How is a stupid Java app with clueless consultants going to help against covid? Or is it Thiel selling yet more snake oil?
Government mistake includes:
- doing nothing for two months
- lying about the dangerousness of the virus
- saying that masks are useless for citizens yet requesting all available
- sending masks to China at the beginning of epidemic
- not restocking masks despite the existence of a pandemic emergency stock
- neglecting hospitals for decades (staff was striking a few months ago)
- battling the potential treatment of Pr. Raoult because of a personal feud between him and the ministry of health’s husband
- putting chloroquine under toxic medicine list just as the epidemic starts
- changing the layout of the paper need to present to police everyday
- enforcing confinement on a part of the population but not another one
- ... I probably forget a lot more
Sources: French media, friends, family and social networks.
People are genuinely angry at the govt response and some are already talking in insurrectional terms.
They'd be on the side of the administration ready to torch whatever group must bear the blame. Some Palantir-like intelligence can be very useful when you want to direct your s̵h̵o̵c̵k̵ ̵t̵r̵o̵o̵p̵s̵ supporters to peacefully protest.
I don't think they need to worry about manifestations because going to one is a fast pass to getting COVID-19.
If this reduces the need and application for nation-wide bans like contact tracing did in Singapore than whatever the cost it will be a rounding error.
"Whatever the cost" disregards the non-monentary costs of giving a player like Palantir access to this data. If you need to implement digital help for contact tracing, at least pretend to do it in a privacy-preserving manner (plenty of attempts out there). There's no need to give surveillance data to the security apparatus of another country just because they have a few spreadsheets already.
That and masks on people's faces.
Basically one of their only models that actually works seems to be suited for contact tracing nearly perfectly.
I understand the reservations of people here regarding the company itself tho, but I’m not against it as a blanket statement.
E.G. on prem installation on German government servers with German staff doesn’t seem like an overreach, especially considering that the German government is already a client.