Eleven years after Pizzamas began, today is on track to be our biggest launch day ever–and no wonder, since the designs this year are just spectacularly good.
I love our weird little Internet community so much. All this stuff and much, much more is available only during pizzamas, and only at pizzamas.com.
(All our proceeds go toward charities fighting tuberculosis in impoverished communities.)
I got the shirt, but why?
Tomorrow begins Pizzamas, a strange holiday in our community that dates back all the way to 2008, wherein Hank and I make daily videos for two weeks and sell merch related to this one time many years ago when I had a mustache for like seven minutes.
Pizzamas is the stupidest and most beautiful thing we do every year, but I think since we started we have raised about ONE MILLION DOLLARS to fight poverty and inequitable access to healthcare.
This year, our fundraising will focus on fighting the world’s deadliest infectious disease, tuberculosis. Thanks in part to astonishing activism from nerdfighteria over the last several months, we now have more affordable tools for diagnosing and treating tuberculosis–but the funding gap remains critical. Millions go undiagnosed every year, and shortages of drugs are causing antibiotic resistance and death in many countries right now. So we’re fighting TB while also celebrating my mustachioed face.
The whole shebang launches tomorrow, but you can donwload our app (hahahahahahaha I cannot fucking believe there is a pizzamas app) by searching “pizzamas” in the app store of your choosing.
I am just a humble unpaid intern for a coffee company that donates its profit to charity, but I will tell you motherfuckers one thing: if you try to steal money from the poor via treating or diagnosing tuberculosis, you will remember the name nerdfighteria.
Danaher has committed to selling their standard TB cartridges at a lower price, and not to earning any profit when selling TB cartridges to the poorest countries in the world.
This deal means hundreds of millions of dollars (literally) freed up to buy more tests, more medicine, and stronger healthcare delivery in the world’s poorest communities.
It’s not a complete win–Danaher is still charging way too much for other tests, including their test for extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. But oh my God, the fact that this happened in a week is truly extraordinary and a huge testament to 1. the power of nerdfighteria, and 2. the power of working in deep partnership with trusted allies, including Doctors without Borders, Partners in Health, and the Treatment Action Group.
Thanks to all who have been or will be part of the fight to end tuberculosis. This is nowhere near the end, but it’s such an important step.
2023 does not have to end being the year of overpriced tuberculosis tests. DanaherCorp can make it the time for five dollar tests for all.
For the last week, our community has been pressuring the large corporation Danaher to lower prices for TB tests. Danaher owns Cepheid, the company that makes GeneXpert Machines, which are absolutely wondrous: In an hour, they can tell you not just if you have tuberculosis, but also which treatment plan is most likely to cure you quickly. It’s life-saving technology.
Danaher mostly owns lab companies and the like, but strangely, they also own Pantone–the color-matching company? And so one way we’ve been trying to make the case to Danaher that it’s in their best interest to lower prices is through a campaign to name new Pantone colors of the year related to their parent company’s overcharging for TB tests.
And now that meme is mixing with OFMD memes, which is a wonder to behold.
I implore DanaherCorp and Cepheid to look at the number households fighting tuberculosis and catastrophic costs and decide if their bottom line is more important than human life. #PeopleOverProfits #Timefor5
ALTYou’ve probably never heard of the corporation Danaher.
That’s how they like it. It allows them to Reverse Robin Hood their way to profits gleaned from the world’s poorest people.
But that ends today. We’re shining a light on Danaher’s business practices. And we’re gonna keep shining that light–and make Danaher and their Very Private Executives famous–until they stop price-gouging the world’s poorest countries for lifesaving TB diagnostics.
Almost every day I think about the time in 2000 when my doctor slipped out of the room for a minute, and so I looked at my chart, and the first words my eyes saw were, “Pt. is a low-functioning young adult.”
I simply can’t afford to quit on the idea that human life can change for the better.
ghoe25 asked:
Hello Mr. Gaiman,
I was wondering if you ever interact with another famous author/tumblr extraordinaire/unpaid coffee company intern that tends to circle many of the same spheres of the internet and fandom that you do. I believe he goes by the name of John Green.
I’m a big fan of the both you, your works, and your internet presence and think a collaboration in any form between the two of you would possible overwhelm the world.
neil-gaiman answered:
good day.
