The White House Has a Shipping Update on Those 500 Million Tests, and It's Pretty Useless

Last month, President Joe Biden promised the American people that his administration would send out 500 million at-home tests for the Wuhan coronavirus. The announcement came around Christmastime, when people hoped to be gathering with their families. Yet even then tests weren't expected to be sent out until early January. During a Thursday interview with TODAY'S Craig Melvin, Vice President Kamala Harris offered that they would be available next week, which the White House had to clarify. Another update came on Friday and it turns out that the amount of shipping for tests to get to those who request them will take so long that they'll be virtually useless.

In addition to tweeting an update, the White House went on to separately tweet about it as an update for this week.

To order their tests, the only two things people will need are their name and residential mailing address. Tests will typically ship through the mail within 7-12 days of ordering, and be delivered First Class through the U.S. Postal Service.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 14, 2022

This week's COVID Updates:
-2.3M Americans newly vaccinated & 5.1M boosted
-Health insurance will start to cover at-home test costs 1/15
-500M more at-home, rapid tests bought to deliver to Americans for free; ordering begins 1/19
-6 more surge response teams announced
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 15, 2022

According to COVIDtests.gov, ordering begins on January 19, which actually brings us to late January. "Every home in the U.S. can soon order 4 free at-home COVID-19 tests. The tests will be completely free—there are no shipping costs and you don’t need to enter a credit card number," the website reads.

Many took to Twitter to react to the absurd timeframe, as well as the likelihood that the website will crash.

Everyone is going to order at once so they have them in stock. The website will crash and supplies will run out in minutes. Watch.
— Beth Baumann (@eb454) January 14, 2022

“Don’t be an idiot, Heath. Order ahead. Duh!”

Sure. The American people will just obviously intuit this and be proactive and get vaccinated and wear masks and...

Oh, wait. Maybe we shouldn’t build gov’t programs that assume people will do these things. That’s part of the flaw!
— Heath Mayo (@HeathMayo) January 14, 2022

The website is a project between the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), the COVID-19 Public Education Campaign known as "We Can Do This," and the United States Postal Service (USPS).

lol remember the postal service freakout? https://t.co/D5Zm6tnLsK
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 14, 2022

This is hardly the only issue to do with testing, though. As Katie reported last month, it was revealed that Biden in October was offered but rejected a plan to order more tests.

Almost a year into his presidency, it's clear that Biden overpromised and has undelivered on many campaign issues, including and especially when it comes to the pandemic. Biden's favorability is underwater in just about every issue, and this now includes how respondents view his handling of the coronavirus, as is reflected in recent polls.

I'm not going to shut down the country.

I'm not going to shut down the economy.

I'm going to shut down the virus.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 30, 2020

As a candidate, Biden even tweeted a promise to "shut down the virus," which has been resurrected when it's clear he so obviously failed on that matter.