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Google Medicine Businesses United States

Google To Open Up Its Office Facilities for COVID-19 Vaccine Clinics (cnet.com) 26

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday said the company will make its office facilities available for COVID-19 vaccination clinics, as tech giants aim to speed up distribution efforts in the US. From a report: The company said it's partnering with the health care provider One Medical for the clinics, which will be opened "as needed" at Google buildings, parking lots and open spaces. For now, Google is targeting its campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the company is headquartered; Los Angeles; New York City; and Kirkland, Washington, outside of Seattle. [...] The company also said it will use artificial intelligence from its Google Cloud division to help health care providers and pharmacies with the logistics of vaccine distribution. That includes detecting changes in the temperature of vaccine doses, which must be stored in cool conditions. Google also said it's committing more than $150 million in free ads and other investments to public health agencies and nonprofits promoting vaccine education.
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Google To Open Up Its Office Facilities for COVID-19 Vaccine Clinics More

Google To Open Up Its Office Facilities for COVID-19 Vaccine Clinics

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  • Good I guess, but at this point I think the issue is more lack of vaccines not lack of space to use them.

    We need PR gestures from companies that can manufacturer more vaccine.

    • I think it is simply a.problem of scaling.
      Because the ENTIRE supply chain has to scale with them.

      It's not like any pharma company would willingly pass up the greatest opportunity of our times, to make metric fucktons of money from people having no choice.

      It's gonna be something really infuriating, like no way to order $chemicalProbe264 that there's no alternstive for, because only two businesse in the world know how to make them, and the two probe makers both require an extremely complex machine with only o

    • Good I guess, but at this point I think the issue is more lack of vaccines not lack of space to use them.

      Distribution and administration are big problems. As of Jan 21st, 36 million vaccines had been produced, but only 16 million shots given. The backlog is growing.

      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain

      This is a quote from Isaac Asimov, not Mark Twain.

      "Most quotes on the Internet are misattributed." -- Abraham Lincoln

      • Because a lot of people have received the first dose but not the second and it is not being produced fast enough to just give more first doses. A bunch of these "extra" doses are going to suddenly disappear in about 4 weeks when all the second doses for the first several weeks or so of first doses are done. The reporting on this seems to have been terrible. There was a slow start, but by using "total doses" instead of something like "total first doses" or "total 2-dose pairs" the press has basically manu

        • Because a lot of people have received the first dose but not the second and it is not being produced fast enough to just give more first doses.

          Unless the rate of production is falling (it is not), that is not true. If we had enough to give X first doses per day, we will have enough to give X second doses per day, without a backlog. A backlog is only needed if the supply chain is unreliable. There is no legitimate reason for 12 million doses to be unused.

          • They produced it for months before it was approved. So the rate of doses shipping has fallen precipitously since December / early January. If you have 400 doses available on day 1 and then 50/week, you can't give all 400 as first doses because 4 weeks later when it is time to give 400 second doses you'll only have 200 to do so with.

      • Private enterprise invented, tested and is producing the vaccines.

        The government is distributing them.

        There, that's all you need to know.

        • The government basically paid private companies to do the testing. That's how the real world works. Also a poor person is just as contagious as a rich person, and since there is more of them, it's in the rich person's interest to have them vaccinated too.

    • Less than half of the vaccine doses which have been delivered to states have been administered. At the moment, it's not manufacturing that's the bottleneck. It's putting those doses into arms.

      Part of problem slowing down administering the vaccine is state regulations saying hospitals and clinics are not allowed to administer doses they have left over after the "top priority" people who registered for the day are done.

      So for example if you have 200 nurses and doctors in the town, and you have 200 doses avai

      • But people complain about the opposite as well. The standard solution is schedule more people than you have doses to account for no-shows. But then people get pissed off because they showed up but didn't get vaccinated. When really they are saying it is better to waste vaccine than inconvenience them -- they just don't understand that.

        And your blanket statement that supply is not the bottleneck is simply not true. Some places are having problems getting vaccines administered but many places are now in

  • $150 million... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday January 25, 2021 @09:19AM (#60988898)

    How convenient, if you're the one setting the price fo those ads arbitrarily!

    (Reminds me of when MS "paid" is court fines with licenses for Windows and Office for schools. You know... to hook em early. ... Fines they got for monopolism. ... I'm sure they laughed all the way to the license key generator. ;)

    • How convenient, if you're the one setting the price fo those ads arbitrarily!

      You don't know how Google's ads are priced, apparently. Hint: Google doesn't set the prices, they're determined by a real-time auction.

  • Will the artificial intelligence be better than the alternative intelligence the last administration used for logistics?

  • Good will investment (Score:3)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Monday January 25, 2021 @09:55AM (#60989018)
    I want to be cynical, but the bit tech companies stock rose during the pandemic and they're doing well while many around them are suffering. Therefore, I think it is nice and make me proud to work for big tech when they lend their facilities and offer logistics help, like Amazon and Google are. While not a massive sacrifice, I do consider this giving back in a way they're uniquely talented to do so. I hope this leads to good free press and good will. I am a huge fan of companies doing what they can to get good will. Apple, (today's) Microsoft, and Google seem to have plenty whereas Facebook doesn't. I hope it impacts them in a tangible way in the near future.

    You never see other highly profitable industries, like Morgan Stanley or the other big banks, help out like this. I hope it inspired a trend of corporations giving back for the vaccine rollout...so we know which companies are shit and which ones aren't. I'll wager money Oracle won't help out one bit. I'd love to see the sociopaths learn a lesson about good will and making your customers actually like doing business with you.
    • Facebook does PLENTY to get goodwill. It's just that "the general public" isn't the target market for this...the public is the PRODUCT, a source of ad targets. Their customers are the companies buying ads. And, various groups that use Facebook for disinformation and to help create general chaos in various countries.

      • Facebook does PLENTY to get goodwill. It's just that "the general public" isn't the target market for this...the public is the PRODUCT, a source of ad targets. Their customers are the companies buying ads. And, various groups that use Facebook for disinformation and to help create general chaos in various countries.

        You're correct, you and I are the product, not the customer. However, that's applicable for any service you don't pay a lot of money for. While Google has lost a lot of its luster in the last few years, 10 years ago, they could do no wrong. People LOVED them. They were constantly wowing us with innovative hardware and services. There were lots of Google fanboys, eagerly exploring everything they had to offer. Do you know any Facebook fanboys? I don't.

        I can't remember anyone EVER saying "hey did yo

    • You never see other highly profitable industries, like Morgan Stanley or the other big banks, help out like this.

      Wrong. Wall Street is trying to help NYC with vaccinations. That's in addition to various charity drives with company match https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

  • Since Google employees, for the most part, aren't in them.

  • Remind me where was this aid before the inauguration?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kqs ( 1038910 )

      Before advanced logistics can help you, you need to solve your basic logistics issues, like "do we know how many doses have we received and sent out?".

      Whether or not you liked the previous administration, you have to admit that organization and logistics were never core strengths.

  • Because they're not being used for anything else, anyway.

  • Wow, a whole four locations. That's going to put a serious dent in this pandemic! /s. Far more useful would be for them to pay to park refrigeration storage units and distribute vaccines from their various data center locations. But that might require actual physical effort, and not something they can just do via a PR tweet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kqs ( 1038910 )

      Offices are near where many people live. Datacenters are where almost no people live.

      Is this a PR move? Sure. But it may also help, which is a hell of a lot more than most other companies are doing. I suggest you spend your scorn on those companies who can't even lift a finger to offer help.

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