*facepalm*
Jan. 18th, 2022 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ermingardenYou may have seen that the Biden administration's new website COVIDtests.gov has gone live a day ahead of schedule. The website is meant to allow Americans to order rapid at-home Covid tests for free through the U.S. Postal Service, limited to four tests per residential address.
I live in student housing, in an apartment building with hundreds of other people...and the website recognizes the street address of the whole building as one residential address, even though there is a field in the form to enter apartment unit numbers. So, since someone else in the building has already ordered the allotted four tests to their apartment, none of the rest of us can.
I really hope my building specifically has been misclassified rather than this being a widespread error affecting apartment buildings generally, because even though I'm sure it could be fixed, the optics on this would be extremely bad for the administration, especially when you consider the disparate impact based on socioeconomic status. (What type of building has the most people living at a single street address? Housing projects.) Add in the fact that the four-test-per-household cap already favors smaller households, which also tends to track with socioeconomic status....
(The website does have a banner at the top reading COVIDtests.gov is up and running early to help prepare for the full launch tomorrow. We have tests for every residential address in the U.S. Please check back tomorrow if you run into any unexpected issues – hopefully if there is a widespread issue they'll fix it swiftly.)
Edit: Evidently the apartment building problem is widespread, and there are multiple other issues cropping up as well.zdenka shared a link to a Twitter account (@MarkedByCovid) that is compiling observed problems and crowdsourced workarounds at this thread.
As of 9:15pm on 1/18, USPS has stated that the observed problems affect only “a small percentage of orders” (...really?) and recommended that customers file a service request here or contact the Postal Service help desk at 1-800-275-8777. (Source: NYTimes)
I live in student housing, in an apartment building with hundreds of other people...and the website recognizes the street address of the whole building as one residential address, even though there is a field in the form to enter apartment unit numbers. So, since someone else in the building has already ordered the allotted four tests to their apartment, none of the rest of us can.
I really hope my building specifically has been misclassified rather than this being a widespread error affecting apartment buildings generally, because even though I'm sure it could be fixed, the optics on this would be extremely bad for the administration, especially when you consider the disparate impact based on socioeconomic status. (What type of building has the most people living at a single street address? Housing projects.) Add in the fact that the four-test-per-household cap already favors smaller households, which also tends to track with socioeconomic status....
(The website does have a banner at the top reading COVIDtests.gov is up and running early to help prepare for the full launch tomorrow. We have tests for every residential address in the U.S. Please check back tomorrow if you run into any unexpected issues – hopefully if there is a widespread issue they'll fix it swiftly.)
Edit: Evidently the apartment building problem is widespread, and there are multiple other issues cropping up as well.
zdenka shared a link to a Twitter account (@MarkedByCovid) that is compiling observed problems and crowdsourced workarounds at this thread.As of 9:15pm on 1/18, USPS has stated that the observed problems affect only “a small percentage of orders” (...really?) and recommended that customers file a service request here or contact the Postal Service help desk at 1-800-275-8777. (Source: NYTimes)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-19 01:52 am (UTC)