FDA found mold in GLP-1 drug factories, then three weeks later warned the drugs can cause blindness.

…(cont) There's a second date in the same notebook. November 9th. Same autumn, different page. The FDA required the drugmakers — required, not asked — to put a new warning on those same drugs. Not about bugs this time. About the eyes. A condition with a longer name than I can say without the page open, something about the optic nerve, and both wire services that Monday reached for the same plain phrase for what it can do: sudden blindness.

Substantial number. Out of millions who were already swallowing it, for the diabetes or for the weight, before November 9th ever arrived. I don't have a count of how many of those millions started before the warning existed. I only have the order the two dates come in — the drug first, the warning after.

Twenty-five days. I did that math twice, out in the garage, with a flashlight in one hand and a calendar app in the other, because I didn't trust myself with just one. October 15th to November 9th is twenty-five days. Three weeks and four more. Not a month — I almost wrote "a month" the first time, and that's not what it says, so I crossed it out.

While I had the flashlight, I looked at the fan belt on the car, the one that's been fraying since August. I noticed it the same afternoon I noticed it. I didn't wait twenty-five days to tell my wife not to take it to the store that week. I don't know if a factory floor runs on the same clock as a car hood. I'm only telling you how fast the noticing went, in my garage, with my belt.

One more page. Both stories from November 9th — two different outlets, same Monday — use the word "rare" for the eye condition. I couldn't find it stamped there. What I found is the reporting using the word to describe the condition — their word, telling us what the notice does, not the notice's own word, quoted. So I'm crossing out where I had it the other way. I should've been more careful with that the first time through.

Excuse me — one more thing, before you go. Twenty-five days sits between those two dates. The first one was about bugs in the factory. The second one was about blindness in the patient. Same drugs, both ends. When you picture that gap — the twenty-five days — where does your picture start? At the warning, on November 9th? Or three weeks earlier than that, back at the mold?