4 ms·

Compared to the billions to potentially trillions of euros Germany will be paying for the lockdown and the other EU states this is basically nothing I think.

by s9w 6y ago

GreenHeuristics 6y ago
20 million is still 20 million
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  For a system which interacts with Germany's divers structure of health authorities. Last time I counted there were 374 municipal health authorities, all of them have to be integrated. Also the laboratories and doctors. In addition they set up two calling centers (a technical hotline and a health hotline) and did multiple audits for security and for epidimological sense. And then all of it, frontend and backend, is open source. For a government project that is cheap! (25cent per citizen) Edit: source for the 374 is the table on https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesundheitsamt https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesundheitsamt
polycaster 6y ago
Provided the app will solve all those problems single-handedly. There are voices arguing the impact will be about 0.
- s9w 6y ago
  It will absolutely be 0, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Are people really bickering about the price of this? Please tell me you're just German developers angry you didn't get this contract. Because the alternative is that you're terrible at math. According to[0], the costs of the pandemic for the German economy are from 255 to 729 billion euros. Taking the middle of 500 billion as a best guess, and a quick division will tell us that this app will be worth it if it stops one in every 25,000 infections. Or, alternatively: this app costs about 0.25€ for every citizen, or about a quarter of one mask. That does not strike me as a terrible deal. The point here isn't that this is a model for how all government procurement should be run. It is not. It's that under the specific circumstances, overpaying is completely acceptable if it meant, for example, getting a contract signed a day earlier. Note that situation was obviously far worse when this project started than it is now. [0]: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiDoKXUlIbqAhUywMQBHUeiAYEQFjADegQIBhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Fus-health-coronavirus-germany-economy%2Fcoronavirus-crisis-to-cost-germany-255-729-billion-euros-in-2020-ifo-idUSKBN21A0V5&usg=AOvVaw2bcR1p98nnChDo_moutVn4 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
  - adrianN 6y ago
    If you assume a linear relationship between economic damage and number of infections.
    - _-___________-_ 6y ago
      This! The economic damage is largely caused by our response to the infection risk, rather than by the infections themselves. There are numerous countries with enormous economic damage and very few infections, and others with large numbers of infections and relatively less economic damage. They don't seem to be particularly correlated.
  - polycaster 6y ago
    Completely OT and just out of curiosity: Is there a point to posting the source as a redirect via Google? Or is it simply the link copied from the search results page?
  - polycaster 6y ago
    You're right of course. My point was rather that you cannot simply say it's worth a single effort because the total net benefit of all measures is positive. Thanks for doing the math. Quite interesting result.
    - neuronic 6y ago
      The worst case is that this app has negligible impact and even if it did, trying it as a strategy that helps fight Corona is still worth €20m. Paying students €500 a month as emergency help will cost hundreds of millions and this is a single miniscule effort in a package of several hundred BILLION Euros. Discussing the cost of this app with the given circumstances is a complete waste of time. It's a literal rounding error in the overall Corona bill for Germany alone.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
      Ah, then I may have misunderstood the sentiment. In that case, please excuse the (passive-?)aggressive tone of my post. And yes, the link is just the result of some hyperactive copy&paste. I'll now try to enjoy the thought that the Germans are bickering about the price of this on HN. It's sort of a return to normalcy: the luxury of caring about pointless details precisely because the government isn't quite as incompetent as always assumed, at least compared to some others.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Germany has done better than most countries, and we need to throw everything at the problem including the kitchen sink. This is noy time for meanongless bickering, its the time to enable folks with a plan and then access them on their merits. The well of criticism is endless. There are voices arguing that masks are useless, that 'Churchill wouldn't wear one' and that 'social distancing is communism'. Dealing with all of them will result in brain damage.
hef19898 6y ago
The Federal Government also sourced PPE for around 900 M € without really distrbuting it. Also, without paying suppliers on time, or at all. So I guess the app is kind of cheap?
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  Well, if they didn't pay the suppliers, they didn't really spend that €900m, did they?
  - hef19898 6y ago
    They sold at fixed prices without limiting quantity or specifying requirements. They are already getting sued over it. Edit: 600 million, source: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-krise-jens-spahn-schuldet-maskenproduzenten-fast-600-millionen-euro-a-00000000-0002-0001-0000-000171527046 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-krise-jens...

Compared to the billions to potentially trillions of euros Germany will be paying for the lockdown and the other EU states this is basically nothing I think.

by s9w 6y ago

Compared to the billions to potentially trillions of euros Germany will be paying for the lockdown and the other EU states this is basically nothing I think.

GreenHeuristics 6y ago

20 million is still 20 million

johannes1234321 6y ago
For a system which interacts with Germany's divers structure of health authorities. Last time I counted there were 374 municipal health authorities, all of them have to be integrated. Also the laboratories and doctors. In addition they set up two calling centers (a technical hotline and a health hotline) and did multiple audits for security and for epidimological sense. And then all of it, frontend and backend, is open source. For a government project that is cheap! (25cent per citizen) Edit: source for the 374 is the table on https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesundheitsamt https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesundheitsamt

polycaster 6y ago

Provided the app will solve all those problems single-handedly. There are voices arguing the impact will be about 0.

s9w 6y ago
It will absolutely be 0, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Are people really bickering about the price of this? Please tell me you're just German developers angry you didn't get this contract. Because the alternative is that you're terrible at math. According to[0], the costs of the pandemic for the German economy are from 255 to 729 billion euros. Taking the middle of 500 billion as a best guess, and a quick division will tell us that this app will be worth it if it stops one in every 25,000 infections. Or, alternatively: this app costs about 0.25€ for every citizen, or about a quarter of one mask. That does not strike me as a terrible deal. The point here isn't that this is a model for how all government procurement should be run. It is not. It's that under the specific circumstances, overpaying is completely acceptable if it meant, for example, getting a contract signed a day earlier. Note that situation was obviously far worse when this project started than it is now. [0]: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiDoKXUlIbqAhUywMQBHUeiAYEQFjADegQIBhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Fus-health-coronavirus-germany-economy%2Fcoronavirus-crisis-to-cost-germany-255-729-billion-euros-in-2020-ifo-idUSKBN21A0V5&usg=AOvVaw2bcR1p98nnChDo_moutVn4 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- adrianN 6y ago
  If you assume a linear relationship between economic damage and number of infections.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    This! The economic damage is largely caused by our response to the infection risk, rather than by the infections themselves. There are numerous countries with enormous economic damage and very few infections, and others with large numbers of infections and relatively less economic damage. They don't seem to be particularly correlated.
- polycaster 6y ago
  Completely OT and just out of curiosity: Is there a point to posting the source as a redirect via Google? Or is it simply the link copied from the search results page?
- polycaster 6y ago
  You're right of course. My point was rather that you cannot simply say it's worth a single effort because the total net benefit of all measures is positive. Thanks for doing the math. Quite interesting result.
  - neuronic 6y ago
    The worst case is that this app has negligible impact and even if it did, trying it as a strategy that helps fight Corona is still worth €20m. Paying students €500 a month as emergency help will cost hundreds of millions and this is a single miniscule effort in a package of several hundred BILLION Euros. Discussing the cost of this app with the given circumstances is a complete waste of time. It's a literal rounding error in the overall Corona bill for Germany alone.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    Ah, then I may have misunderstood the sentiment. In that case, please excuse the (passive-?)aggressive tone of my post. And yes, the link is just the result of some hyperactive copy&paste. I'll now try to enjoy the thought that the Germans are bickering about the price of this on HN. It's sort of a return to normalcy: the luxury of caring about pointless details precisely because the government isn't quite as incompetent as always assumed, at least compared to some others.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Germany has done better than most countries, and we need to throw everything at the problem including the kitchen sink. This is noy time for meanongless bickering, its the time to enable folks with a plan and then access them on their merits. The well of criticism is endless. There are voices arguing that masks are useless, that 'Churchill wouldn't wear one' and that 'social distancing is communism'. Dealing with all of them will result in brain damage.

hef19898 6y ago

The Federal Government also sourced PPE for around 900 M € without really distrbuting it. Also, without paying suppliers on time, or at all. So I guess the app is kind of cheap?

_-___________-_ 6y ago
Well, if they didn't pay the suppliers, they didn't really spend that €900m, did they?
- hef19898 6y ago
  They sold at fixed prices without limiting quantity or specifying requirements. They are already getting sued over it. Edit: 600 million, source: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-krise-jens-spahn-schuldet-maskenproduzenten-fast-600-millionen-euro-a-00000000-0002-0001-0000-000171527046 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-krise-jens...