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Tuberculosis and Hank's Shingles

2026-03-17 · letter vlog · John · 5:47 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: Philosophy & meaning, Sports, History & curiosities) · mode: Announcements · tags: timely hook, self promotion, fundraising ask, community lore, heavy topic

In a five-part video shaped like the spinal column, John tells Hank that his pain video changed John's view: telling others their pain has meaning is unhelpful, but finding meaning in one's own can help. He explains that GSK chose a shingles vaccine over a TB vaccine because rich countries are the bigger market, then covers his AFC Wimbledon livestreams, Galen's 'sacred bone' and a Keats & Co. World TB Day giveaway.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Part one: does pain have a meaning? John revises his view after Hank's pain video

  • ★★★ John says he has long believed pain has no non-biological point: it is not ennobling or transcendent, it simply is. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says attempts to give pain a meaning can be really harmful to people living in pain, one of the themes of The Fault in Our Stars. — 00:00:29 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★ Hank's video reminded John that people sometimes find meaning in pain, and that pain can make us more empathetic, or at least make us believe others' pain. — 00:00:29 · empathy
  • ★★★ John's current, not fully formed thinking: telling other people their pain has meaning is deeply unhelpful, but finding meaning in your own pain can be fine and at times very helpful. (hedged) — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Part two: Hank's shingles, and how GSK pursued a shingles vaccine instead of a tuberculosis vaccine

  • ★ John says Hank's pain video changed the way he thinks about this and thanks him for making it, though it was very difficult to shoot and edit. — 00:00:58 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ John says the reason Hank is in so much pain turns out to be that he has shingles again. — 00:00:58 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John says shingles, famously painful, may no longer exist within a generation or two because it is now vaccine preventable. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John says GSK several years ago had two promising vaccine candidates, for shingles and for tuberculosis, that shared an adjuvant, so it could really pursue only one. — 00:01:27 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says GSK chose shingles though tuberculosis causes more death, because shingles is a bigger problem in rich countries and TB mostly in poor ones, so the shingles market was much bigger. — 00:01:56 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says the shingles vaccine has been a huge hit, generating over 14 billion dollars for GSK. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says shingles is terrible, he is very glad a vaccine now prevents it, and GSK did a great job creating it. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John says pursuing the shingles vaccine left the TB vaccine much further behind; in the years we might have had one, many millions of people have died. — 00:02:26 · tuberculosis, vaccine
  • ★★ John points to a fascinating article, linked in the doobly-doo, on the relationship between the shingles vaccine and the tuberculosis vaccine. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John says the story shows the strange incentives in creating vaccines for poor countries' diseases when they conflict with health problems of wealthy countries, whose governments can spend lots on vaccines. — 00:02:26 · vaccine

00:02:55 — Part three: John's Channel livestreams for AFC Wimbledon's playing fund and his Red Dead Redemption 2 stream

  • ★★★ John says his livestreams on John's Channel have raised money for AFC Wimbledon's playing fund for a couple of years, helping pay for three players, including current top scorer Marcus Browne. — 00:02:55 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★ John says AFC Wimbledon is a third-tier English soccer team having a surprisingly great year so far. — 00:03:24 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★★ John says Wimbledon wear DFTBA on the back of their shorts between left thigh and buttocks, because when you are in love you do strange things, and he loves AFC Wimbledon. (playful) — 00:03:24 · AFC Wimbledon, DFTBA
  • ★★ John is livestreaming himself playing Red Dead Redemption 2 with his own moral compass, which has been challenging; he just wants to be a beloved member of the gang. — 00:03:24

00:03:45 — Part four: Galen names the sacrum the sacred bone; his tuberculosis treatments; butt is legs

  • ★★ John is also livestreaming something he can't talk about yet, with a link in the doobly-doo for anyone who wants to follow along. — 00:03:45
  • ★★ John says the sacral vertebrae and the sacrum are so named because Galen called it the sacred bone 2,000 years ago. — 00:03:45
  • ★★ John says Galen recommended fresh air and sea voyages for tuberculosis, standard treatments for consumption for about two millennia though not particularly effective. — 00:03:45 · tuberculosis

00:04:14 — Part five: World TB Day, Keats & Co. and its Ode on a Grecian Urn giveaway; get-well wishes and sign-off

  • ★ John says Galen perhaps called it the sacred bone because of its role in sacrifice, or maybe its proximity to the genitalia, seen as sacred. (hedged) — 00:04:14
  • ★★ John says our upper butts are sacred, or upper upper legs as Hank would argue, since Hank remains committed to the insane idea that butt is legs. (playful) — 00:04:14
  • ★★ John notes World Tuberculosis Day is coming up on March 24th; there is a World Everything Day. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ John says World TB Day is a chance to remind people that the world's deadliest infectious disease, tuberculosis, is both curable and preventable. — 00:04:44 · tuberculosis · first in: 2025-12-16, John Green's Brother
  • ★★ John says Keats & Co. delivers coffee and tea to your home and donates 100% of the profit to fight tuberculosis in impoverished communities. — 00:04:44 · Keats & Co., tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says the company is named for John Keats because he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. — 00:04:44 · Keats & Co., tuberculosis
  • ★★★ For World TB Day Keats & Co. has an unusual giveaway: subscribers before World TB Day receive John reading Ode on a Grecian Urn and explaining why it is important and poignant. — 00:05:13 · Keats & Co.
  • ★★ John's favorite Keats poem says that though all humans die, art lasts forever; John disagrees, since art also dies, but forgives Keats, who wrote it at 23. — 00:05:13 · Keats & Co.
  • ★★ John says the poem reminds him of what is impermanent, which is everything, including, hopefully soon, Hank's pain; he wishes Hank a speedy recovery. (hedged) — 00:05:13 · Hank Green

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: GSK plc · Keats & Co. · pain · Sacrum · Shingles · tuberculosis

Also: People: Galen · John Keats · Marcus Browne

Projects: John's Channel

Works: Ode on a Grecian Urn · Red Dead Redemption 2 · The Fault in Our Stars

Organizations: AFC Wimbledon

Terms: DFTBA

Concepts: empathy · Immunologic adjuvant · infectious disease · market failure · pharmaceutical industry · vaccine

Events: World Tuberculosis Day

Products: Zoster vaccine

Also centred on pain: PUNISHMENT OF PAIN AND SCIENCE! · On Pain · My Physicalmental Illness · Pain

Also centred on Shingles: Here's Why Younger People are Getting Shingles · I'm Sick Because of the Social Structures of Early Hominins

Replies to

  • continues · Pain — “your video about pain made me wonder”

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