's easier for it to go down, but it's the adult liquid formulations. I don't know. NyQuil. I don't want to misrepresent any brand names. Things like that, that may be really tempting to give them. Maybe it'll help them sleep. It's easy to take, but some of those things are most likely to have ingredients we shouldn't be giving kids?

Dr. Judith Flores: Absolutely, absolutely. You're absolutely right. You have to be very careful. As we always say, children are not little adults. We have to be very careful with the medications that we give them. A lot of the preparations, even adults, take a little too much because they're feeling sick. They just take what we call a swig. We don't really know what that is, or they take a swig, and then they just have a little wine with it or a little brandy. Even adults can get into trouble. I would say, for children, it's not a one-to-one. You have to be very careful. They contain a lot of things that kids, especially younger kids, should not be getting.

Brian Lehrer: Allison in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Allison.

Allison: Hi, thanks for letting me call in. Big fan of your show. I'm a big believer in natural remedies. I never gave my kid any of that and she's 23 and healthy. I wanted to say one thing for bringing a fever down. Household vinegar. Just plain white distilled vinegar diluted with cool water rung out on a washcloth. Put it around their wrists. Put it on their forehead. Tie it around their neck like a little scarf. Let them lie down. Read them a story.

In 15 minutes, you will see that that cool compress has become hot and will pull out a lot of the heat if you do this repeatedly with them over a course of a day or a couple of days or before bedtime. Read them a book. Let them relax. You'll see that this will take down the fever without any chemical intervention. I'm not talking about maybe 104, but it's a very good thing. Also warm fluids, miso soup, homemade chicken broth, homemade veggie broth. Let them sweat it out. A very good thing and lots of hugs.

Brian Lehrer: Lots of hugs. Allison, thank you very much. Reaction. How about that vinegar, Dr. Flores?

Dr. Judith Flores: I think if it works in a child and the child can tolerate it, it's fine. Again, my caution is usually children under one. We try not to put things that they can inhale, but that's where my caution is. If it works and you're careful and you have experience, I don't see a big problem. It works a little bit like alcohol, but it's not as strong. I can't say I personally have used it. I would just leave it at that at this point if you want to try it, but I would not try too many things with very young children.

Brian Lehrer: Victoria in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Victoria.

Victoria: Hi, I was just calling. We luckily haven't had the flu, but my daughter had a bad head cold recently. We were at the pediatrician and she was recommending the use of honey for her bad cough and phlegm. We've been doing that in just not very warm water, a little bit of honey, a little bit of lemon. She loved drinking that. We tried to do that several times a day.

Then another hack because my daughter doesn't like a shower and we don't get the bath too hot for her during her bath time. I started using my facial steamer to try to break up the phlegm at night before bed. It was an easy way to get a direct amount of steam towards her. Then we'd sit in front of a show for 30 minutes and just have her breathe that in before hitting the bed, so that was my recommendation.

Brian Lehrer: Victoria, thank you. Two things there. Honey. I've read that honey can be a cough suppressant. You don't necessarily, depending on the severity and the individual, have to take an over-the-counter commercial medication that honey can be a cough suppressant. What do you know about that, Dr. Flores?

Dr. Judith Flores: Oh, yes, the only time I get honey, what she was describing sounds wonderful. The honey, the lemon, and all the good things she was doing. I would say the only time I worry about honey is when they're very young, under one, we should not be using honey. One, one and a half, you should not be using honey.

Brian Lehrer: There's a risk of what they call infant botulism, right?

Dr. Judith Flores: Infant botulism. Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Infant botulism with honey, in particular, for some reason under one, one and a half, yes?

Dr. Judith Flores: Under one, one and a half. After that, if you look at a lot of the over-the-counter preparations that are geared towards people that like more of a natural approach, a lot of them have honey. Using honey on your own is perfectly fine. I think that she was very inventive and I like that when she used her facial steamer as, basically, a nebulizer, a humidifier. I recommend to parents to always have a cool-mist humidifier in the house. That helps adults and children, especially when they're trying to sleep.

The coolness seems to help a little bit more than the hotness. If that's all you've got, whatever kind of humidifier you have, I would definitely put it in the room. Put it next to the child. It helps a lot. It helps adults. It definitely helps adults. The only time we have to worry about coolness or any of that is when people have asthma. Sometimes they don't react so well. Children don't react so well to the humidification.

Getting that mucus to move with a cool-mist humidifier, with nasal soft drops, nasal saline. What is nasal saline? You can make it at home. You heat up some water. You cool it down. You put in a tablespoon of salt. Mix it up. If you have a nice dropper, you can use that and start sucking out some of the mucus. There are a lot of things that we do that parents have learned to do over the years and caregivers that work very well and are safe. We should start using them now especially.

Brian Lehrer: Listener tweets, "If your local pharmacy is out of meds, try your local bodega and discount store. They will always have behind the cash register." That's probably a good tip, obviously, depending on the store. That can sometimes go to the non-obvious place, but that might also have it. All right, and one more on the natural remedies thread here. Joshua calling from Nutley. Joshua, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Joshua: Good. Hey, Brian, how are you doing? I have a low immune system. I got to tell you, every year, I get sick. Every year, my kids get sick. I had strep throat seven times one year. My sister, Andrea, told me about akinesia a couple of years ago. We've all heard about it. I've tried everything and nothing really works, except prescribed medicine. I got to tell you, akinesia, everyone in my family has had the flu this year. I'm the only one that didn't have it. You can take five or six or even seven of them. Check the milligrams of what the bottle says, but you could just keep a constant load. I got to tell you, I've never felt healthier with this.

Brian Lehrer: That's more of a preventive thing, I think I hear you saying. Joshua, thank you so much. Akinesia for kids, Dr. Flores?

Dr. Judith Flores: Again, if it doesn't hurt, which it doesn't, it's probably a good thing to use, as you say, as a preventive. It depends on age. Some people do well, some people don't, but that's a personal experience with it. I see parents use it. I see some benefit to it. There's a lot of things that we have to learn to use. Many times, we learn from parents as physicians. My thing is if it works, let me check the safety. If it's safe, let's go for it.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Ava in Queens, who says she's a pharmacist. Let's hear what a pharmacist has to say about this shortage in the pharmacies. Ava, thanks so much for calling in. You're on WNYC.

Ava: Oh, thank you for having me. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to bring to the public's attention, really, the underutilized resource of your local pharmacist. You don't need to have an appointment. You can just walk in, get medical advice. If you do have a child under five that you're trying to get a fever reducer and you're not able to get it over the counter, in the worst-case scenario, you could have your provider send it over to the pharmacy. Pharmacists do have the ability to compound ibuprofen or acetaminophen from the adult dose to pediatric dose. The public doesn't have to think that they have to cut the adult dose on their own.

It's a really good resource. Maybe even your mom-and-pop pharmacies would be better to utilize during the shortage. I know a lot of the retail chains. Those pharmacists are inundated with vaccinations and other things. I think just going in and chatting with your pharmacist in that scenario where you can't find a fever reducer and your child's less than five or even if they're older than five because some kids, honestly, they're not able to swallow for whatever reason even until we've seen until 13 years old, it does become challenging.

Brian Lehrer: Ava, from your pharmacist's vantage point, why is this shortage happening?

Ava: That's a good question. I think it trickles in slowly. We saw some of the products that were labeled to sell for retail first going out. Now, we're seeing products that we have behind the counter like our big bottles, our stock bottles that we use to fill those scripts that are called in or sent in. Now, those are getting short, so we can't even barely get our supply behind the counter. I guess it's just this tripledemic all over the country. The wholesalers have to make sure that there is enough stock for institutions and for hospitals before they make it available for smaller retail or community stores.

Brian Lehrer: Ava, thank you so much. Very informative. Be well out there. Good luck behind the counter as a pharmacist. Dr. Flores, we're going to run out of time soon. You mentioned earlier your reminder to get your kids their flu shots because it will prevent the flu in some cases, lessen the severity in many cases. Are you recommending the COVID boosters for kids? The uptake of these bivalent boosters has been so low.

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, I think we're missing an opportunity here. When I see patients, we do testing. I test for COVID. I test for RSV, depending on their age, and I test for flu. I'm still seeing quite a bit of COVID. My urgency is definitely get the COVID vaccine for the child. The other thing is get flu vaccine for the entire family. Because if you protect the child and protect the adult, you have a good barrier in that family. If you just do the child, there's still a good chance a child may get flu even though it's less severe, so getting your vaccine.

Also, the pharmacist brought up a great point. I cannot live well without working with my pharmacist. In many places, people don't have a primary. They don't have a doctor to call. That's almost a fantasy. I think going to your pharmacist, as she said, the smaller pharmacies are better. The bigger pharmacies tend to be busy. They will give you a lot of good information on how to manage the cold, how to manage these medications, and how to adjust for age. I think the pharmacist is invaluable to all of us.

Brian Lehrer: You talked before about not always chasing a fever with a child. Sometimes the fever is serving a medical function. How do you know where that line is?

Dr. Judith Flores: I think--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. Answer that. You can answer that.

Dr. Judith Flores: No, please go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. You go.

Dr. Judith Flores: I think where we really get to is the point that we know that, physiologically, fever has a purpose. When you are fighting infection, especially in a child and there's suffering, that's no consolation. I think what we want to do is we can use a lot of the remedies that we've talked about today, a lot of the home remedies to stabilize the fever, alleviate the comfort, but not be so aggressive that you have to bring it down to 99. If you bring it down to 100, 102 slowly, and then it starts to come down, you're good. When you're reaching very high fevers, that's when you want to back up some medication to bring it down and, again, age, age, age.

Brian Lehrer: It's so sad to see them suffer though, right?

Dr. Judith Flores: Yes, you don't want that.

Brian Lehrer: The other part of that question that I was going to ask is, when are these symptom relievers that you can buy over the counter just about relieving discomfort and is there any point at which it becomes any kind of medical risk to not treat?

Dr. Judith Flores: I think if you think it's a medical risk, you should be talking to somebody that can help you medically with a child or yourself. That's when you need to have someone weigh in, give you that advice, whether it's going to the pharmacist, whether it's calling your team. I don't want to tell people go to the emergency room, but calling in and see if you can be seen when you think-- and medical risk has to do with your underlying state.

If you're immunocompromised, if you have lung disease, heart disease, that's a situation we have to be careful. If you have a very young child under one, that's a situation when you have to be careful. The other thing is not to overmedicate. We don't have to alleviate every sniffle and every cough. As we talked already, we can use humidifiers. We can use honey. We can use so many things to make someone comfortable and wade through this because it does take a while. We have to remember that most of these RSV, flu, COVID take at least a week or two to resolve.

Brian Lehrer: In newborns, just to finish the thought and then we're out of time. Listeners, Senator Gillibrand is standing by to be next. Newborns. First couple of months, a fever should never be ignored, right? It might even be ER material.

Dr. Judith Flores: No, never. If you have a child three months or under that has a fever and temperature of 100 and over, please have the child be seen. That would be my strong recommendation. Do not stay home and use any kind of remedy. I would not give them any over-the-counter. I would not give them acetaminophen or Motrin, any of that. I would have them seen as soon as possible under three months.

Brian Lehrer: Pediatrician Dr. Judith Flores here in New York, also a board member of the National Hispanic Medical Association and a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Thank you so much. Listeners, all of you who called in with your suggestions, thank you so much for helping people get through this child over-the-counter medication shortage. Dr. Flores, thanks a lot.

Dr. Judith Flores: Thank you. Thank you for the time.

 

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