If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is working 24/7, guess again

Re:If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is wo... by pdonis on Sunday April 05, 2020 @11:34PM (#22790709)

> From a financial perspective, there's not a huge difference between a) a hospital paying $0.80/mask for the next year and $0.02/mask for the following decade or b) $0.10/mask with a decade long contract.

Yes, there is: the cash flow for the two cases is very, very different. Case b) is doable for a reasonable cash flow. Case a) is impossible unless someone else besides the hospital provides the huge up front amount of cash required to pay $0.80/mask for the first year.

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Re:If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is wo... by gpm on Monday April 06, 2020 @01:07AM (#22791039)

Masks aren't a large enough portion of a hospitals budget for cashflow to be a major concern. Besides which loans exist (though we are neglecting to properly account for the future value of money in our napkin math).

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Re:If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is wo... by pdonis on Monday April 06, 2020 @11:41AM (#22794674)

> Masks aren't a large enough portion of a hospitals budget for cashflow to be a major concern.

Maybe not under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. Also, we're talking N95 masks, not ordinary surgical masks.

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Re:If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is wo... by gpm on Monday April 06, 2020 @11:49AM (#22794745)

Compare the cost of masks to the cost of the salary of the people using them. Under no circumstance is the cost of masks a major cashflow concern.

Nothing in the article says these are N95 masks, I don't believe you are correct. But also, what does that have to do with my comment?

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