Huge Ma built TurboVax, a robot that discovers the appointments available, after discovering how confusing it is to book one for his mother.
Last Monday, March 1, 2021 at 08:02 GMT
Enorme Ma first came up with the concept of his robot locating essential vaccination appointments after discovering how confusing an e-book was for his mother.
“Basically, I had to open 3 tabs, one for the government’s main vaccine portal, and then upgrade all day until I had an appointment,” said New York’s 31-year-old software engineer.
Inspired to see if there was anything he could build himself to help the thousands of New Yorkers fight for dates, in January he “took a look under the hood. “Two weekends after coding, he had created TurboVax: a robot that discovers quotes that can be had on 53 other vaccination sites in New York City and State and stores them on Twitter and on a website. It only costs $50 to install.
Today, the site registers more than a million page views according to the day. To date, she estimates, tens of thousands of others have gotten appointments for the vaccine, the bot, which has more than 80,000 fans on Twitter, and Ma has been inundated with thank you messages. He also won requests from others asking him to take TurboVax to his city or state.
“The reaction was incredibly overwhelming,” he said. There’s so much gratitude. Hundreds, thousands of emails from other people who received appointments through TurboVax, which is honestly mind-blowing and also humiliating. “
The price of his creation surprised Ma. ” I never imagined I could have built something that had such a tangible effect on the lives of others. “
But there’s also a lot of tension, especially for anything that started as a secondary project. He manages the service in his free time from his paintings to Airbnb. Meanwhile, the site, built on Google Docs, is flexing on such demand.
yesterday I won my first vaccine thanks to New York City and especially @workersjusticep @jessicaramos @CarlinaRivera – NYCCouncil38 @JustinBrannan by delivery men and thank you @turbovax #NYC pic. twitter. com/fQihq0SQKp