hello glenn beethoven is for her. is for the. beethoven is for cause. beethoven is for the a beethoven 2020 the 250th anniversary here on d. . glenn. faced with an outbreak like corona virus openness can save lives and restricting it can kill that is something that china has learned as public outrage grows following the death of the doctor who 1st sounded the alarm over the disease only to be silenced by authorities is this a health crisis it is now mutating into a political one i'm headed home frame by then this is the day.

of the beat you just roger tell group i work for and really for all of the chimes in your. freedom of speech the old right information about why rose was there isn't right china has been very open and transparent and responsible when a government just committed to the government is that willing to be transparent then we do have a chance to try these people do not know what is are coming but don't care for all you know entities with roky up front that is allowing this or by resisting grant allowing the virus is it anything not a chance. it. was a coming up germany may have pledged never again but 19 years on the far right has played power broker in elections and the state of the rigi at the surprise results

so outrage on the streets for what is the risk of a name again. it's a do order churns on to put it in for the party in the ranger and across germany there will be no direct all in direct cooperation with the f.t. in india for. one day there is no voting for a candidate the relies on support from the f.t. . and. to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome to the program i'm glad you could join me hailed as a hero by many in china the doctor who 1st alerted authorities to the corona virus has tragically died from the illness talk to me when yang is being widely moved and his death has fueled anger at the government's initial cover up of the epidemic now in january he was reprimanded by chinese authorities for quote spreading false

rumors about a sars like a virus a little over a month after that warning the corona virus is now killed more than $600.00 people and infected at least $31000.00 others in china. dr li when liang is dead 5 weeks ago on the 30th of december he noticed a virus similar to sars a killer virus from 2 decades ago he posted a warning on the we both groups of fellow doctors 3 days later the 3rd of january he was reprimanded by officials and forced to sign an apology to hand shut down its food and wildlife market the origin of the virus on the same day but then officials delayed a citywide lockdown and the virus spread weeks later the city announced the virus and the official lockdown came but according to statistics that was too late the virus is now spreading rapidly in china although it's only caused a few 100 cases worldwide and it's killing people dr levy one of many.

in life he sparked a national conversation about freedom of speech in china and in death he's become a national hero. for their freedom that i deeply regret his death and feel very sad we need to see if his death can change anything and i hope he did not die in vain have either of them should suffer for it or hot china says it's now effectively dealing with the spread of the virus she needs sympathy she sing ping emphasize that since the outbreak of the corona virus the chinese government and its people have been making great efforts in fighting the epidemic. but many people feel otherwise for them dr lee's story shows that chinese officials priorities are about control and political self-preservation. well from all i know what of this i'm joined in the studio now by our science correspondent derrick williams good to

see you derek now i have to say to assess an extent this strikes me as a double tragedy because you have the casualty all of transparency on one hand with regards to this doctor and then also of course the casualty now that he has died from this illness yes i'm what makes it actually even more striking is that transparency has really been so large from the very beginning that has been very very positive and very it's pretty praise china for being transparent throughout the crisis and now we've discovered that actually at the beginning in the very early stages of this outbreak that's really not been that really wasn't the case and so it's it is a great tragedy as there are so many other tragedies in china i'm sure going on right now as we speak and touching on the i mean how critical is the situation there right now i think that psychologically it's quite a critical situation because we're approaching in an important number which is the number of people who were killed in the sars epidemic back in 2000 to 2003 and it

looks very likely that we're going to outstrip that number were the last couple of days there has been the number of confirmed cases has dropped but that could very well just be a statistical blip or we're far from out of the woods with this on the other hand that said there are also more deadly diseases out there there's a family of viruses out there that kills lots and lots of people it's the ones that cause the onus colloquially as the flu. influenza viruses can cause some symptoms similar to the novel coronavirus including sudden onset of fever and coughing as anyone who's had it knows it's more than just a cold for some it's deadly the world health organization says that annual epidemics result in about 3 to 5000000 cases of severe illness caused by influenza globally and flu viruses kill somewhere between 290650000 people every

single year those numbers are broad enough but there's another factor we have very sketchy information worldwide on how many people get the flu and don't end up in the hospital that makes it tough to nail down exactly how deadly the illness is a detailed running count kept by the centers for disease control in the u.s. shows that this year so far flu viruses in the country have killed around one out of every 2000 people who kept on children and the elderly are the most likely to die. so even though we've been dealing with flu for centuries there are huge gaps and what we know about it little wonder then that the data on the novel coronavirus is also very unclear and changes from day to day. the chinese government has now said that it's identified well over 30000 corona virus infections in the country and medics have confirmed that as of february 7th over 600 people have died due to

the new virus in theory that means 2 out of every 100 people who get the virus will die of it that's a much higher rate than flu. but that number is attached to a major uncertainty factor if some people catch it but only develop mild symptoms or none at all they won't be counted. so if many more people have actually caught the virus but haven't been tested because their symptoms have been mild just a matter of how lethal it actually is could easily drop once we know more. numbers for pandemics are hard to collect which makes mortality rates difficult to deduce so far the entire coronavirus epidemic hasn't killed as many people as on average die from the ordinary flu in a single day but the very fact that it's new and we still know very little about it

has authorities around the world worried one thing we do know wash your hands that's one of the best ways to prevent getting any kind of respiratory virus. where derek one thing i did just notice in your report there is the fact that you say that flu kills more people every day than the entire coronavirus epidemic so far i mean so why don't we see for example every flu season people rushing out buying those face mosques that we're seeing at the moment. well i think the short answer to that question would be that we're used to the flu i mean it is really a major killer as we saw 600 to 650000 people every year that's actually closer to 2000 people every day than it is to the number of people that have died so far from the coronavirus i think that the reason is that we're used to it and that means that. that when flu season rolls around we don't really tend to think about it anymore really we don't tend to think about the people that it claims are often the

elderly sometimes the very young but often the elderly and so they're people with underlying complications as well the other thing is that we also have preventive preventative measures they are that we can that we can reach for there are back scenes that that you can be given there are also antivirals that work like tamiflu where they can have an effect on it and so i think ultimately that's the reason why we tend to ignore it but it is a major major killer i mean that's an important point to make as well people should get their flu shot michel and we shouldn't forget about that but do you think it makes sense then that people off if a lot of this new. say when they don't really think twice about flu for example. i think the reason that is really the uncertainty of the uncertainty involving the new coronavirus. as we as i said in the piece there's this juge sort of vast grey number we don't really actually know how many people are infected and we're not going to be getting that information out of china any time soon chinese health care professionals are in the midst of

a major major crisis they're dealing with thousands and thousands of severely ill patients and the great number of people that we're talking about are going to be people who do contract the virus but maybe only have mild symptoms or maybe are completely asymptomatic maybe they have no symptoms at all and so there just isn't the time and the space on the ground i think of china to try to identify that as we start to get the upper hand over that in this epidemic we can begin to look at other people and then we'll have a much better idea about the mortality rates how lethal is this exactly well let's stick to what we do. then at the moment what we know about current of ours is that it can be spread from person to person for example like flu but i'm wondering about kind of all the power tells in terms of how contagious is it would we know about that so far the the term the viral epidemiologists use when they're looking at how contagious the virus is is is that based reproductive number that's what they call it it's called the are not enough for flu that has an r not

a 1.3 what that means is that on average during the flu season somebody who contracts the flu will give it to 1.3 people on average and so they're trying to come up with a number of this number for the code for the novel coronavirus as well and there was a study that i read from last week that placed it somewhere around 2.2 so more infectious than flu course it's still very very early days to be able to try to really nail down that number but but it is there's one thing that's clear which is that it is moving quite quickly right there when he was from a science desk keeping us all informed thanks so much derek. did you did you would urge for the c.d.u. germany and for the seaview to be the principle still stands that there is no cooperation with the i have to either directly or indirectly for new to do this this cd you will not vote for a candidate of the i or the left party in addition the cd you would not vote for

any candidate that is dependent on the votes of the f.t. . and is well here in germany leaders of chancellor merkel's conservative c.d.u. party have been holding crisis talks to deal with the fallout of its collaboration with the far right now in an unprecedented move the cd year in the eastern state of 3 joined forces with the right wing populist a.f.d. to elect a new state premier and now that decision has been condemned by political leaders across germany and the new premier has been forced to announce his intention to resign. now tracking this story closely for us as ever is our chief political correspondent melinda crane melinda ultimately this was a democratic election of a state premier with crossed party support anywhere else this would have been hailed as a victory for consensus politics but not here why. because most other countries don't have germany's history they don't have germany's record in the 20th century

of nazis bringing catastrophe onto europe and the world so this is a country that is particularly sensitive about anything that can be perceived to be seen as cooperation or coordination with the far right now in this case the coordination was in direct and yet we heard the c.d.u. party leaders saying very clearly that indirect cooperation is still a taboo now in this particular case in this state the far right party the a.f.p. is a particularly rabid one it is under surveillance by german security services for possibly being a threat to democracy so the taboo is real the red lines are real but they were defied by the local conservatives despite clear orders from berlin. or and i think we have some a reaction from the general public actually about what they made all this move

let's take a listen to that and then i want to come back to you then and. i think it's good that there was such an outcry this move was just not accepted but it's good things didn't break out into chaos. to be honest i don't think having fresh elections is the best solution. i think it would be best to have a premier from one of the big parties and see if it's i think it's terrible that their engine has such driving tendencies so i myself am from through in jan of war and i was born there and the situation is terrible. or a sort of mixed reaction there from the public and differing views from politicians now we've already seen the free democrats will back all this but not the c.d.u. so far i mean why is that is lida the nikkei it come having a hard time asserting her authority over her own policy absolutely her authority

looks to be in tatters at the moment on wednesday when this election maneuver occurred she and the party general secretary said very clearly we need to have new elections this is unacceptable and a taboo has been broken as we heard and yet her local party leadership continues to defy those those orders essentially the local party leader mike moring a very ambitious man clearly concerned that in a new election the c.d.u. could possibly lose more votes maybe even seeing them migrate to the far right and therefore are determined to block new elections at any cost but the consequences are very real for the party leadership here in berlin and with people also in the governing coalition in the junior coalition partner the social democrats questioning whether the c.d.u.

leadership is in a position to control members of its own party and you're really into all the while this story is gone during international attention so how is germany being a brute and i said this. well it clearly is making headlines as you say and the fact is that i think people everywhere are very sensitive to the idea of a resurgence of the right wing in germany and by the way when you go back to those to those sound bites that we heard from people on the street here in berlin those are very much for your points of people here in berlin but if you took a random sampling in some eastern cities you might hear something quite different there is a real threat of a resurgent right wing in the eastern part of this country and i think that's something that has been well reported in international media it is a source of concern as you can see from the reaction here in berlin yes certainly

a credible warning indeed chief political correspondent linda craig good to talk to you thank you. now french president of money when michael has told european leaders that they cannot remain spectators in a new nuclear arms race now in a wide ranging speech michael spoke all of a new geopolitical landscape in which the e.u. must rely less on britain a nuclear power in a post brags it walled instead he called for the e.u. to develop closer ties with ukraine pointing to russia's growing influence michael said that france and germany in alliance with ukraine were now responsible for europe's future. all right so let's take a listen now to some more of what the french president had to say. most. europeans must now collectively realize that in the absence of

a legal framework. we could quickly find ourselves exposed to a new conventional arms race on our own soil. we cannot confine ourselves to the role of spectators. it's only acceptable for europe to return to being a theater of confrontation between external nuclear powers. all right well let's deconstruct the french president's speech and its implications now joining me from brussels tonight is christina bezzina an expert in transatlantic ties and the nato alliance from the german marshall fund welcome to you christina now this speech seemed to be a show of force from michael an effort to put himself at the center of a you know knighted using french military clout to make his point would you agree with that assessment. absolutely so this is a really big show of leadership from france on the european security on the one

hand this is a domestic performance president mccartney here is speaking to a graduating class of military officers this is a speech that has a tradition for french presidents every french president wants within their mandate gives a speech on the nuclear deterrence and so it was a very long awaited speech and a view of leadership at the same time it's a speech that is coming a week after. the great britain leaves the european union and a moment in which france is the strongest military power left in the e.u. so it's really a moment for france to shine it's a moment for president of a clone to show his vision for france as a military power as a global power as a security power and how that relates to europe at large if you're talking about the international vision and that message that michael wants to project something that strikes me is that you know we know that michael has refused to place the

french nuclear deterrent under a you or nato command but at the same time he is calling for a coordinated european plan i mean couldn't that be a bad look. i think this is an interesting step in the direction of the more european french defense policy what we've seen since president mccrone became president is that he is calling for more european defense. a plan that is french led that is perhaps different from something started in brussels different from something under nato if he is making france to be more european he needs to start with small steps because france has been very unique in making sure the nuclear deterrent is a french deterrent that contributes to broader nater deterrence and defense but as a french thing to change this longstanding policy it would be very shocking for him to do it in one speech today but instead to start saying that we need strategic

dialogue with other european partners who are interested in having this this could be the beginning of a tilt for european defense and for france to be an architecture in charge of broader european priorities and again that would mean a great deal of evolution and so yes maybe it's not earth shattering what he has said today and it isn't a full vision but also i think it's important to realize the implications of such a change in the strategic culture of france and for that audience there for the french military signals of some kind of evolving situation already is a pretty big deal where as usual could bout that kind of valving tilt that little by little step there from my call and i'm wondering where did the idea come from how is it germinating is this about drags it on the fact that the other new kid nation is now out of the block or is this about as well the fact that washington seems to be set on retreating from the multi national stage. there are many reasons

here for france to how this view one of the visions is the question of states currently europe is under the the american nuclear umbrella the united states has not been as easy to work with under the trumpet a ministry ssion has it has in the past and so you see a call in europe to have more autonomy and particular france has been calling for more autonomy in its operations militarily so there is a response to some frustrations with the u.s. at the same time the u.s. has been calling for europe to have more abilities to act on its own so it's not necessarily in opposition to the u.s. but it is a need to build up capability as much as the u.s. has so yes it's a response to the u.s. i mean it is absolutely response to bragg's that it's a response to the fact that france sees itself as having a true opportunity to lead europe on these issues the other major member state of germany is much more skeptical about nuclear weapons has fewer military

capabilities isn't the security council at the u.n. and so you have an opportunity for france to shine so it's a response to bragg's it because the u.k. isn't slowing france down right now on the european stage and it's also responds broadly to the sense of threat that is coming globally within the speech yes it's about nuclear deterrence but it's also about the manger global challenges that are coming up and china for example is a nuclear power we have an unresolved situation with russia and president a cron is very eager to start to chip away at all of these challenges and to make some progress and so again this is a vision that responds to a global set of challenges and really alluded to some of these very big transitions not just nuclear policy and that is why we see him for trying to lead these issues i'm glad you mentioned russia because he also stressed the importance of restoring

trust that what do you think he can create we might have in mind. it's a very interesting way to say that we need to restore trust with russia russia also needs europe to trust it more so very much i believe that the ball is in russia's court in restoring trust but this is really part of a broader rhetoric that president ican has had starting in august with a speech to all of his ambassadors about the need for. closer and different ties with russia so he president account has been travel around around europe trying to get the partners on board in order to try to change their relations with the prussia president on c. is russia as an integral part of european security and needs a better situation on the eastern side so he can deal with other world issues. yes so this is a priority for him and perhaps a tough nuclear stance is a stick that would allow him to extend a carrot to russia in other ways and i think that if you're in moscow this is

something you'd be looking for for a christina busying a senior fellow at the alliance for securing democracy thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. thank you. well the day is almost done but the conversation continues online you'll find us on twitter either out new so we can follow may not have a messy home for a fan from me on the entire team thanks for making a false positive you had a. clear

position on the international perspective such donald trump takes credit for the great american comeback speaking in the very room where congress held hearings to impeach him he declared america's union stronger than ever as election season

starts is he i'm stoppable to find out on to the point to point. b. w. . hijacking the news. more are going wrong the news is being hijacked turtle is what still has become a scripted reality show it's not just good vs evil us vs them white and one. in countries like russia china turkey people are told is that so and if you're a journalist here and you try to get beyond that you are facing scare tactics intimidation . and i wonder is that where we're headed as well. my responsibility as a journalist is to get beyond the smoke and mirrors it's not just about me prayer and balance or being neutral it's about being truly. funny was more in golf and i would you know.

i am. this is dude over the news wire from there in german politics shaken over a scandal involving the far right conservative and liberal parties under huge pressure off to breaking a decades long to brew against working with far right parties. also i'm going to marco keeps an eye on developments unfolding at home a she visits and go to fortune economic times. and also coming up there's growing

outrage over the death of the doctor who 1st sounded the alarm over the corona.