Good morning, Hank, it's Saturday.

You actually can't get this shirt at pizzamas.com because it's from last year. Just a reminder that everything at pizzamas.com disappears at the end of Pizzamas, but that's not why I'm here today, Hank. So listen in the long history of Pizzamas, one thing I've definitely never done is make an extra Pizzamas video, but I'm making an exception today because I have an extraordinary update.

You may remember that a few months ago, Nerdfighteria joined a long-standing campaign to try to convince the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson to relinquish secondary patents on their life-saving critically important drug-resistant tuberculosis medication bedaquiline. The patent was scheduled to expire but Johnson & Johnson was using kind of a backup patent to extend their monopoly for a further four years, and lots of people were like, "Well, well that's not great. Like people in low and middle-income countries need access to bedaquiline and if there were generic competition, we know the price would drop by more than 50% and we need that now." And after a few days of pretty intense pressure from Nerdfigheria and others, Johnson & Johnson along with the Global Fund announced that there would be generic competition, but only in some countries. Many countries including Ukraine and South Africa and tons of others were left out of that deal, and so it always felt like a little bit of a win but a compromise win. But then today, Johnson & Johnson announced that they will not in any way enforce their secondary patents on bedaquiline in any of the 143 low and middle-income countries in this world.

This is the announcement that we have been waiting for. And that I have to confess that I—despite my ridiculous over-the-top optimism about all this stuff—never thought was possible. Like people in Nerdfighteria along with lots of other people have continued to push Johnson & Johnson over the last month and say, "You should really just release the secondary patents on bedaquiline entirely." And I've always been like, "Well, well I mean that's-that's probably not going to happen." But it just happened, so huge credit to Johnson & Johnson. I mean, they really showed that they care about patient access in a major way. Yes, they did it under tons and tons of pressure including like pressure from governments like the South African government, but still they did it. They have essentially agreed to everything that Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health and Treatment Action Group and so many other people have been asking for.

I realized that we've had like a string of these victories so it's worth pointing out, like, how wildly uncommon it is for a pharmaceutical or diagnostics company to agree under pressure to lower prices. And these are massive wins. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars that will be saved by the Global Fund and by low and middle-income countries around the world that can go into treating more people for tuberculosis.

Johnson & Johnson thank you for giving me just a wondrous Pizzamas gift and also it's perfect timing because this year, all our profits from Pizzamas go to support better tuberculosis care in the developing world, so wow. I mean I'm genuinely trying to explain what a big deal this is , but I can't because it's such a big deal that it goes way beyond my capacity for language. Thank you to everybody who wrote an email or made a phone call or wrote a tweet or made a meme. You have made a huge difference. And Johnson & Johnson, thank you. Honestly, I feel nothing but gratitude right now. I mean a little bit of surprise, but also a lot of gratitude.

Sarah's out of town, but I'm gonna go like drink some champagne by myself to celebrate 'cause that's how great this is. Okay, DFTBA. Hank, I'll see you on Monday.