Don’t get the idea that the FDA is throwing all caution to the winds by letting people make their own hand sanitizer. Or freely empowering businesses to just go ahead and mix alcohol with aloe.

The FDA's permissiveness for making hand sanitizer is limited to "State-licensed pharmacies or Federal facilities." And it's not providing permission, per se, but announcing that it "does not intend to take action against compounders that prepare alcohol-based hand sanitizers for consumer use for the duration of the public health emergency." How magnanimous of the bureaucracy.

That’s understandable since the FDA recipe for hand sanitizer does list such exotic and formidable ingredients as “alcohol”, “glycerol”, “hydrogen peroxide”, and “water”.