This might be true for your average project, but the pandemic is not average; it’s very high-profile. Put out the word that the government needs help and you would have Googlers taking a leave of absence, like they did to fix the Obamacare website.

There are lots of great people who would rather be doing something meaningful than whatever they’re currently doing and governments need to do better at tapping into this.

It’s a different problem, but for a more recent example, look at how fast vaccinateca.com got going.