During today’s big coronavirus press briefing, Trump announced a soon to be unveiled website from Google being made by 1700 engineers. At the website, you would answer questions about symptoms you’re experiencing, and the website would tell you whether or not you can/should be tested, and then direct you to a testing facility. I guess it should surprise none of us, but Trump was — we’ll be charitable here — exaggerating when he made that announcement today. He acted like this website was pretty much here and ready to go. It’s not. It’s nowhere near ready.
From WIRED, an article titled: "Trump Caught Google Off Guard With a Bogus Coronavirus Site Announcement."
The lede: “Google's not making a nationwide coronavirus testing website. And the company had no idea the president would say it was.”
A source at Google tells WIRED that company leadership was surprised that Trump announced anything about the initiative at the press conference. What he did say was also almost entirely wrong. There will be a coronavirus testing site, not from Google but from Alphabet sister company Verily. “We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing,” Google tweeted in a statement. “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.”
Even that, though, was not the original plan. The Verge reported Friday afternoon, Verily had intended the site for health care workers only. After Trump unexpectedly publicized the effort, Verily decided it will let anyone visit it, but can still only provide people with testing site information in the San Francisco area.
So, to recap: Today’s announcement from Trump, complete with White House coronavirus coordinator Debbie Birx holding up a hyper-simplistic branch chart as if what she was detailing was so complicated that she needed to explain it, of a website to triage potential coronavirus patients was a significant exaggeration. Despite acting like the website was ready to go, it’s not. It’s in very early stages, it will start with only being available to the Bay Area, and seems to originally have not been intended for actual patients but for health care workers.
Nothing like a massive amount of chaos to help us all feel assured in a crisis.