Alphabet, Walmart join U.S. effort to speed up coronavirus testing
reuters.com
reuters.com
Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information.
This is _in addition_ (emphasis added) to other measures we are taking, including:
- A Google “home page promotion” to promote greater awareness of simple measures citizens can take to prevent the spread of the disease;
- Work being done by our sister company Verily to launch a pilot website that will enable individuals to do a risk assessment and be scheduled for testing at sites in the Bay Area;
- Promoting authoritative information through Google Search and YouTube;
- Taking measures to protect users from misinformation, including phishing, conspiracy theories, malware and misinformation;
- Rolling out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally until 7/01/20;
- Advancing health research and science; and financially supporting global relief efforts.”
So one of two things happened. Either the media largely got the story wrong, claiming that Google was not actually working on nationwide website like Trump described, perhaps the media was confused by the multiple efforts underway at Google and misreported the Verily work the only thing that was going on.
Alternatively, after Google sent out their internal memo asking for volunteers and got 1,700 replies (the 1,700 engineers that Trump mentioned) they still weren’t actually planning to build a nationwide site, but after Trump announced it on national news and praised Google for their work, he effectively forced them to volunteer to do the work. This seems less likely to me.
However there is just a tremendous amount of arguing and misinformation in this thread claiming that Google is only doing the Verily thing, when in fact Google has come out and declared that they are in fact working on a nationwide site, at Google, in addition to the Verily work.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238989460127...
When you say the media was confused by multiple efforts, you’re sort of hand waving away the fact that the same account you linked pointed the world at Verily right after the President’s speech.
So if they went and looked for Googlers who knew about the national effort and came up bank, and then didn't get immediate confirmation from Google, then they ran with a story.
Obviously I am but a small part of this massive machine and even though I am in a lot of the COVID-19 chats and have been engaged with various technical readiness efforts since we'll before US took it seriously, so maybe I missed it. But also, I wouldn't be surprised if the Executive has just recently enlisted Google to do this.
The "1700 engineers" number is super weird. That's much too high to be any one reasonably sized team, but it's definitely smaller than the impact footprint I infer at Google.
So my prediction is Trump said nonsense but the Executive decided to try and make it reality afterwards. Google as a company would definitely jump on doing this sort of thing for free.
That wouldn't be the actual size of the team I bet.
It clearly wasn’t straight up invented out of thin air, because the 1,700 number correlates. Someone gave him that number after talking with Google.
Either way... IMO, booting it into Google’s court (whether they truly volunteered or not, maybe we’ll never know) is a way more effective way to get the site done quickly than trying to get it done inside the government. I guess we’ll see what they stand up in the next week.
Personally I really like the idea of “Corporate America” pulling out all the stops in every way that they can to provide COVID support. Whether it’s credit cards waiving payments and interest, tech companies donating software/services, retail stores volunteering space and workers to support outreach and testing efforts. I’d love to see a massive mobilization of the commercial sector truly bringing everything they have to bear on this challenge.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe...
In general the media was strangely quiet about it until very recently.
It'd also a bit rich to be cursing at "the Media" for lying as the Executive and his most friendly media outlets just got done trying to play off the global pandemic as a liberal conspiracy nat CPAC.
It's important to watch the press conference on this topic for context.
The website is supposed the be the front line in the CDC's revamped testing effort. There are still far too few tests for everyone to get one, so they are being rationed. The website was to be the first stop made by a person who wanted to get tested.
No website, no coordinated testing effort.
All indications are that the president's announcement was premature and caught Alphabet, Verily, and Google flat-footed.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its-not-p...
The president's bald-faced attempt to use this bogus announcement to elevate the stock market should be transparent to anyone paying attention. The presser was held just before the market close, just for this reason.
This is very, very bad.
They have clearly seized upon the moment for PR.
How much abundance would we have without the federal government?
- Schools: The US department of Education contributed 8% of all funding to the entire public school system of the US in 2012-13. (source: https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html)
- Roads: "The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Highway Trust Fund tax revenue will total $41 billion in fiscal year 2018" (source: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-highway-t...)
- Internet: Not only was the internet created by the Department of the Defense in the 1960's and 70's (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History) It's expansion is also subsidized by the FCC (source: https://www.fcc.gov/consumer-governmental-affairs/about-bure...)
- Mortgages: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide important stabilization and support to the mortgage industry. (source: https://www.fhfa.gov/SupervisionRegulation/FannieMaeandFredd...)
I'm actually a big fan of a Stateless, decentralized society. But you can't reach that place just by Galting your way there. You need at least a modern city to go with you.
In the US, central authority substantially impeded pandemic response. Both out of apathy (substantially defunding and deprioritizing support in 2018) and selfishly, with key CDC officials acting on behalf of the executive to suppress key information and decline assistant from other countries (and the WHO) who have better testing infrastructure.
We only discovered the Seattle COVID-19 outbreak because a (heroic, imo) doctor decided to destroy red tape that was blocking her from doing important work [0]. The US has been refusing to evaluate South Korea's current treatment method [1] which is clearly saving lives.
More in my camp, the notion of enforcing borders is hurting us more than protecting us in a lot of cases. E.g., border control chokepoints in airports are creating infection hotzones that are going to do much more harm than good. Great job loading everyone with a nascent infection and then sending them out into society with no possibility of tracing where they got it, customs! Way to do exactly the opposite of whatyou wanted to do! [2]
Even more ridiculous is how currently US IP law, a longtime foil, is being used to hold up giving Chinese citizens access to potentially very effective antiviral drugs because Gliead is afraid China will undercut them. [3] Sure the world is on the brink of a global economic collapse and in the worst case a few percentage points of the global population could die and the majority of people living could see their lifespans shortened due to complicatons, but yeah let's worry about that quarterly stock price and IP law.
Libertarianism in America is rife with contradictions and racist buffoons, but right now I think there is a lot of positive things to be said about decentrialized and anti-authoritarian societies. It's certainly hard to imagine them doing worse than our current government.
[0]: https://reason.com/2020/03/11/how-government-red-tape-stymie...
[1]: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/03/12/South-Kor...
[2]: https://twitter.com/StevenDialFox4/status/123899199815520665...
[3]: https://sfist.com/2020/02/06/bay-area-based-gilead-donates-e...
How, exactly, would they manufacture that many tests? If the idea is that they pay Roche to manufacture the tests, then we're right back to the problem we have right now. Presumably, Roche cannot manufacture them fast enough. I can tell you that right now a lot of hospitals are just praying that the promise of 500 000 being available "next week" comes to fruition. (And 500,000 is not that many, but it's a start.) Putting out even 10,000,000 is just beyond our capabilities right now. the 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 it would take to make it at least seem like enough for "everybody" is just fanciful thinking at the moment.
People and companies should volunteer to do things we actually have a chance in hell of accomplishing. Promising the impossible at a time like this, knowing full well you can't deliver, only deepens the crisis. Especially if people would be counting on you to deliver.
"With Google executives eager to show they are working with the president, the company [Verily] is racing to meet the promise even as they acknowledge that the debut of the website will be far more limited than Mr. Trump has suggested..."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/politics/trump-google-...
"Mr. Trump’s comments caught Google completely off guard and executives rushed to issue a statement on Friday afternoon to temper expectations, making it clear that the website is an effort led by Verily, not Google itself... Since then, Google executives have scrambled to coordinate with the White House in an effort to do as much as possible to make the president’s vision for the website a reality."
Google will not be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon, contrary to claims made by President Donald Trump during a Friday news conference.
Instead, a health-focused subsidiary owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, intends to launch a small-scale website next week to begin to triage California-based patients. The website will aim to serve a broader population only “over time” — not “very quickly,” as Trump said.
“What we’re building is a triage tool that will live on ProjectBaseline.com, and we plan to pilot it in California next week,” said Carolyn Wang, a spokesperson for the Alphabet subsidiary, Verily.
“Our aspiration is for the triage tool to be used much more broadly over time. Initially, we’re linking it with several sites in the Bay Area to test and iterate, and collaborating closely with organizations like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp who are also working on additional approaches to making testing more accessible and expedient in other areas.”
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its-not...
"Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information"
What if the president makes a claim about a companys actions at time N, that company then says that the claim is false at time N+1, and then the company about faces and says they will be doing what the president claimed at time N+2.
Does this mean that the president lied or does the fact that the company changed their story later on make the president retroactively tell the truth?
"Carolyn Wang, communications lead for Verily, told The Verge that the “triage website” was initially only going to be made available to health care workers instead of the general public. Now that it has been announced the way it was, however, anybody will be able to visit it, she said. But the tool will only be able to direct people to “pilot sites” for testing in the Bay Area, though Wang says Verily hopes to expand it beyond California “over time.”"
From https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179118/google-coronavir...
From this quote and the behavior of Google's communications team (whether Google or Verily), you can assume that Google/Verily were caught off guard by the announcement of Google's involvement. Whether it was Google's original intent or not, it seems Google is trying to make the best of the situation now.
I will very readily admit that I've not made a huge distinction between Alphabet, Google, and Verily. And for that matter Waymo, the Google self-driving car project. Or is that the Alphabet self-driving car project. I have no idea, without checking Wikipedia, if Project Loon (Internet-via-weather-balloon) is a Project of Google or an Alphabet subsidiary, or some other legal shenanigans.
There are so many other things going wrong right now that I am severely disappointed that the Verge wasted any words talking about the distinction between Alphabet and Google, no matter how much I may, or may not, like the individual that confused the two.
Verily was a division of Google X before Alphabet. It’s effectively Google Life Sciences minus the corporate advantages of the Alphabet structure.
Maybe Kushner or the President wanted to encourage Google, or maybe a speechwriter over exaggerated it. Or maybe the President lied. But when the media ultra parses the controversy to make every element the nth degree worse for him, it makes it hard to believe in objectivity at all.
He doesn't get a lot of slack (outside the right wing machine) because he's repeatedly foot-gunned in dramatic and damaging ways.
4.5 million people or 32% of the voters in CA voted for President Trump in 2016. Democracies of uneducated masses (on both sides) don’t make any one side intrinsically right. Cue Socrates.
Sounds pretty much like authoritarian rationalism to me. I'd like a pass on platonic republicanism but unfortunately it's found within all forms of Western philosophy these days
This effort for a nationwide testing website is different from and in addition to what Verily was already doing at a smaller scale in Bay Area (although I imagine there will be lots of overlap and shared code etc.)
I searched for "Sunday" there, and they only mention they'll be able to provide details of when the testing website will be available by Sunday evening. They didn't say the website will go live Sunday.
>> Mike Pence: For Americans looking on, by this Sunday evening, we'll be able to give specific guidance on when the website will be available
If anything it was the FDA approval of Roche's automated testing ability that was going to happen by Sunday, which was announced today (Saturday) with a 24 hour window [1], and is only one piece of the puzzle. We don't even have a brand name or domain for the "Google site" yet. The only domain he mentioned http://coronavirus.gov directs to a CDC content site, so it will probably just be via Verily, which only announced a limited SF roll-out so far.
The closest thing he gave to a direct response to the website question was a paper was being released after the press conference which outlines their plans. Not sure on the status of that. The Reuters article was last updated 17hrs ago yesterday so it might just be highlighting the press interview, not the paper.
The media (and many, many commenters here) were foaming at the mouth for another ORANGE MAN BAD story.
It's amusing to watch all the frantic spinning taking place in this comments section to avoid walking back the ORANGE MAN BAD narrative from this morning. You were wrong, guys. Just admit it. It won't kill you.
I am no particular fan of Donald Trump (to put it mildly), but I think he's been doing a reasonable job on this specific issue, especially when judged by the (admittedly very low) historical standards of federal government responsiveness and timeliness.
But then I'm old enough to remember when the previous administration wasn't able to deploy a functional web site to sell standardized health insurance policies, even when given several hundred million dollars and a couple of years of lead time.
Sometimes, I trust what he is saying. It has always proven to be worse for me to have done this.
Say what you want, but this is far worse than a web site that isn’t 100% on day one and designed by law. That site has worked for a long time, but the actions taken on this misinformation is permanent.
And as well as you think he’s done, he’s made it worse. Through policy decisions to calling it a hoax, he’s worked hard to make it as bad as possible without doing nothing.
When people are discussing where people can find food because they didn’t stock up enough and grocery stores are sold out, that’s pretty unreal. A hoax doesn’t go to something real in less than a week.
This is crazy. You hear orange man bad. Yeah, that’s because he legitimately is doing a bad job. Your standards are just in the dumpster. And honestly, don’t blame you. That’s where is actions belong.
Why didn’t we have testing in place sooner? Even if you pin the blame on the CDC, why weren’t there remediation plans announced publicly/immediately? Why is there still no word about how we will manage the crisis when it hits? What of ordering more ventilators and other necessary equipment or scaling up hospital capacity? What of containment measures to slow the spread? How are we going to ramp up testing (I’m grateful for the Roche test deal but who knows if Trump was even aware of or involved in it)? This isn’t leadership even by the crudest standard, and people will die as a consequence.
To his credit, he’s working with “Google” to make the website and that’s not nothing, but there’s still a lot to be done and he gives no impression of proactivity or even merely reacting to what is already happening in other countries. I don’t want to be in the middle of the crisis hearing him shift the blame onto the Obama administration when there’s plenty he could have done or plenty he could be doing to mitigate.
Congress, to it's great credit, cooperated and got a good relief measure done quickly.
Things are going about as well as can be expected, I think.
If you think a guy with a 40+ year career in the cut-throat New York real estate world, then in in media and entertainment world, culminating in the Presidency of the USA, can't "process or transmit information", it might be you with the issue. You can mock "Art of the Deal" all you want, but it's not possible to be that "lucky".
I wouldn't call what he's doing 4d-chess by any means, but everything he does or says is filtered for his base and/or for self-preservation.
The guy clearly has some skill sets that are useful at least to him personally.
I'm not convinced that all the falsehoods he spreads are spoken with any intention / a deep understanding of what the inaccuracies are.
AFAICT, he seems to have developed a strategy in which attention to detail, accuracy, honesty, utility, fairness, integrity, etc. simply have little bearing on his getting what he wants.
I would posit that if you spend your entire life this way, your ability to pay attention to things of true value would seriously atrophy.
All that being said, when in the last 5 years has he displayed more than a facile understanding of anything besides women's bodies? He again suggested this week that the US could refinance it's debt like a mortgage. He has previously declared that vaccines cause autism, climate change is a hoax, health insurance costs $12 a year, you need an ID to buy groceries. He's also said a website costs $2. A lot of people claim it's his persona and not his real self but I haven't seen any evidence at all to the contrary.
This reads as dumbing down the explanation of interest rates enough for the american population to understand or in other words
>>he does or says is filtered for his base and/or for self-preservation.
Show me any evidence to the contrary.
That’s fully incompetent transmition of information.
Yes. Sounds like the system is working as intended.
Do you understand the pace at which things are happening right now (much of it the administration's own fault)? It isn't "just" a virus; they are also concerned about the economy and an election and an opposition (and media) who will blow every mis-step out of proportion. It doesn't matter what Trump does, the media says it's bad. Always. Remember when he was racist for restricting flights from China early on? And right now I'd bet they don't have a plan (again, their own fault).
The press conference was a disaster, I agree. Trump looked legit ill. Based on that you determine he can't process information? Your priors mean nothing?
Sure. Remember the topic though. It’s working in spite of his inability to transmit information. And it’s a lot less efficient/effective to correct information after-the-fact.
> the media says it’s bad
True, but so what? The media isn’t one guy, it’s a huge number of people and many of them pay attention to what he does. So, yes someone somewhere criticizes everything he does whether it’s deserved or not, just like Obama and every other president. BTW, you might not bring up his early handling of this. Not “a hoax” anymore, is it. We didn’t get to zero cases soon. Unfortunately, we can’t go back and correct these incorrect statements.
> Your priors mean nothing?
Ok, now I think you’re just trolling. Jesus.
Seriously, what topic has he shown even basic fluency? He is exceedingly capable of expressing his impatience with imperfect solutions of his predecessors and adversaries. He has less than zero capacity to even as well as any of them.
There are thousands talking and writing for hours each a day. There’s going to be a lot of trivia with the meaty content.
Oh my fucking god... anyone who's paid 30 seconds attention to this virus knows that you may have it and not show any symptoms.
So they make a deliberate decision to induce fear and anger in their audience, for clicks. They hate you!
I think the media understands that in our present day world, they live or die by the number of clicks they can get. Journalistic integrity in that kind of environment is understandably difficult to ensure.
People will no longer pay for a subscription to the news in the numbers that used to be feasible in the past. This is a fact, and with it comes a set of a consequences we as a society have to come to terms with. Instead of pointing fingers, I think it's more important that we try and focus on finding solutions to the problem.
A lot of that incorrect information is very high stakes. This inconsequential detail just came along for the ride.
If I were you I’d be extremely concerned with the slipshod handling of this. A lot of lives are at stake.
The news outlets should be holding the president's feet to the fire and demanding accountability.
It's very much thought of as "Google". Ridiculous that people are suddenly pretending otherwise.
But yeah, fake news or something.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/13/google-says-its-not-p...
Like, most people on HN talk about how 'Google Fiber' is part of Google, but really it's not, it's part of Alphabet, which owns the trademark Google. Or again, when GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) invests in a company, people say 'Google invested in <blah> company', because GV is alphabet, which is Google because... Google the company means Alphabet in common parlance. Stop nitpicking.
> for the Bay area
Them (in the Tweet you linked to):
> ... with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.
I apologise to douchebags regularly, if I'm wrong, though I'm very clear about the limitations of the apology.
> Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information.
This sounds like it’s in addition to what Verily is building. So I doubt it’s the diagnostic and get to testing site function that Verily’s working on.
Other than that all we know is it’s “information about COVID symptoms, risk, and testing information”. Which at least aligns roughly with what was announced on Friday.
That article just seems like its fishing for "trump bad" material.
Isn't that... "bad"? So why is it "fishing" to report "Trump bad" in this context?
This is bad. It's BAD. We have a clearly incompetent administration trying to coordinate the response to the worse disease outbreak in 102 years. And shouldn't the media be able to say that when it's true?
And pointing that messaging mixup out is part of the job of good journalists, because the public deserves to know what it's getting (i.e. if you're in Seattle or NY, Google has announced nothing for you but hope). And in particular because this administration has a terrible record with delivering a clear message. Yet some people insist that as long as there is some reasonably charitable reading of a statement that isn't an obvious lie, that somehow the messaging problem is the media's to solve?
"Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information.
This is in addition to other measures we are taking, including:...Work being done by our sister company Verily to launch a pilot website that will enable individuals to do a risk assessment and be scheduled for testing at sites in the Bay Area..."
You seriously don't see why this is a messaging error? That it's newsworthy when Trump announced something that doesn't pan out? That it's of a piece with the other times he's done the same thing (e.g. repeatedly stating "anyone who wants to be tested can be tested" when the CDC rules actively being enforced placed strict limits on test availability)?
https://www.walmart.com/ideas/discover-online-grocery/google...
Are these alexa/home gimmicks?
Id have to see reviews, quality, stats, visualize a purchase which is not easy to do over a speaker.
Turning of the light is already in the palm of your hand. I have a smaller 12 room house, light switches are right by the door of each room. Convenience might be to turn off all the lights in the house at once as I forget to turn off one or two most of the time. That would still cost a small fortune to replace all the bulbs.
It was scheduled to start at 3:00 PM, but they stalled until 3:30 PM to actually start it. 30 minutes before the stock market closed for the week. The longer they talked, the more the market went up. The market loved them. Everyone's confident that they are delivering competent leadership. Time to buy! Or so it seemed.
There were a huge number of short sellers in the stock market this week, and I think the white house knew that the short positions would be expiring at the end of the day on Friday. By bringing out this dog and pony show with captains of industry and making these big promises, I think they hoped to take credit for the inevitable upswing as short sellers brought up the market by closing their positions.
By doing this, the administration is trying to look like they have the power to restore confidence in the stock market, when in reality the market is still badly battered, and they are absolutely culpable.
To be shorting and attacking the economy and businesses during this time (all businesses are interconnected, especially ones that provide food/energy/medical supplies) and be so distrustful of efforts to help ramp up testing and saving lifes, it’s just wrong.
I happen to know many people who works in cruise industries and hospitality. These folks are worried sick right now. Those people are who you are shorting
- It was happening
- The White House probably was aware of the extent of it
- They wanted to get credit for the rise in stocks when their actions actually didn't have any effect (or perhaps even had a negative effect)
The government's job is to assure calm, it that requires a little white lie or a bit of misdirection then so be it. the last thing we need is people in authority spreading doom and gloom.
People need direction and understanding of the severity, which has been lacking.
If they were doing things that instilled confidence, I'd be happy to give them credit. However, let's review the timeline of statements:
- Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control.”
- Jan. 24: “It will all work out well.”
- Jan. 29: “Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!”
- Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.”
- Feb. 2: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. … We can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. So we’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes.”
- Feb. 7: “Nothing is easy, but [Chinese President Xi Jinping] … will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone.”
- Feb. 10: “I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine.”
- Feb. 14: “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”
- Feb. 19: “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine.”
- Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
- Feb. 25: “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are … getting better. They’re all getting better. … As far as what we’re doing with the new virus, I think that we’re doing a great job.”
- Feb. 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world.”
- Feb. 26: “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done."
- Feb. 27: “Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!”
- Feb. 28: “I think it’s really going well. We did something very fortunate: we closed up to certain areas of the world very, very early — far earlier than we were supposed to. I took a lot of heat for doing it. It turned out to be the right move, and we only have 15 people and they are getting better, and hopefully they’re all better. There’s one who is quite sick, but maybe he’s gonna be fine. … We’re prepared for the worst, but we think we’re going to be very fortunate."
- Feb. 28: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
- Feb. 29: “We’re the number-one travel destination anywhere in the world, yet we have far fewer cases of the disease than even countries with much less travel or a much smaller population.”
- March 4: “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.”
- March 5: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths.”
The list goes on [1].
Let's not delude ourselves. This isn't a few white lies, this is a pattern of denialism and ignoring the warnings and advice of public health professionals.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/12/trump-cor...
Except it could work.
If we insert the control rods now and scram the reactor then we could avoid societal breakdown when hospitals overflow and make the difference between a 3-4% death rate (Italy/Wuhan) and 0.7-0.9 (south Korea/Beijing)
I’m on the frontlines of this one. I’m going to be deciding who gets care and who doesn’t shortly. I hope we can act sensibly and quickly to limit the damage and somehow avoid the worst case scenarios
- not enough testing / 80% of people have mild/no symptoms
- cases reported today were contracted ~5 days ago, so there's always roughly a doubling in the pipeline
Right now the official case number is ~3k for the US. Focusing too much on the number doesn't help (it will keep going up for a while), what matters is doing things which will stop the spread.
Seems fairly straightforward given their massive surveillance infrastructure.
Anyone at Apple or Google actually going to pitch in here and offer meaningful help?
So far, crickets.
I’m not even sure China does that.
The first thing that came to my mind is HIPAA (I know it's US only). There are more than enough details for each patient to figure out who they are. They list employer, when they traveled, family members, etc.
I personally think it is bad that HIPAA doesn't have epidemic exemptions. Over you have widespread testing, having this info public allows:
* Exposed individuals to submit to testing, learning more about who may be exposed = more data and find more exposure
* Learn valuable patterns about disease transfer. E.g. Both Singapore and South Korea clusters suggest children aren't playing a significant role in transfer, but aren't enough data to know for sure. With more data, perhaps we would know they aren't and could avoid enormously expensive school closings.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the end games of lockdown in Western societies are with a disease that can spread asymptomatically. You need these kind of X area was infected at y time announcements to get high enough testing coverage of potentialy infected people.
They also take your temperature in all these places and if your temp is higher than normal they send you to a fever clinic, where they determine if you have the virus. If you do, you're isolated and your movement data gets flagged to track other potentially infected individuals.
Flash green at the checkpoint and you're allowed through. If your app shows yellow or red -> checks and quarantine.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/07/how-gl...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman...
My sister finally came around to thinking Facebook was going to far so she switched to Instagram. We had a uncomfortable conversation last month when I broke the news to her.
South Korea has an app, it could be done by anybody actually, but a known company would have more resources and branding power.
The reality is that after Eric Schmidt went away, Google changed: it's trying to make money by focusing only on its products instead of focusing on its image by doing good to people (while building its products).
Also Trump doesn't have the same relation with these companies as Obama had.
That both are owned by the same company?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-c...
Because I doubt Google has the capability to do this, accurately, without false positives, without being a gross violation of privacy and without joining your location data to medical data, something which I'm fairly sure is illegal.
Usual disclaimer applies, Google employee but not in Geo.
Mirror: http://archive.md/UV9px
EDIT: Before you downvote, for a simple example that fits within existing ideological battlelines, how would Apple do this?
Fuck this website. Exactly where, in each US state does one go for testing, right now? Any sources on this?
Edit: I may sound rash, but what I read is Google: it's only in SF Bay, Trump: there will be a website, and drive through testing, which sounds like in Walmart parking lots or something. Yes, I'm freaking out.
Can anyone out there answer my question above? Cause the local govt or healthcare facilities are unable to. Nor Trump, Walmart, or Google (even Google search)
These tests are all drive through, that is why you don't need PPE to go in, because you don't need to go in.
I don't understand the HN hivemind that American companies wanting to help out Americans is a bad thing.
Second part of the question. Where do I go get tested in each state, right now?
In no way do I feel that way. But, I personally don't need anything from large corporate America bullshitting about the seriousness of what lay ahead. Reactions, particularly from grociers and retailers just in the last two days have been surprisingly good though.
Still, I don't need an article or website giving me a status update, I need to know where I can get tested.
If you are extremely sick, high fever, persistent cough, and quickly deteriorating then go to the hospital you may be tested.
Multiple people who called ended up being sent (or told to call) from one place to another.They after series of calls ended up being told they cant get tested due to rules on who is being tested being quite strict.
It is not the case of "call your doctor and they will know and give you straight clear information". It might become that case after a while, but afaik it is not that way now.
tldr; call your provider or local public health