Skip to content

COVID-19 pandemic

pandemic · in 106 videos (2020–2026)

The pandemic, which John says has drawn hot takes the world doesn't need.

Videos by year: 2020: 33 · 2021: 23 · 2022: 11 · 2023: 4 · 2024: 9 · 2025: 6 · 2026: 20

Also known as: coronavirus, COVID-19

Threads

Also named in the threads: SciShow Kids: launch of the science channel for young kids (2015) · Quadragocon 2015 edition: the brothers' fourteen-event competition for Hank's birthday · A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor: Hank's sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018) · Maternal Center of Excellence: the brothers' Partners In Health project in Sierra Leone (2019) · John asks viewers to donate to Partners In Health at pih.org/hankandjohn (2019) · P4A 2019 edition · Vlogbrothers videos titled with Smash Mouth's All Star lyrics (2020) · John writes his first nonfiction book, The Anthropocene Reviewed (2020) · John: news of the President's COVID-19 hospitalization will not feel big eight days later (2020) · John: Partners In Health will break ground on the Maternal Center of Excellence in spring 2021 (2020) · Quadragocon 2025 edition: the brothers' fourteen-event competition, ten years after the first

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

vaccine (17) · social media (7) · Koidu Government Hospital (5) · Donald Trump (9) · maternal death (8) · Sierra Leone (10) · Partners In Health (9) · United States (16) · Study Hall (2) · The Anthropocene Reviewed (book) (5)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2020

  • 2020-03-13 · The Anxious Scroll — Hank called two people he rarely phones; they talked some about COVID-19 but also about bread, Star Wars, work and coffee, the normal stuff, and it was lovely. — 00:00:50
  • 2020-03-20 · The Sudden Obliteration of Expectation — Hank says getting diagnosed and coming to terms with a chronic illness feels similar to what is happening now: first something wrong, then a better-understood problem, now a deluge of uncertainties. — 00:08:42
  • 2020-04-28 · get your game on — John says losing sports is one of the least important losses of this historical moment, and sports don't matter, but he misses the luxury of caring about things that don't matter. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-06-30 · i like it — John: Instead Liverpool won the league after a three-month pandemic break, and John watched alone in his basement, the game played in an eerily empty stadium. — 00:03:04
  • 2020-07-21 · Somebody Once Asked . . . — John: The pandemic challenges health systems everywhere: Koidu Government Hospital's emergency department closed for a time after health workers caught the virus and others had to self-isolate, leaving no replacements. — 00:01:28
  • 2020-08-18 · what's wrong with taking the back streets? — In a comment John explains the number: at least 170,000 Americans had died of COVID-19 as of the day before. — creator comment
  • 2020-08-21 · The Water's Getting Warm — Hank: If that is true, Hank tells John, we now have a second such problem, the pandemic, which we could have done without. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • 2020-10-05 · Thank God It's Over and PIZZAMAS IS HERE!!!!!!! — announcement: John: The Pizzamas items are sold only during this Pizzamas, and all profits and royalties go to charity to reduce child and maternal mortality, plus international COVID relief for a couple of items. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-10-27 · The time I met Joe Biden — John finds Biden's plans for tackling the COVID pandemic far more convincing than Trump's. — 00:01:56
  • 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) · Just Some Election Thoughts… — Hank says the rift, crafted over decades and deeper than many of its crafters hoped, was never going to be filled in one election; his hope that it would was faulty. — 00:01:27
  • 2020-11-17 · Our Biggest Project Yet: A One Year Update — announcement: John: Despite COVID, groundbreaking on the Maternal Center of Excellence is still planned for April 2021, the original date, a credit to PIH and Sierra Leone's government. — 00:01:56
  • 2020-11-24 · personal risk · societal risk — John: In the US a 75-year-old with COVID-19 has well over a 90% chance of surviving; at John's age, even with some pre-existing conditions, over 98%. — 00:00:00
  • …and 75 statements more in 2020 — all statements of 2020

Also named in: I Need to Get Myself Away from this Place

2021

Also named in: Should You Abandon Social Media?

2022

  • 2022-01-04 · After 15 Years on YouTube, THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING — John: Even before COVID, raising $25 million felt between ambitious and impossible, but John says it was worth reaching for because it could transform care in the region. — 00:00:29
  • 2022-01-11 · The Fault in Our Stars - Ten Years Later — John is emerging from a long bout of the flu, not COVID, an old-school virus that makes him feel like he is in the 1990s. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • 2022-02-01 · This Video Is Actually Three Videos — John has been thinking about cost-benefit analyses partly because the pandemic demands a constant, exhausting stream of personal and societal ones. — 00:02:34
  • 2022-03-11 · Is it All Hopeless? — Hank understands the gloom: the pandemic isn't over and we are entering the instability of a dictator with nukes starting a horrific, unnecessary war on a neighbouring country. — 00:01:19
  • 2022-07-01 · 7 Movie Reviews in Four Minutes — Hank has COVID and has not left his hotel room in about a week; instead of getting a lot done, it has meant little motivation and a lot of sleep. — 00:00:00
    • In a comment John says that when Hank tested positive but felt fine, John told him to retest because of false positives; Hank then texted that he now had double Covid. — creator comment
  • 2022-07-08 · Sad COVID Boy Hank Green Eats Foods He Hates but Can't Taste — Hank says that, probably partly because he takes medicine to control an autoimmune disease, he got a kind of COVID that goes away and comes back, which has him looking for the bright side. (hedged) — 00:00:00
    • In a comment Hank says fully vaccinated people have demonstrably far milder COVID and vaccines cut the chance of death many times; new variants infect vaccinated people but their disease is far less serious. — creator comment
  • 2022-08-16 · cars vs. covid — John reports that he has COVID, opening his video with greetings from it. — 00:00:00
    • John styles himself America's leading COVID-stricken Cars vs. influencer and analyst. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2022-08-23 · Flin Flon: One Book's Unlikely Survival — John: The Sunless City arrived in John's mailbox just as COVID was settling upon his house. — 00:00:29
  • 2022-09-16 · Here's Why Younger People are Getting Shingles — Hank notes COVID-19 is a disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, and asks why it isn't simply called the COVID-19 virus. — 00:00:00
  • …and 8 statements more in 2022 — all statements of 2022

2023

  • 2023-06-02 (said on 2023-06-01, implied) · Chemo is Weird, Y'all — Hank compares the fatigue to when he had COVID: it is hard even to move his arm to grab a Gatorade bottle. — 00:03:39
  • 2023-07-18 · Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse — John says COVID-19 had a global constituency from day one: powerful people and countries saw their lives upended, so resources were spent immediately. — 00:00:58
  • 2023-09-14 · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — Nandita Venkatesan: Nandita says that during COVID, studying at Oxford on a full scholarship, she watched drugs and vaccines arrive weekly while people lamented an isolation she had already lived through. — 00:09:46
  • 2023-09-15 · The Worst Disease in Human History — Hank says tuberculosis has been the deadliest infectious disease for like 99% of the last 10,000 years, overtaken only every once in a while by the Spanish flu, the Black Death or, very briefly, COVID. — 00:00:12

2024

2025

  • 2025-02-25 · EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS — John says COVID-19 displaced TB as the deadliest infectious disease in 2020-2022, but in 2023 TB regained that status, killing 1.25 million people. — 00:04:58
  • 2025-04-15 · Chatting with ... a U.S. Senator? — Adam Schiff: Taking the long view, Schiff says the country survived the Vietnam era, a civil war, world wars, a cold war and a pandemic and will survive this, though rebuilding takes time. — 00:09:52
  • 2025-08-05 · ONE TAKE JOHNNY — Hank explains the Quadragocon: every 'four years' the brothers hold a 14-event competition; a pandemic disrupted it, the last was four years ago, and the first ten years ago. — 00:05:10
  • 2025-09-19 · Let's Just Be Stupid For a Moment — John announces the 2025 Quadragocon ends in a tie, the third consecutive Quadragocon tie, and says they do not set it up that way. — 00:08:17
  • 2025-10-01 · Real Reasons for Hope — John: Globally maternal mortality has fallen only slowly since 2015, even worsening the year after COVID emerged as health systems were strained: about 23% in the last 10 years. — 00:02:55
  • 2025-12-09 · Hank Green, from A to Z — John says VidCon, a more successful venture, grew from a hotel basement into one of the largest US conferences; it still exists, but the brothers have not owned it since before the pandemic. — 00:04:22

2026

  • 2026-03-31 · I've Been Keeping a Secret… — announcement: John announces he has written a new book, Hollywood, Ending, out September 22, with signed copies available for pre-order now. — 00:00:00 · also in: My First Novel in Nine Years Has a Cover, Hollywood, Ending
    • When the pandemic first emerged John read a story on a series of semi-secret livestreams; that story became this novel. — 00:00:29
    • The novel is about Kai and Juniper, two people in their early twenties who were in a movie together about the last year of Andy Warhol's life, called Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. — 00:00:58
    • John asks viewers to pre-order the signed edition at hollywoodendingbook.com soon; signed copies are available in the US and Canada. — 00:03:24
  • 2026-06-16 · My First Novel in Nine Years Has a Cover — announcement: John says he began a novel about fame, trauma and loving our way through them about eight years ago, and today finally gets to show its cover. — 00:00:00
    • The book has two narrators, Kai and Juniper, twenty-something co-stars of a film about Andy Warhol's last year (2025), Andy Warhol Never Gets Old; as it blows up, so do their lives, thrillingly and painfully. — 00:00:00
  • 2026-07-07 · On the Death of the Author — John says that, like all books ever written, Hollywood, Ending is coded autobiography: about movies, press junkets, trauma and sudden fame, which he has known. — 00:05:22
  • 2026-08-25 · The Great Thing about Infectious Disease — John calls it curious that, five years after a vaccine dramatically cut serious illness and death, people on average trust preventive health less than before COVID. — 00:04:52
  • 2026-09-22 · I Want You to Know Nothing About This — announcement: John says Hollywood, Ending is officially out as of today. — 00:00:03
  • 2026-10-01 · Are We Still YouTubers? — Hank says his artwork is not video but the channel, the brotherhood, the whole thing: from people unsure which brother is which to people making Hollywood, Ending cakes, fonts and hospitals in Sierra Leone. — 00:06:57
  • 2026-10-02 · the most powerful attention-consuming tools in the history of the world — John says consuming content is a central theme of Hollywood, Ending: it really means engaging with art, but within capitalism we view that engagement as consumption and art as content. — 00:00:01
    • In Hollywood, Ending John tried to argue that art is essential to human experience and a site of joint enchantment where our attention intertwines and deepens our connection. — 00:01:57
  • …and 43 statements more in 2026 — all statements of 2026