Contrary to Trump's claim, Google is not building a nationwide coronavirus screening website

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179118/google-coronavirus-testing-screening-website-drive-thru-covid-19

Instead, Verily is building a triage website just for the Bay Area

By Dieter Bohn Updated Mar 13, 2020, 6:20pm EDT

Google is not working with the US government in building a nationwide website to help people determine whether and how to get a novel coronavirus test, despite what President Donald Trump said in the course of issuing an emergency declaration for the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, a much smaller trial website made by another division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is going up. It will only be able to direct people to testing facilities in the Bay Area.

More than an hour after Trump’s press conference, a Google communications Twitter account passed along the following statement from Verily, which is a different company inside the Alphabet corporate umbrella:

We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. 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. We appreciate the support of government officials and industry partners and thank the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort.

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.”

The triage site should be put live within a few days, and it will be hosted at Project Baseline, the Verily website where people can sign up to take part in clinical trials. That’s a seemingly odd place for the triage tool to live, but Wang says that Project Baseline already has certain necessary tools like an informed consent agreement, so it makes sense to put it there.

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Trump steaks, anyone?

[rzemanfl]

1. He would lie about whether there was a urinal cake in the urinal.

Compulsive damn liar.

[NBachers]

7. Speaking of urinal cakes:

[sarcasmo]

14. He would steal the urinal cakes and urinals.

[stillcool]

2. jeezus, we need a gag-rule

for government officials who lie.

[Caliman73]

10. From the Trump Admin? Then we would have ZERO contact.

They all lie. Each and every one of his top people lie almost as much as he does. If we had a gag order, we would never hear from them, which is not a bad thing, but then we wouldn't know what they were up to.

[stillcool]

12. who knows what they're up to?

they've got their own gag orders on anything that moves.

[DesertRat]

3. He stood at the podium and flat-out lied

[Tbear]

4. Pre-meditated Lie with

a freaking a flow chart on poster board on how the web site works.

Uggggggggghhhhhh it hurts my head.

[Mrs. Overall]

5. He lied about Google. Will there be ramifications for this HUGE lie?

[NBachers]

6. I'm in San Francisco; I've got the symptoms; my doctor at Kaiser is sidestepping testing for now.

I've signed up at Project Baseline. It collects medical information, and asks what you're interested in. They'll keep me notified when Verily comes available.

Of course, I'm hibernating.

[DesertRat]

9. I hope you feel better soon. Take care

[Caliman73]

11. Good luck. Take care of yourself.

[coti]

8. People need to understand that he went up to the podium knowing ZERO about what is happening

He doesn't care enough to ask and he's probably rude as shit to people who try to talk to him about problems.

So everything he didn't read directly off his script was probably wrong- all of his bullshit commentary and "riffing"- and all of his answers to questions were made up and wrong.

This isn't news. This is who the piece of shit is. He lies through the whole day to pretend as if he knows what he's talking about while having no curiosity about the world around him whatsoever.

[Caliman73]

13. If the press had any integrity...

They would send one reporter to represent them and ask tough questions. That they gather and fight to ask him mundane questions shows that they are not serious. We have good reporters who ask tough questions, but he just dodges and goes to the next person who asks a silly question.

When he goes to Europe and dodges a question, the next reporter asks the same question and down the line.

[NBachers]

15. Yet his cult of bleevers shroud themselves in his lies like a security blanket, and seethe at truth

like vampires before a crucifix.

[Roland99]

16. #LiarInChief