Amazon
to the rescue? Will they find a high volumr source for test kits?
Amazon
will deliver at-home COVID-19 test kits in Seattle trial
Amazon
is playing a direct role in COVID-19 relief beyond shipping
essentials to people sheltering at home. Amazon Care, the
division providing healthcare to company staff, is partnering
with the Gates
Foundation-backed Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network to
deliver and pick up at-home COVID-19 testing kits as part of a trial.
The
number of kits will be limited,
but should help widen testing for the virus without relying on
conventional mail and courier deliveries.
(Related)
Reducing the economic impact?
Big
Tech Could Emerge From Coronavirus Crisis Stronger Than Ever
The
New York Times – Amazon
is hiring aggressively to meet customer demand. Traffic has soared on
Facebook and YouTube. And cloud computing has become essential to
home workers:
“…While the rest of the economy is tanking from the crippling
impact of the coronavirus, business at the biggest technology
companies is holding steady — even thriving. Amazon
said it was hiring 100,000 warehouse workers to
meet surging demand. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive,
said traffic for video calling and messaging had exploded. Microsoft
said the numbers using its software for online collaboration had
climbed nearly 40 percent in a week. With people told to work from
home and stay away from others, the pandemic has deepened reliance on
services from the technology industry’s biggest companies while
accelerating trends that were already benefiting them. Amazon has
muscled in on brick-and-mortar retailers for years, but shoppers now
reluctant to go to the store are turning to the e-commerce giant for
a wider variety of goods, like groceries and over-the-counter drugs.
Streaming services like Netflix have dampened box office sales for
movies in recent years. Now, as movie theaters close under
government orders, Netflix and YouTube are gaining a new audience…”
(Related)
How hard would it be to ask phone companies to push government
messages to their users?
Government
ignored advice to set up UK emergency alert system
The
government does not have the ability to send advice on coronavirus
directly to Britons’ mobile phones, after repeatedly ignoring its
own findings that an emergency messaging system could help the
country in times of crisis.
Another
perspective.
Machine
learning and artificial intelligence research for patient benefit: 20
critical questions on transparency, replicability, ethics, and
effectiveness
No comments:
Post a Comment