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.