discover the. subscribe. documentary on 2. around the world more than 7000 are dead and more than 190000 are infected with the coronavirus exponential growth meaning the numbers i just said are already out of date here in germany the top health authorities today raise the warning level from the pandemic to high and in the united states doctors say the country is at a tipping point if the public refuses to heed the warnings now it will only be a matter of time until hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed. and berlin this is the day.

we should be restricting our contact with other people to the extent that we can the less context we have with other people the restaurants we're going to become infected we have proposed solutions to enable people to go home now and allow the transport of goods that are needed across you know. we have to keep cross border transport of supplies flowing by making shared sacrifices in temporary changes we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy because i think our economy will come back very rapidly those industrial tests that they use on construction sites are perfectly acceptable for health care workers to be protected from the respiratory disease itself to be careful everybody into this in a sense out of caution so it's my opinion. also

coming up the state puts the german chancellor says this is no time to take a vacation and for those outside the country the government is earmarking 50000000 euros to bring them home the ministry of foreign affairs has agreed on a unique program with commercial airlines which will bring back german travelers from particularly affected areas in coordination with us the airlines will make flights available for the. well to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome but we begin the day looking at the coronavirus time line getting longer and longer people here in europe and north america are being told that this unprecedented shutdown of business could be worse than the great depression of the 1930 s. with restrictions on social activity possibly lasting through the summer u.s. president warning the emergency could last into september and french president emanuel mccrone telling his country we are now at war against the virus that as the

european union today shut its borders to all non e.u. citizens trying to cross measures never taken before and measures that resonate all over the world today india closed its iconic monument the taj mahal iran with the 3rd highest number of infections released 85000 prisoners in an effort to combat the viral spread and today the philippines became the 1st nation to shut down its stock exchange indefinitely germany is preparing for a major spike in new infections today plans were approved for the armed forces of the country to begin setting up a new hospital here in berlin to treat up to 1000 patients german chancellor angela merkel spoke earlier this evening after an emergency video conference with other e.u. leaders we discussed a number of different issues and some depth some say the 1st was that carla has has agreed with the proposal of the commission to prevent

those who are traveling to europe from countries that are not known to the union know it after region know it to the u.k. that we will never strict entry essentially a ban on entry into the e.u. with very few exceptions this will be put in place. by the e.u. for 30 days and germany will be implemented implementing this immediately it is the job of the german ministry of the interior and of foreign affairs to put this into place was the german chancellor speaking earlier this evening to talk about these and president is measures being taken i'm going out here to be tabled by our chief political correspondent linda crane milena really mean these are decisions that have never been made before on the list we've got this 30 day ban on most non you citizens traveling into the european union that's right this basically is the

european union trying to get out in front of a number of unilateral measures that e.u. countries have been taking to try to shut their own borders and those are borders also within the e.u. and those shutdowns are causing big problems within the passport free area known as the schengen area goods being stopped at the border truck drivers waiting hours and hours and hours on a parking places in big crowds in other words an infection risk as well now in order to try to get out in front of all of this the e.u. commission made a proposal to shut the external borders of the e.u. hoping that countries will then perhaps start to relax some of these internal border restrictions not only because of the economic effect but also because of the principle schengen is supposed to be a passport free borderless area it already was questioned in the migration crisis

if you remember in 2015 when countries also began trying to close some of those borders so that's what basically is happening here and it's very much at the instigation of french president mccaw who was concerned about these internal border shutdowns and has been pressing hard for the external border move it as a as a form of compensation but interestingly enough the chief of staff of the president of the e.u. . commission actually himself said you know where the closures really aren't going to be doing much for any of these countries because the fact is the virus is already here with in the european union and basically the effects are going to be large and on its way to the too late today we heard predictions here in europe and in the united states that this pandemic could easily morph into a global recession that could be worse than the great depression of the 1930 s. absolutely so apparently that was also a topic at this video conference of leaders this afternoon on tuesday afternoon

with some focus on what can be done there too the e.u. commission has made some proposals it wants to create a fund of $37000000000.00 euros that would be used to support health systems small and medium sized enterprises and also provide some support in labor markets to vulnerable workers beyond that osce so some talk apparently at this video conference today about relaxing some of the e.u. restrictions on state support for companies and government support for companies so that the governments can do more to try to keep them afloat and also budget deficits so all of this also very much up ending some key in new rules but it's a crisis and an attempt at least now by brussels to do some crisis management after having been largely sideline to till now. ok let's talk just about germany and its

place in the e.u. germany has a huge budget surplus right now and has often been criticized for its its fiscal policies which have ensured that it has this extra money you know but it's money for a rainy day and we've got the rainy day right is there is there a sense here in political berlin that see we told you so well there certainly i think that sense is there and i think there also is certainly a commitment in this country to provide fiscal stimulus as well and we've even seen for example the very conservative state of the various saying that it's going to do a great deal more than it normally would in trying to get at it that it was willing to depart from its own balanced budget rules the fact is germany does have some other systems in place that are part of its approach to capitalism namely systems like short work which ensure that workers even in the face of great reductions in

demand are kept on staff and their wages are topped up with government funding so that's also an effort to try to keep companies afloat and provide workers some protection and that's quite unique in the german system and worked very well during the financial crisis and we'll see how it works this time this time around to w.c. political correspondent linda greenland as always thank you thank you. where germany is not yet under a general lockdown but the government's appeals for people to stay home have left much of the country looking and feeling like a lockdown w.'s political correspondent so i mean young reports there's a curious come in the normally pulsating hearts have been laid on tuesday morning fewer people than usual were out in about in the german capital. foreign minister heiko must announce another unprecedented measure a travel warning for the entire planet he said no unnecessary trips should be made

in addition the government will provide $50000000.00 euros so german citizens currently abroad can come home. also i think i'm the ministry of foreign affairs has agreed on a unique program with commercial airlines which will bring back german travelers from particularly affected areas within the next few days and that's what we are talking above all about iraq oh the dominican republic the philippines egypt and the mall deaves in coordination with us airlines will make flights available for the. flu. on monday drastic steps were announced to beat the virus shutting many shops apart from essential businesses such as food stores and pharmacies. civic life is shutting down schools the actors and museums are being closed nationwide as even children's

playgrounds are deserted many parents are having to stay at home to look after their families the government is offering them extra support that's just fear fly endings in what we're seeing is that many families are wondering about money issues they want to know how to deal with a drop in income this is a huge concern it's not a private matter it needs to be resolved and the state has to help itself that if you're interested. politicians continue to search for the right responses to this rapidly evolving crisis. 20 here the big table now is steven beardsley from d.w. business a check to every american citizen $4000.00 right it sounds like something we've never seen before and maybe it isn't a check to every american it sounds very trump in riots it sounds like something that sort of opening and gets your attention and maybe that would be part of the plan here is to really sort of boost confidence to give people that money to pay some outstanding bills or to go and spend it while the economy is still open

remember that 2 thirds of the u.s. economy is based on consumption rather than sooner activity that means the travel industry the hotel industry the restaurant industry all the industries that are now being hit very very very hard direct help was actually a part of the last big recession package it was just often put into tax measures tax credits for example and it was put into. a payroll withholdings it was basically your withholdings were sort of decreased this is a lot of difference this would be an eye opener and it could hopefully join up a little bit of excitement or a little bit of help for people and i could imagine we'll get some criticism because a lot of people who don't need the money would be getting a check for a $1000.00 of course that is one claim you know in recent years a lot of it was that this sort of looks like the universal basic income brackets and like you've already are saying that but as we've seen even the u.b.i. actually has support on both conservative and liberal side so you might be surprised where some the support is coming from mitt romney the senator has been tied with this already saying look this is a good idea and then on the democratic side shared brown of ohio so there might be

more support than you expect ok so we're talking about $850000000000.00 here in this stimulus plan is that comparable to recession packages we've seen in the past you know we're definitely getting in that territory 153000000000 dollars measure by george bush to answer the recession when he was still in office about 780000000000 dollars from obama of course we're not quite at the auto bailouts of the industry bailout the airlines will get a portion of this money will be $50000000000.00 under the proposal is important to repeat it's just a proposal you know there is. is different than what's happening now that's all credit freeze up and then a lot of businesses were damaged which then brought demand down this demand is very down and artificially so almost because there are fears over the virus but there are also so many restrictive measures that are basically keeping people home and shuttering businesses it's something that really economies have never really seen and so they don't know how to respond to it and that's why you see this effort to really get as close as possible to the business and to the individual themselves

they want to get as close as possible to directly pay directly give that money to them because there's a few they might not have enough time otherwise if they try to out of the tax system through the banks that it may not help people are going to face bankruptcy because it's a good point we heard from some political leaders in the united states today warning that this could be worse than the great depression of the 1930 s. in all of this money going for measures to stop the virus or other people saying that actually the cure is going to be more expensive and worse than the actual virus it would be a cold calculus right because we're talking about lives here and so no one would really actually put it in that way but it's a good point to make when we try to understand how this will shift the economy and how this will shift livelihoods livelihoods will change personal fortunes will change industries will be reshuffled frankly because of this and so there will be a long term effect just as there was from the great recession 10 years ago so whether it's bigger or not will leave that to experts to save and look back but it's clear that everything is going to change because of this and that's the way to

peers right now and that uncertainty is really looming still stephen beardsley with the business stephen thank you very much helping us go through as we said unprecedented decisions being made today thank you. my next guest tonight says that pharmaceutical companies view code 19 as a once in a wife time business opportunity in his book ringback pharma greed lies and the poisoning of america gerald posner details how an entire industry betrayed the people it was intrusted to protect and heal on or is a new york times best selling author and an award winning journalist and he joins me tonight from miami florida joe pass' good to have you on the day with this corona virus pandemic that we are in right now. would you say that it is in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies for the crisis to get worse. no

i think you know exactly in line with what your previous guest said that would be a cold calculus that nobody's going to say that people the pharmaceutical companies the executives the scientists working in the labs they would like to be able to come up with a vaccine not just for the profit but because it serves everybody's purpose it's going to save this financial collapse it takes place it's going to save lives and they come to the rescue they look as though they're the superhero with the white cape on so there's a lot of reasons why they really want to do it many of them very good ones the researchers you say that of course they want to find a vaccine they want to find a cure but the system in which they're operating in the united states it is it's unique or it's different when you compare it to what it is here in europe when it comes to medicine and profits isnt it. no question about is about a fact you know i talk about this throughout the book that we the united states the only country in the world the pharmaceutical companies unfettered power to set their own prices in europe you have the good common sense in germany the u.k.

france spain is the other countries to negotiate to have set prices with them you know every drug that's accrued to automatically be available for everybody they have to show you that if they're charging exorbitant prices it's going to cost less to the health care system in the long term treatment of that person there's no such standard here so the majority of their profits have been made in the united states for the last 70 years they continue to do so and what's really particularly irritating is that for instance the national institutes of health which is the government sponsored health agency in the u.s. has spent 900 $1000000000.00 since the 1930 s. on public research the pharmaceutical companies of them taken patent and and had exclusive rights to it billions of dollars of profits that brings us right into the question of vaccines for code 19 because a lot of the money now is public research money that companies looking to come up with a vaccine maybe looking to put a patent on it eventually that could be a cause some consternation and their hats and there have to be bridges here pounds of connection between the research world and government what do you make then of

the experts who are advising the u.s. president on this pandemic. well he has an excellent medical team around this no question i know some of those individuals and i know that the group that they're in charge of the scientists the researchers and the doctors are a good group the question is how much he will listen to them and i'm not sure we'll have to find out as we go along he certainly is paying attention now and he's responding to it but i do see the other day for instance in the u.s. the 1st thing that congress did with the president was pass an $8300000000.00 emergency funding bill now everybody's focused on the end result which is that stuff the spread of the virus and that's the right focus that's absence of isolation let's worry about getting over lowering the death rate but i know the pharmacy lobbyists were out of the drug company and what they did in that is they took out 2 causes one would have made any of the research that they were involved with if they left the program then public research they wouldn't have had any

intellectual property rights to it they were able to get that excluded there was also another clause that would have given the government some real punitive damages to bring prices down case the eventual price of a vaccine was too expensive for 3rd world and developing countries that also got taken out could be negotiated in the future the problem is what is the goetia in the future there's more leverage for the pharmaceutical companies so it's interesting for me since i have a microscope on pharma yeah watches the law sort of you know the little things in these bills or the big flood of public money to make sure they're protected down the road i want you to take a listen to what health and human services secretary alex czar said on march 5th now he makes predictions on march 5th for the future that is now the president take a listen. they did our testing in the united states has been very has been very consistent if not even more aggressive than some really impacted countries so we are not korea korea is that a very active hot zone outbreak as is northern italy and so we have been ramping up

our testing and actually where we will stand in the next week to week and a half in terms of bail ability of testing will place us far ahead far far ahead of similarly impacted major countries around the world so we've actually been progressing with this on par with all of our peer countries in europe for instance similarly impacted so it's a job he says there that today the united states should be far ahead far far ahead of some really impacted major countries around the world is the united states there . absolutely not brand i wish it were so if those words were accurate it would be fantastic and it's misleading in the sense south korea a perfect example they learned a lesson from 2015 when the murders out took place a related sort of viral cousin to the current code. and when they had $38.00 deaths their economy almost went into recession they decided afterwards they were going to

do something about it they passed regulations that allowed them to have super fast testing when china reported the 1st cases of coronavirus they took a kit from the world health organization they did in south korea and they prepared 10 needed 10000 test a day they also passed some measures of intrusion into privacy that many of us in western europe in the united states would not accept they went into the cell phone records of those who were found to be positive for the virus and also to their credit card so they put online where those people had been in put their names where they'd been if they went to the cinema where they sat if they'd been to a restaurant so you would know as a non infected person whether back to might have a risk as a result they did a quarter 1000000 tests they kept their infection rate very low and their death rate is $29.00 compared italy 6 so south korea is the motto if you look at testing wow what a sight the price through. and you know you mentioned vaccines the 1st human trials for a coronavirus vaccine began yesterday in the united states and the u.s.

has your mark funding to expedite research into a back seat public money for public health you would think but does that guarantee that this vaccine will be free for everyone once it's ready. you know i found that after 5 years of working on the. pharmaceutical industry the one where that almost never comes into play is the word free it doesn't fit into almost any aspect of it they're always at least recovering cost and on top of cost they put some research development that it would take 16 economists to try to figure out how to put that in this thing is that we expect you know there's all this talk about the vaccine be ready in a year or 18 months which would be a landscape record i hope that that's the case but remember the viruses are tough sometimes to figure out we just need we need united states the f.d.a. our food and drug administration mastered 2900 the approval for the 1st time to a vaccine that was 46 years after bowl of 1st appeared the democratic republic of the congo that's how long it took to get what we still have

a vaccine after some 30 years for aids coming on every 40 years for a child be an ace so everybody's assuming they can immediately master the vaccine get the viruses spread as they have to throughout figure out the virus strain get right to market that's the best case scenario but i assure you that when it comes where there's a year and a half or 2 years from now the pharmaceutical company that's 1st in line will be looking to recruit a small profit as they describe it we've got about a minute left i just want to ask you you know you've talked to watts of people in the forms you took industry but you've also seen what's happening on capitol hill how do you explain the democrats allowing this stimulus package to be passed and there not to be any type of price restrictions i mean where is the risk the resistance or the public outcry here. i think that an election year changes the calculus a lot and so no party neither party wants to be in a position when november comes there for the presidential election when the other side could run ads that says this is the party that is the critical moment when the

country was facing a pandemic decided to vote against this it is packaged and put your health at risk because that south scab so everybody is gritting their teeth up there on both sides of the aisle and doing what they always do and congress and the presidency throw a lot of money at it and hope some are along the line fixes the problem we'll have to wait and see yeah well definitely have to wait and see that's true joe posner joining us tonight from miami jeff we appreciate your insights valuable stuff tonight thank you thank you frank. well today irish people all over the world celebrate st patrick's day on march 17th but this year the traditional parades have been called off because of the coronavirus snow that has not dampened the mood in ireland communities and families have been marking the occasion with social distancing moves being respected thank you very much with the luck of the irish and some creativity virtual parades have popped up all over the country online for everyone to see a nation keeping its system from each other but still coming together happy st

patrick's day everybody. you know fun. fun fun fun fun. you. know. it's. the fee. the only thing. i could you know are you ready to get it and we wonder are they kissed the blarney stone or is that bad for the outbreak we don't know when the day is always done the conversation continues online you find us on twitter news or you can follow me of brett goff t.v. don't forget to use the hash tag today to remember whatever happens between now and

then tomorrow is another day we'll see that everybody states they stay healthy.

quarantine diary. journalist sebastian documents daily life in beijing where protective measures grow tunder every day. the state controls and monitors with a heavy. but there is resistance. which i'm really being comes up. 30. w.

the feeds hard work done by. saving the o.-ring around the dominican republic. the sensitive ecosystem is under threat from the tourism the mining pollution. the money conservation project aims to save the delicate coral because the reefs are an important hour to. handle 3000 and. 90 minutes to t.w. . we're all set. to go beyond. that. we're all about the stories that matter to. us through this book whatever it takes. are running down the to explain a little nugget d.w. made for mines

ringback. frank food. international gateway to the best connection self in road and rail. located in the heart of europe you are connected to the whole world. experience outstanding shopping and dining offers and try our services. biala gassed at frankfurt airport city managed by from a bought. this

is g.w. news live from berlin tonight the european union takes down the well. inside it imposes a 30 day entry ban for non e.u. citizens german chancellor angela merkel says european leaders agreed to the move in a video conference steps have been taken she says to assure the smooth transport however of goods and cargo within europe. also coming up bringing them home and a huge airlift begins for german tourists stranded abroad by coronavirus restrictions will have an exclusive interview.