Found it strange that some parts of media decided to focus on the semantics of Google and Verily being different subsidiaries of Alphabet. This is an almost meaningless detail.
"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.