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John Goes ... to the UNITED NATIONS?

2023-09-27 · letter vlog · John · 4:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development · mode: Advocacy & fundraising · tags: timely hook, on location, heavy topic, self promotion

John vlogs his trip to the UN High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis, where the political declaration is approved, remembers Shreya Tripathi, and in a two-minute speech argues that TB deaths are now caused by human choices: the cure is where the disease is not.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Arrival: a picnic for TB survivors, pre-meeting meetings, seeing his TB heroes and dinner with them

  • ★★ John and Sarah visited a picnic for TB survivors and activists and attended pre-meeting meetings, which he loved because he loves hating tuberculosis so much. — 00:00:00 · Sarah Urist Green, tuberculosis
  • ★★ John got to see several of his heroes: Dr. Lucica Ditiu, the writer and surgeon Dr. Atul Gawande, and Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee. — 00:00:00
  • ★ John compares seeing these TB fighters to how his daughter would feel seeing Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift the same night; they invited him to dinner and he tried to keep his cool. (playful) — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The walk to the UN, the building, and the approval of the political declaration on tuberculosis

  • ★★ On his 40-minute walk to the UN, John wondered whether he would get to speak and thought of the honor of representing Nerdfighteria, Partners In Health, TB survivors and those who died. — 00:00:58 · Nerdfighteria, Partners In Health
  • ★ John calls the UN grounds' beautiful landscaping, which some of the world's richest people get to look down on, a metaphor. (playful) — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John celebrated with other TB activists as the UN political declaration on tuberculosis was formally approved. — 00:01:36
  • ★★★ John says the declaration sets big targets for reducing TB in the next few years which, if honored, will save millions of lives. — 00:01:36 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says the declaration is only a piece of paper unless nations and their leaders fund and implement its initiatives. — 00:01:36

00:02:05 — Remembering Shreya Tripathi, alive at the 2018 meeting, whose death bureaucracy and indifference also caused

  • ★★ John says this was the second UN high-level meeting on tuberculosis; at the last one, in 2018, Shreya Tripathi was still alive. — 00:02:05
  • ★★★ John says Shreya was a teenager who sued her own government in India for access to bedaquiline for herself and others; her fight reached India's highest court, where she won. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ John says Shreya was a fan of his book The Fault in Our Stars. — 00:02:05 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★★ John says by the time Shreya won it was too late: her lungs were too damaged for her to survive. — 00:02:34
  • ★★★ John says Shreya's death was caused not just by tuberculosis but by government bureaucracy and international indifference to TB. — 00:02:34 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ Thinking of Shreya, John was told by UN staff that he would get to speak if he kept it under two minutes. — 00:02:34
  • ★★★ John wishes he had said more: that TB is a problem of resource allocation. — 00:02:34

00:02:58 — John's UN speech: what he wishes he'd said, Mugyenyi's line applied to TB, death from TB as human choice

  • ★★★ John wishes he had said that disease does not treat people equally unless society treats people equally. — 00:03:04 · health equity · first in: 2021-09-28, 11 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read
  • ★★★ John wishes he had said that we cannot keep promising to address the TB crisis without making the choices and sacrifices needed to keep those promises. — 00:03:04
  • ★★ In his speech John recalls that 23 years ago Dr. Peter Mugyenyi said of HIV medications that the drugs are where the disease is not, and the disease where the drugs are not. — 00:03:04

  • ★★★ John tells the UN that TB today is in the same situation: the cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not. — 00:03:33 · tuberculosis, health equity

    “The cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not.”

  • ★★★ John says TB has been curable for 75 years yet continues to kill 1.6 million people. — 00:03:33 · tuberculosis

  • ★★★ John says that in the 19th century TB deaths could be blamed on the bacterium, but since we know how to kill it, death from TB today is caused by human-built systems and human choice. — 00:03:33 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says we have chosen today's world, in which 1.6 million people die of tuberculosis, and we can choose a better one. — 00:04:02 · tuberculosis

00:04:31 — Closing: hoping he did okay and that Shreya knows the fight continues; sign-off

  • ★★★ John believes that, working together over the next decade, we will choose a world where no one dies of tuberculosis. — 00:04:31 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John hopes he did okay and that Shreya somehow knows we are still fighting for her and will continue until the fight is finished. — 00:04:31

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description and John's pinned comment ask viewers to get their Pizzamas at pizzamas.com. — video description · Pizzamas

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Political Declaration on Tuberculosis · Shreya Tripathi · tuberculosis · UN High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis · United Nations

Also: People: Atul Gawande · Lucica Ditiu · Olivia Rodrigo · Peter Mugyenyi · Salmaan Keshavjee · Sarah Urist Green · Taylor Swift

Works: The Fault in Our Stars

Organizations: Government of India · Partners In Health · Supreme Court of India

Concepts: health equity · HIV/AIDS · Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Places: India

Products: Bedaquiline

Only in the description or credits: Pizzamas

Also centred on Shreya Tripathi: My Tuberculosis Reading List

Also centred on United Nations: What the Heck is the UN?

Later videos replying to this one

Part of an exchange of 3 videos, 2023-09-27 – 2023-09-29.