500 Patrons and a Very Productive Week of Writing! | The Friday(ish) Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday(ish) Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

NB: I’ve noticed that we recently passed 500 supporters on the Patreon page! Thanks so much, that’s a goal I’ve been hoping to hit for some time. It really means the world that so many people like some of the stuff I create enough to be willing to support it financially! The “reward” (I’m not sure that’s the right word!) that I set for when we hit that goal is to create a behind-the-scenes video in which I take you through my process for creating one of my videos. The Patron number might fluctuate a bit (that’s pretty standard) but, regardless, I’m going to start filming that video as soon as I begin work on the video after this one!

What have I been up to this week?

This week has been all about writing, writing, writing. This time around, I spent a tiny bit longer in pure research mode than I often do, resisting the temptation to jet-off into writing the script until I’d read quite a lot on the topic at hand. This has really been paying off over the past week. While I’ve still found occasion to read a couple of new articles or return to ones I’d previously read if something in my notes didn’t seem overly clear, the early work I did in ensuring I had a really good grasp of the important aspects of the topic has allowed me to largely just crack on with making it read well!

This week, I’ve mostly been writing about COVAX, a World Health Organization initiative which (in its current form) operates primarily as a means for rich countries to donate COVID-19 vaccines to countries in the Global South. The reason I’m discussing it in the video (which I’m still pretty sure is going to be called How Big Pharma is Prolonging the Pandemic) is because it was initially intended to be much more than this and to operate, instead, as a programme through which every country in the world (or as close as possible) would purchase their vaccines. This would have brought the price of vaccines down as, had governments banded together, pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t have been able to negotiate such eye-watering (in some cases) prices for vaccines.

The plan, however, was essentially scuppered as wealthy countries (in which most large pharmaceutical companies are based) abandoned it in favour of negotiating their own bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies, thereby increasing the prices of vaccines (in fact, in some cases, poorer countries are paying more per vaccine dose than rich countries who were able to get their orders in early). It thus serves as a useful articulation of how things could have gone differently and helps to set-up a more informed discussion of why treating life-saving medicines as profit-making commodities is, to put it simply, terrible for public health.

I’m really pleased with how the script is turning out. It’s going to be a long video as I’ve decided to lean-in to ensuring that it is as in-depth as it can be. While sometimes I feel like I’m just offering a slightly different point of view with my videos, in this one, I do feel as though I’m putting together a much more comprehensive overview of the state of global vaccination, vaccine inequality and Big Pharma profiteering than I’ve found anywhere else online or in the academic literature. Hopefully the rest of the script turns out as well as what I’ve got so far and that I don’t mess it up in the filming and editing stages!

I think I’ve found a great location to film the video in, and I’m due to do a site visit this week. So, if it’s as good as I hope, I’ll tell you all about it in next week’s update!

And outside of work?

Tuesday of this week was Burns Night which, for those unfamiliar, is a Scottish tradition which celebrates the poetry of Robert Burns. While I’m from the other end of the UK, my partner’s Mum is Scottish and so we went to a local pub where they were hosting a celebration complete with haggis, bagpipes and the traditional recitation of Burns’ Ode to the Haggis. Last year, we were forced by lockdown restrictions to have it at home with just my partner and I so, while it’s not a celebration that’s overly personal to me, it was nice to be out in the real world celebrating again. A slice of normality!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

This week I’ve been catching up on the new series of Toast of Tinseltown which is a relocated version of the British comedy Toast of London. I don’t know how popular the series is outside of the UK, but I’m a really big fan of Matt Berry who writes and stars in it. Some of you may know him from providing the voice of the C3PO-type robot in The Book of Boba Fett or from being in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. Anyway, it’s a really bizarre show but it’s currently living up to the earlier series’.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful!

Hopefully some of you will have seen that I released the long-awaited Patreon Q&A this week. Thanks again to everyone who sent in questions—I hope my answers sufficed!

And, as every, thank you all so much for your generous support!