Why Hasn’t Amazon Already Done It?

Close but no cigar. The editors of the Wall Street Journal have an idea:

Their respective comments highlight how difficult it is for leaders to make decisions when they still lack answers to basic questions. One response might be for the federal government to develop a website where the states update their numbers, outline the policies they have put in place, and note the results.

That would let people and public officials find out what’s happening in, say, Louisiana; where other states are on the infection curve; what is being done to flatten it—and give people a better sense of what their unmet needs are likely to be. Precision is inherently difficult, but a federal website could be a shared clearinghouse for shaping policies informing the public.

Many early projections about Covid-19 deaths were based on worst-case scenarios if governments did nothing. But state governments have taken many different steps. It will take more testing and tracing to know for sure, but the more information we have the more we can close the gap on dramatically different estimates and learn what works and what doesn’t.

Right idea. Wrong strategy. If undertaken by the federal government, the crisis would be long over before the site came up. The federal government simply does not have the human resources to accomplish it. That’s not what it does.

What it does is let contracts for private corporations, drawn from a list of qualified vendors, to do things. The contract process alone will take months.

Amazon, Google, or Facebook have the know-how, resources, and the ability to have such a site up in days. Amazon, in particular, is making millions in additional sales. C’mon, Jeff, do your bit. Set up a clearing house for state and local governments to pool their information.