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The White House deflected criticism over the issue with Deputy Press Secretary Kevin Munoz i say Boundary that mistakes are “just a small percentage” of overall experiences. Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “For us, every website carries risk. We cannot guarantee that one or two errors will not occur.”
But as often happens during this pandemic when the government fails, citizens stepped in via the internet.
Immediately after the site launched, Twitter posts from people willing to donate tests began pouring in, and last year some groups that helped people find vaccine appointments turned to helping people get tested. For example, the Facebook group Maryland Vaccine Hunters, which has started to crowdsource information about vaccine appointments, is now posting up-to-date details on where rapid tests can be purchased and facilitating test donations.
Mutual aid groups, community organizations that trade goods and services for people in need, have gone mainstream during the pandemic and have become increasingly active by offering protective equipment, helping people get vaccination appointments and, more recently, distributing tests.
One such group is Serve Your City, a Washington, DC nonprofit that works with the city’s homeless population. To find out who should get tested in Wealth City, he cited data gathered from a helpline he set up to help people with fewer opportunities book vaccination appointments.
Still, these crowdsourcing efforts have an advantage: They require reliable access to the Internet. Maryland Vaccine Hunters has a solid Facebook thread of people willing to donate tests. But how can they help people who can’t access the internet?
Alternative ways to take tests are fraught with problems. Adding to the quirks of the online form, the White House didn’t set up a hotline until a few days after launch, so people who were supposed to use the phone couldn’t get help. It’s also unclear who exactly oversaw the fair distribution of tests: representatives of the hotline directed us to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which forwarded us to the White House, which did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Postal Service.
This means that people who badly need these tests continue to have problems obtaining them.
“Covid hits this population the hardest,” Levy says of his clients. “They are disabled, have limited resources, most are Black or Hispanic. They are really vulnerable people.” On January 24, Levy called the hotline to place an order for the occupants of his building for the tenth time, but again unsuccessfully.
Additional reporting by Eileen Guo.
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