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.
Probably the latter. If the nationwide effort had already been underway when the President made that claim, Google Comms would have no reason to hide that fact. Instead, they initially pointed the media at Verily and only yesterday announced a larger effort.
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.
I mean, I thought the media was right and I work at Google. I knew the Verily site existed (a member of my team helped with a production readiness review last week).
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.
I wouldn’t totally put it past Trump to announce it therefore forcing Google’s hand. But it also seems reasonable that someone in the Admin has a conversation with someone high up at Google and most of Google wasn’t aware of it immediately.
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.
I'm betting on the former. As dangerous as it is to basically blanket call the media liars as Trump has done, there are just enough cases of it being correct to keep you scratching your head. Journalism of today is little more than Gawker-esque trash. I feel sorry for the remaining good journalists, having their industry muddied so much.
Manufacturing Consent is a good book and I believe most of what's in it, but you should read the parts about the mechanics of it as opposed to assuming there is any unity or conformity in the production of News.
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.
> “I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s gonna be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location,” Trump said.
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.
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 was my interpretation, too. If you watched the presser, it was clearly about a website into which you could enter your symptoms and then be directed to a testing site if needed. Nationwide. Verily’s first set of subsequent statements refuted this.
Google, with their enormous warchest of money could be providing free test kits for everyone, not developing some chinch web site locator that could be built in an afternoon by a single developer.
If we didn't pay taxes we wouldn't have schools, roads, or the internet, and maybe even your mortgage (along with countless other things). So imagine where you life would be without it.
That strategy only works because other people are paying taxes and mortgages.
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.
You know, it's easy to dunk on these folks. Especially since the American Libertarian party has allowed itself to be infested with a lot of silly and even racist people. But globally this crisis does show that the "decentralize and democratize" sides of the political compass have a point.
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.
Google, to my knowledge, has next to 0 pharma know how.
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.
You are right, perhaps we should look at taxing those war chests so that the companies can financially contribute and the experts (the government) can produce and distribute the vaccine.
The New York Times has a story delving into the different levels of commitment that's been reported for Google (in a story last updated on Sunday):
"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..."
"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."
For what it's worth, here's what CNN was reporting Friday night:
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.”
And here's what Google Communications said three hours ago:
"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?
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 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.
What you said is all true, which is what makes the focus on Alphabet/Google mixup so out of touch. There are so many other problems, that focusing on a mistake about the details of Google's corporate structure seems like focusing on the alignment of the deck-chairs on the Titanic.
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.
I feel like this debate is analogous to the test kits being rejected from 3rd parties, if that’s what happened. We’re lost in bureaucratic technicalities.
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.
...or maybe trump heard something in a briefing and said what he thought he understood, instead of what he'd been told. And without, you know, coordinating or having the speech fact checked before delivering it to millions of people. The dude doesn't do process... See also, walking back the "no trade with Europe" thing a few days ago.
He doesn't get a lot of slack (outside the right wing machine) because he's repeatedly foot-gunned in dramatic and damaging ways.
And um, when does one have to stop blaming the previous administration for the current's failings? He did not inherit a "dysfunctional CDC" that is pure BS. He has called COVID-19 a hoax, that it would but just like the cold, that you could go to work with it, and that the number would "soon be zero" (number of cases).
He has no idea what he is doing and only cares about his own reelection regardless of the risk that puts Americans in.
Yes, the best way to fix something dysfunctional is to slash its budget, repeatedly make statements contrary to what they actually say, and downplay worldwide pandemics.
Without conceding the point of prior dysfunction, I have to say that trump has yet to find a bad situation that he can’t make worse.
Right, which is why he shut down the division created to plan and prepare for pandemics, and terminated the position created to organize the response for a pandemic.
The CDC was so dysfunctional that by the swift signing of a pen the CDC has been made great again.
Of course, it took him 2+ months to actually sign the document that waived restrictions (which were Bush era, anyways, and any decent government creates laws for the norms, but provides power to override them in case of an out of the norm situation, which Trump waited 2 months to do because he insisted it must be business as usual).
As Tim Pool said, California is the king of greed. A lot of rich people secretly support him and working class people who have to deal with the societal breakdown that is California politics.
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.
That's why Socrates tells you that you become valid to run society when you become dialectically educated enough, and that the unwashed masses do not see reality for how it is as a result of a lack of dialectical education and therefore should not rule.
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
Because what was said in the press conference is very, very, very, very, very, different from whats going on inside Google and Verily. Think: someone had an idea for a much, much, more limited in scope project for a very small area _that morning_. Not a nationwide exposure detector somehow built by 1700 engineers to be launched in the next week.
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.
I could see how someone could get the impression he said it was coming Sunday evening but watching the interview from start to finish it's clear that wasn't a direct response to the question like some people thought it was. Edit: Re-reading the transcript it looks like they only announced the announcement of plans for 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.
> I could see how someone could get the impression he said it was coming Sunday evening
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.
Here is my issue. I take what he says, and assume it’s not true. This works over and over again. T works so well, I default to this for everything he says. It makes things much easier to understand. Unless something gets fact checked as true, this serves me well. I didn’t start like this, but this is where I am. And I haven’t run into a situation where it wouldn’t have served me well.
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.
(I didn’t downvote you). I actually think this is the one time the media’s criticism isn’t hyperbolic (Trump always merits criticism, but somehow the media takes it to ridiculous extremes). I don’t think Trump is the frothing racist he’s made out to be (although I’m sure he has all sorts of subconscious biases), but he is an idiot narcissist with a national crisis on his hands and he seems to be handling it miserably.
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.
I think POTUS is doing well. I listened to the Sunday shows this morning, administrative people calmly explained what's happening on the medical and economic fronts.
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.
They sent a company-wide email looking for volunteers to help build the site. 1,700 engineers responded. This obviously doesn't mean that 1,700 people are going to work on the site.
Because it's yet another detail that he's gotten wrong and shows that he's not paying attention. He made several incorrect statements about who is building the site, how many people are working on it, when it will be ready and who the target audience is. It's been a valve of mistakes this week that just show he isn't treating this seriously.
...or that he's incompetent to the point of not being able to receive, process and relay information with any degree of reliability. Pick your poison I guess.
Last time I was reprimanded for making this point on these forums, but I'll say it again:
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.
I wasn't mocking anything and do not consider him lucky.
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.
He hasn't worked in real estate for 30 years. Not since Trump Taj Mahal went down in flames. He does hotel management and branding. His other ventures have also all gone down in flames with a few resulting in fraud lawsuits.
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.
Per my comment, it could be but I haven't seen a shred of evidence that that's true. There isn't, in fact, any way to refinance the national debt or anything analogous to refinancing debt. In the past he's suggested we could default on some debt the way he has with his myriad failed businesses, but that would be an obvious disaster. I have never seen any public or private statements that indicate he has any understanding whatsoever beyond his nonsensical public statements. The only stuff we've seen leaked show the exact same levels of ignorance. His official actions all support the theory that he is truly an ignorant moron.
The “wall”. The money was only partially needed for building physical wall. The rest was electronic surveillance and deterrence. But dumbed down to the people as “the wall”. It’s been his M.O. his whole presidency
Show me any evidence. Public statements, rumors, anything that says Trump actually meant surveillance or deterrence. Because there is heaps of statements of him talking about walls meaning walls. Walls that are high and strong and can't be tunneled under or cut through. And his attempts to seize land to build on. And his leaked phone call begging President Nieto to pay for it like he said would literally happen (https://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/transcript...) exactly the way he described it to voters. Show me anywhere that he acknowledges what percentage of illegal immigrants actually run across the desert versus using a legal border crossing. Find me any leaked statements that show anything more than the exact same facile explanations he uses in public. All I see are the same statements with more cursing.
>Did you watch the address Wednesday night? And how many critical points had to be corrected afterward?
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?
> Yes. Sounds like the system is working as intended.
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.
Donald "Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated" Trump. The guy who said Russia would never invade Ukraine. Who called his soon-to-be convicted national security advisor in the middle of the night to ask if it was better to have a strong dollar or a weak dollar. The guy who promised a peace deal with North Korea after tearing up a durable deal with Iran. A guy who said tax cuts pay for themselves and the deficit will go down. Remember 2.5 years of infrastructure weeks?
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.
Yes but that’s the point, the news coverage should help to focus on the important details that were wrong, like will this service ever be available and when. Misusing Google in place of Alphabet is not even worth correcting someone on in a casual conversation, much less focusing articles on during a crisis.
Exactly stop with the dumb idiotic politics were in a pandemic and even both sides are coming together (setting aside the stupidity) to focus on trying to defeat this virus.
The best example of him being totally fucking clueless is when a reporter asked him if he/the WH staff will be tested after there's public evidence (a photo) of him next to the Bolsonaro aide who was later tested positive. His response, very confidently: "No, we have no symptoms whatsoever.".
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.
He also had no idea anyone died from the flu even though his grandfather died of flu. And thought coronavirus might be treatable with a flu vaccine. That's all stuff you learn in high school or by reading the newspaper.
Tech media knows the average person doesn’t understand the whole Alphabet/Google thing (and lets be honest in 2020 no one really understands it as the founders have left and Sundar is CEO of both ).
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.
It's so disingenuous. Almost everyone refers to Alphabet as Google, even on HN. We all know this, right? You can find endless examples if not. And most people outside of HN or tech don't even know what Alphabet is.
It's very much thought of as "Google". Ridiculous that people are suddenly pretending otherwise.
Very few of the media seemed to focus on that.
They largely seemed to focus on the fact that the Verily plans were nothing like described in the speech.
And getting some details wrong is fine if you accept criticism with the goal of converging on being correct.
Trump rejects the framework of communicating in correct facts, relying on emotional platitudes instead.
Running with your example, it's as if Trump is boasting that he has cured cancer, because he knows someone who invested in a company that made a marginal improvement to treatment for one type. And then when asked for clarification, he doubles down on his blunt assertion while making fun of the questioner.
If you accept a leader as being an authority, then you're still reassured by this. Everything is under control, because he says so. But if you try to analyze the facts you're hearing to form an independent judgment, he's out to lunch. And it's extremely worrying to hear someone who is not in touch with reality insist that everything is fine, especially when that person is supposed to be responsible.
> Trump rejects the framework of communicating in correct facts, relying on emotional platitudes instead.
Yes, he uses words that people understands. No non-tech, non-finance person would know what alphabet is. Regular americans do not know that Google, Inc (a publicly traded company) decided to change its name to Alphabet Inc (still traded under GOOG though, because apparently this snafu is good enough for the NYSE) and create a new subsidiary named Google, and another called Google Life Sciences which is now known as Verily. Most Americans would simply say 'Google'. There is nothing wrong with a POTUS using words that literally everyone understands. If you understand this, you will understand why Trump won.
I was addressing the general pattern of why "these same people would literally be upset".
In service of converging on the nuanced truth, I do agree that the specific of conflating Google and associated entities isn't a particularly big deal.
The suspect bit here is the claim of "1700 people working on it", which doesn't add up no matter how you try to slice it. It obviously doesn't take that many people to make a website. It doesn't even take that many people to scale a website, given the modern options available. I think the most plausible explanation is trying to claim entire departments responsible for the infrastructure that will be used, but they're still not "working" on it. Regardless of how the figure could possibly be justified, it doesn't have any purpose in the speech besides conveying a feeling of big/strong/powerful - ie an emotional platitude.
I do understand why Trump won. I personally have been quite tolerant of Trump, chalking most of the outrage up to differences in taste, and trying to explain this to others. That is, tolerant up until now when we're three weeks behind with our society's coronavirus response, and he's still spouting ineffectual bullshit.
If I were flippant, I'd say it appears par for the course for you to blame the media for the gov't lying. It's been well-reported that what was said in the conference was far from the truth. See my other comment for details.
Verily is an Alphabet subsidiary. To the majority of Americans, 'Alphabet' is Google, because Alphabet is the successor organization to Google the company. All these ridiculous technicalities are nuts. No one cares that Alphabet decided to reorganize to maximize shareholder value. Alphabet is literally Google, and still trades under that ticker (GOOG). When people talk about Google the company, they mean Alphabet, and you know that.
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.
Exactly. For weeks people have been clamoring to get tested, including outside of the Bay Area. But whatever they’re launching will not help provide this in the short-term. That is the point.
Good point. The most important part of the speech is the number of engineers working on it. If we have 1699 it might not work but if only we could know we had 1700 then we would all be saved /s.
Google Communications says here that "Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information."
No, no not apologizing to Trump. Apologizing to HN readers for spreading the fake news even after Google themselves came out with a statement saying that they are in fact doing what Trump announced.
No. Did you actually watch the press conference? What Trump announced is what Verily is building. But he implied it would be nationwide. It’s not.
> 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.
It’s absolutely separate from the Verily work, because they explicitly say that.
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.
A quick read of the article confirms that a google subsidiary IS MAKING A WEBSITE. Trump got all the details wrong as usual, but the main idea is true.
That article just seems like its fishing for "trump bad" material.
Under the circumstances, shouldn't we demanding that the executive branch do a bit more than getting the main idea correct? Isn't it newsworthy when the president, in probably the single most important press event of his administration, got "all the details wrong as usual"?
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?
As has been pointed out ad nausum, what Google said was "Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time." which clearly does not match the product announced by the executive branch (i.e. it's not for everyone, there's no existing plan for rollout beyond the bay area).
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?
That may have been the case initially, but is clearly no longer true if you click through to the statement I linked. I'm not sure if Google was planning this prior to Trump's announcement or if it's reactionary, but the relevant portion is here:
"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..."
Arrgh, but those aren't the same thing! The press conference announced a test scheduling tool, which corresponds to the Verily product. That quote you just listed is just a static info site.
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)?
> President Donald Trump claimed during a Rose Garden news conference Friday that Google would soon publish a national-scale website related to the coronavirus, but company representatives said its plans relate to a small-scale site that will initially be focused on California cases and the timing was unlikely to be soon.
Most people don’t know what Alphabet is, or that Google and Verily are under it’s umbrella. I think it’s fine that they just used Google as a general place-in term for the article.
I wonder how many people are actually using these voice systems. In public, obviously zero. Ok google was convenient for a while while driving, but I havnt used it for months.
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.
In my experience these voice assistants are wildly popular among older and less technically literate people. I have an aunt who has around a dozen alexa-enabled speakers, tvs, and tablets around the house and constantly talks to them—weather, news, turning on the radio and music, ordering things on amazon. She doesn’t appear to be bothered by having to change her behavior to suit the assistant, including occasionally ordering the wrong item on amazon (!) and simply saying “play (genre here)” rather than album oriented listening she normally does, which disturbed me a little bit. Other older people in my life have similar behavior, and on a related point I’ve gotten at least one assistant enabled device as a gift for each birthday and christmas for the last several years (I give them away, I already have too many damn electronics).
The timing of that press conference was really suspicious, and makes me think this is still all about the stock market and not a public health strategy.
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.
This is a global health crisis that happens to impact millions of workers who are now worried they might contract coronavirus or they might lose their jobs if they were in some of the more impacted industries.
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
Seriously what do you want the White House to do? Run around like chickens with their head cut off? I am so damn disappointed at this site often enough to just delete the book mark. The partisan first, TDS, or call it what you will, on display here, makes me wonder if I landed on reddit/politics instead of a tech site.
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.
Assure effectual calm, I would say. Not wallpaper a crisis for gain of self, cronies, or political points, which is what the original commenter was describing.
People need direction and understanding of the severity, which has been lacking.
I’m curious as to your definition of a little white lie, and I wonder how durable you think this calm is. People clamoring for tests nationwide don’t need provable lies told to them. They need confidence that the people in charge know what they’re doing and they need to know how they can access the tests. These lies are hurting, not helping.
> it [sic] that requires a little white lie or a bit of misdirection then so be it
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.
I have taken a short position in the last couple weeks because I believe the market will go down, rather than up. I have given some thought to the effects of my actions, and I haven't yet been able to figure how anything I'm doing is harmful or unethical. Every transaction requires more than just my consent, somebody had to be on the other end of that deal thinking they were going to be the one making money, and they might be right.
What Is the point of increased testing now that it is so widespread in the community? The message needs to be social distancing even if you are not sick and if you are sick just assume it is coronavirus and self quarantine.
It’s like that walkthrough of the Chernobyl meltdown from the miniseries.
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
Ok, I was under the mistaken impression that we likely have a lot of cases, just under reported due to lack of tests. Perhaps we really only have ~5000, I had thought it was >100000.
There's various factors that contribute to underreporting:
- 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.
Why is Google (and for that matter Apple) not helping to track the prior movement of every coronavirus patient where possible to identify additional potentially exposed individuals?
Seems fairly straightforward given their massive surveillance infrastructure.
Anyone at Apple or Google actually going to pitch in here and offer meaningful help?
I found this site about Singapore yesterday. This kind of detail would never fly in the US. But they do seem to have used it effectively to track the spread of the disease:
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.
That level of detail is definitely enough to unmask an individual but if you wanted to protect the infected person's privacy (while massively violating others' in order to join the data sets), it seems like it would be possible to notify an individual that they were exposed, and not leak the infected person's personal details.
Both Singapore and South Korea publicly report such data. Names are anonymized, but it isn't that hard to dox them.
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.
Oh they’re doing that. You can use AliPay, an omnipresent payments app to get a QR code based on your movements over the past days as tracked by your mobile. If it’s green you’re safe, yellow or red I think you need to be quarantined or at least monitored.
Of fucking course, China does that. Watch the videos on how they are dealing with it. There are several on YouTube. When you get in and out of a subway or a building or whatever you have to scan a QR code with WeChat. Otherwise, you're not allowed to proceed.
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.
Because that would shine a light on just how creepy this all is. We know they do it but the normal person might be a bit concerned if Google and Apple just announced "We track you everywhere and who you interact with."
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.
> Seems fairly straightforward given their massive surveillance infrastructure.
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.
Why are people asking this of Google and Apple and not of, you know, the major telcos who do have your location history (which you cannot opt out of) and are perfectly willing to sell it?
I don't think the location history is very accurate. Either the polling interval is too low, or they use less power consuming location services, but Google fudges my history a good amount of time.
If you have google location history turned on you can see it in maps. Its pretty accurate. It couldn’t tell you for sure you were in with 5 feet of a known case, but it certainly would give a useful signal.
Operative word is “you” there- I cannot look at your location, and the government can’t without a warrant either, what the OP is suggesting is way more invasive.
So, I'm gonna have to go to Walmart to get tested? Wtf? I should be able to go to my local hospital right now, but there's no tests, and no one will be wearing PPE when I walk in there.
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)
Because Walmart already has the infrastructure to (a) set up drive-through testing sites, (b) employees to perform the tests, and (c) the distribution network to get this test to the majority of America very quickly. Your local hospital, not being part of a larger chain or system, does not.
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.
That's a really good answer. Thanks. I agree, but it just makes me pinch myself, check my pulse, and wonder if I'm in an alternate universe when the world pandemic of this age involves me going to Walmart instead of to a hospital.
Second part of the question. Where do I go get tested in each state, right now?
You don't want to flood hospitals with millions of Americans that think they might have corona virus. Testing in non-hospital space is the correct thing to do.
"I don't understand the HN hivemind that American companies wanting to help out Americans is a bad thing. "
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.
Large corporate American represents some of the most logistics-capable organizations to have ever existed on the planet. I don't understand the disdain.
A few downvotes on this so far, but no replies. No answers! I apologise for reaching out to the community. I love HN and respect the guidelines whole heartidly, but I was actually hoping for a reply.
Possibly because its common sense no country is really prepared for anything like that, doesn't matter the overall medical situation, and private companies who have infrastructure already help out if they can everywhere in the world right now.
Personally, I would call my health provider, or my local hospital to inquire about their particular Covid testing protocol, seeming as some states are currently reporting very few confirmed cases, while others are already doing drive-through testing.
Your answer was that you don't know through. You just assume that the information would be easy to obtain by calling to hospital. (Which is not a way to distribute information many people need simultaneously anyway, even if it worked).
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.
I do know..and most who care and plan ahead know. Acting out ignorance (whether deliberately feigned or even true ignorance) isn't advancing productive discussion. Of course testing is currently rationed for the most vulnerable/susceptible..you are not a consumer ordering a Big Mac in that drive-thru line, at least not yet, although that frequency and ease should be the outcome of widespread testing effort.
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...