which pandemic possibility will it be in what was perhaps her most important address to the nation german chancellor angela merkel has warned that the threat of the coronavirus outbreak is the greatest since the 2nd world war and appeal to everyone to do what is required of everyone and to do it now before time and lives begin slipping away i'm bored golf in berlin this is the day. that's one of the it was in that thought that that's the coronavirus is dramatically change in life in our country at this time and the concept of normality of public life and of social contact is being tested as never before millions of you cannot work cannot take your children to school kindergartens. minutes and still is a closed. and perhaps most difficult of all we cannot have the contacts to one

another that we otherwise take for granted it's natural that in a situation like this all of us have many questions and concerns about how things will continue. to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome we begin the day with the coronavirus pandemic germany and europe's worst crisis since the 2nd world war tonight german chancellor angela merkel addressed the nation and described the corona virus outbreak as a challenge to the country and continent the whites of which have not been seen since 1945 the number of new infections continues to increase exponentially health officials say if the public does not adhere to strict social distancing up to $10000000.00 people in germany alone could catch the virus unlike france and spain germany is not in a total walked out and no one knows if it will stay that way what we do know is

that merkel and has been chancellor for 15 years tonight was the 1st time that she delivered a message to the country in a prime time televised speech a decision reflecting the gravity of the moment and the why for death stakes involved in every decision we now make. i'm addressing you today in this unusual manner because i want to tell you what is guiding me as chancellor and all of my colleagues in the government at this time that is part of an open democracy that we explain our political decisions and make them transparent that we do all we can to justify and communicate her actions so that they are understandable. good community and i truly believe that we will succeed in the task before us so long as all the citizens of this country understand that it is also their task. easier.

so let me say this the situation is serious take it seriously since german unification know since the 2nd world war there has been no challenge to our nation that has demanded such a degree of common and united action. dollars hundreds and called i would like to explain to you where we currently stand in this epidemic what the government and federal agencies are doing to protect everyone in our society and to limit the economic social and cultural damage. and who are out of there but i also want to tell you why we also need your contribution and what each and every person can do to help it's an adult's abiathar. as far as the epidemic itself is concerned and everything i say in this regard comes from the constant consultations between the government and the experts at the robert cock institute as well as other scientists and for all just i can tell you that research is being conducted

intensively across the globe but as yet there is no cure for the corona virus and no vaccine against it at this new are so long as that is the case there is only one course to take. and it is that which is guiding all our actions to slow down the spread of the virus to stretch it over a period of months and serve to win time in stop and think and time in which for such as can develop medication and a vaccine but above all time that enables us to provide the best possible care for those who do fall ill. that germany has an excellent health system perhaps one of the best in the world we can take some confidence from that but our hospital stay would be completely overstretched if too many patients with a severe corona infection were to be admitted in a short space of time to an allied these patients and not just abstract statistics they are fathers and grandfathers mothers and grandmothers partners people and

apart and we are a community in which every life and every person counts in the years the men still see it as it is so our job here is to slow down the path of the virus throughout germany and the one thing we have to do and this is of existential importance is winds down public life as far as possible. of course with a sense of reason and proportion because the state will continue to function supply lines will of course continue to be guaranteed and we want to maintain as much economic activity as we possibly can. but everything that might endanger people everything that might damage either individuals or the community must now be limited. they would see and we must reduce the risk of one person and factoring another as much as we can go back and review and work and yet to d.m.

now to the most pressing issue for me today all the steps taken by the government would be to no avail if we want to implement the most effective measure against stopping the virus from spreading too quickly and that is we ourselves everyone can be affected by the virus we are all the same in that regard and that is why everyone must now help and the 1st thing we all need to do is to take what is happening very seriously not to be panicked but also not to think for a single moment of what each and every one of us does is not important we need everyone everybody counts this requires our collective effort that is what an epidemic shows us how vulnerable we all are how dependent we all are on others showing consideration for us but also how we can protect and support each other through our collective actions. it's down to each and every one of us we are not

doomed to helplessly watch the spread of a virus we have a means to fight it we must practice social distancing out of consideration from one another. up stand the advice from her ologists is clear no more handshakes thora and frequent hand washing keeping a distance of at least one and a half meters from each other and preferably only very limited contact with older people because they are particularly at risk. i appeal to you will to stick to the rules we have put in place for the foreseeable future one that we as a government will continually check which restrictions we can left but also which need to be kept in place of all possible movements not mathias and they will cut we are a democracy we don't live by force but through shared knowledge and cooperation this is an historic challenge and it can only be overcome together and we shall overcome

it of that i am completely sure. but how high will the number of victims be how many loved ones will we lose to a large degree we have control over that. we can all now act together and with determination and then we can accept the current restrictions and support one another. biased this situation is serious and how things develop remains open that it will very much depend not entirely but to a degree on how disciplined we all are when it comes to following and implementing the rules. oh even though we have never experienced anything like this before we must show that we can act with common sense and with our hearts and in doing so save lives without exception it depends on every one of us and therefore on all of

us take care of yourselves and your loved ones thank you stuck in one of the speech unlike any other that i go america has ever delivered let's take the story now to our chief political correspondent melinda crane good evening to you well and the chancellor there saying that germany is now facing its worst crisis since the 2nd world war. yes strong language given the fact that this is a country that was at the very heart of the cold war and has certainly experienced other crises as well but if you look at the sheer numbers that germany could be facing she is not wrong this is a life and death threat and the experts are talking about as many as 10000000 germans possibly being infected so her urgency here and the truly

personal nature of this appeal as you say this is this is historic we haven't seen the chancellor use this kind of language really at all in my experience in her long time in power she tends to be very understated and certainly her delivery was that here that her message was anything but and and i think that tells us what kind of urgency this government sees coming coming out of this and she did not a total loss for the country at least not for now but we know that the government continues to examine what measures are still needed do you think that everyone in the country will heed this you did volumes in the warnings from the chancellor and the government. it's very difficult to say many of them are being heated and if you look at the polls 80 percent of germans say they think that drastic measures are necessary they support them officially schools are closed many cafes bars and

restaurants are either closed or mostly empty big events have been cancelled you see a lot of people now staying home from work doing home office and so on on the other hand beautiful spring weather here in berlin lot of people out in the parks and on the streets today and they were not socially distanced they were in groups they were playing soccer so there's still quite a ways to go and particularly again when you look at polls some young people between 20 and 29 say i don't know you know i'm i'm not taking that all this seriously and they are known to have been going to clubs and bars despite a very clear prohibition against doing so police here and brylin have had to shut some clubs down whether they will heed this message which is delivered in a very old fashioned manner on a medium that many young people scarcely use namely a linear television whether they will now get behind this i think remains to be

seen and certainly that complete lockdown is an option the government tool box if it appears that they're not on board and we've got about a minute left i want to ask you about the role of america here when you look around at all of the leaders in europe. can you identify another leader outside of germany. who could bring the grubby jobs that angle americal brings to a crisis that demands this type of grubby talk that we're seeing. well yes frankly she has borrowed a book from the french president in man when he gave a very similar speech some days ago in which he said that this threat is visible and insidious and is amongst us and referred to a war against corona so i think undoubtedly she will have seen that speech and also drawn her own conclusions about perhaps even including this kind of path

us that we're not accustomed to hearing from her but certainly these are times that call for these kind of messages and i think that some people around the world may envy the french or the germans for having a leader who is capable of delivering this kind of message to w.g. political correspondent bill a degree as always melinda thank you. we're germany is just one of several european countries struggling to contain the outbreak all of which is adding to fears about the health of the eurozone economy with many businesses facing potential ruid some countries most notably debt ridden italy have been calling for the creation of a so-called corona bar and such a measure would centrally allow individual countries to borrow money with the debt responsibility being pooled among member states. the notion

of the euro bond there has been taboo for a long time here in germany. beardsley's here with me now it's it appears not to be a taboo anymore here in germany but i'm going to ask you all the countries here in europe do you get the impression that they are recognizing the severity of this crisis they have and i think they are i think the question is whether they can come up with stimulus packages that address those needs and that's what everyone's raising to do right now is a one trillion dollars just of course from a 3rd piece of legislation in the u.s. in europe you're asking what the e.u. spain and italy for example if you look at their stimulus packages they're trying to put money directly in the hands of individuals spain for example paying mortgage big mortgage payments italy giving out for babysitting what they're recognizing is that everyone is in a cash crunch that's once economic activity has basically been paused whether through the lack of demand because of the virus outbreak or because of the measures

put in place to deal with that outbreak to try and control it and that left a lot of people high and tight frankly once businesses lack that next payments they couldn't pay their employees and once employees weren't paid and they couldn't make their payment and so she's the circular activity that keeps getting worse and worse depending on how long this lasts and that will be the big question that's what makes this thing so bad is that there is uncertainty we don't know if this is going to be a few months 4 months 6 months what you know that's true i don't think there's any example in history. where we on purpose basically turned off the global economy like what we're trying to do now with all of this we're talking about countries having to take on a lot more debt and we know you know the day after tomorrow that's going to be not good absolutely and it's going to be an interesting question going forward to create that liquidity someone has to buy that debt and that means that there's going to have to be a lot more confidence in the system there's going to have to be bank regulators for example who allow banks to dig into their buffers there's going to have to be. the

e.c.b. the central banks are going to have to be able to buy up some of that debt there's going to have be investors who take another look at debt saddled countries and say we're not going to pull out yet there have to be guarantees that allow that system to stand up it's going be a big question people want the debt of countries like germany and the u.s. we know that if you look at italy people generally don't want that debt and so as you see the bond yields separate from italian bonds and german bonds that question is rising about how do we keep that system propped up carona bonds or as you said euro bonds basically it's been around forever this idea has there's going to have to get another look from germany in particular and that's going to be a massive question going forward germany obviously very very hesitant to put it even charitably any idea of financing other nations spending and so this is an unprecedented situation as you've said in washington will the question is will germany respond with unprecedented measures including perhaps settling some more debt yeah i mean we we cannot stress enough all the years you've covered this i've

covered this the german government has never been willing to even entertain the notion of euro bonds and now the chancellor at least saying you know i'll consider everything we say that the global economies around the world that they were not prepared for this crisis did they not see it coming for sure i mean as you and i both know their basic questions about how workplaces are set up to incentivize hygiene and their. course you get all the way out and you step out of the 30000 level the basic set of the global economy is based on the interconnectivity of supply chains between multiple countries what happens when those supply chains are broken what happens when people can't fly between one country and the next that's being tested on another level though regardless of this being a virus a lot of companies that taken on too much debt there was little investments in some countries as we're seeing in health care systems that's all being exposed now central banks in particular we take a look at they used up all their weapons frankly in the recession because they used

them all up but they hadn't really recovered interest rates weren't back up enough for them to really be able to cut them that low enough to goose the economy like they wanted to now there is a question of whether they could really goose the economy by cutting but the e.u. the e.u. central bank the european central bank it was already a negative interest rates you can't really go much further down than that so they were still recovering from the last recession what are they going to do this time is a question that's a big question we we talked a little bit about this yesterday what industries will most likely be reshaped by this and the united states will need to give a $1000.00 to everyone it sounds like a gary t. to a basic guaranteed income in the making there isn't it amazing that a republican president is the one who's having to invoke new urgency measures. you know basically suggested by the democrats we should say and he accepted them but basically he's going to be the one who's going to put in unimaginable measures to try and right this economy and this is someone who really want to be hands off and even really sort of encourage things through stimulus tax and things like that now

the government's going to have to play a massive role just saves on these industries the airline industry will of course it's facing probably the biggest challenge ever boeing the air aerospace industry it asked for a $60000000000.00 bailout today that's massive consider the $737.00 max it was happening already a friend of mine is a flight attendant or southwest airlines in the u.s. and she told me that things were already bad getting flights getting on flights as a flight attendant's with the 737 max problem now you can imagine if there. going to be hauled in domestic traffic so the flight crews the pilots we're talking about massive layoffs g.m. ford i believe that was $150000.00 workers in their plants alone from suspending production in europe yeah it is a crisis that you know we haven't seen anything like it before that's for sure even if there's always stephen thank you very much. where u.k. prime minister boris johnson now says that schools will close in britain on friday of this week in an attempt to stem the spread of the corona virus the death toll in

the united kingdom has topped 100 and johnson says the tougher measures tougher measures may be necessary we live in a land of liberty is you know and. it's one of the great features of our lives that we don't tend to impose those sorts of restrictions on people in this in this country but i have to tell you we will rule nothing out and we will certainly wish to consider bringing food and foster measures where that is necessary to suppress the peak of the epidemic to protect and a chance to minimize casualties and to minimize suffering that is that is our objective or the spores just they're saying we will rule nothing else out and talk about that and more i'm joined now from london by durban mcdonald he's from the campaign just treatment which is demanding that access to medicine comes before drug company profits it's good to have you on the day let me add start off by

asking you what is not being done in the u.k. that needs to be done right now to address this crisis. yeah as you can egg gap from your previous guest the scale of this crisis is really unprecedented and i think the u.k. it could be argued it was going to respond in some of the steps that it decided to take. we certainly are seeing a step up in the response today and we see that building on further steps that were taken and aired this weekend and and initial steps were taken at the start of the previous week now some of those steps we think need to go much further much faster we are to be concerned about the amount of testing that's happening and within the u.k. health system at the moment in comparison to what's been done in other countries particularly testing being made available for health care workers who really are the heroes of this they're doing incredible work we're already hearing reports from

doctors that i have you know some of the toughest days of their lives and they're doing that often without the protective equipment that they need to keep themselves safe and so i think they're definitely prudent that are going to be needed to be made in the care response to improve the care that health workers are given the support that they get and they speed regressively with which people get tested and treated and cared for but i think what we really are seeing and this is many of the foundations for this crisis were in a long time before the virus 1st jumped from the animal to human in i think many of the problems we're seeing are really the virus exposing some of the fundamental weaknesses in our healthcare systems and in our economies and i would say very clearly we've relied upon the far from prostitution pharmaceutical system to deliver us vaccines and treatments for these kinds of and then it's on the other

really failed us in this instance with that and i think that sleeper picks even exposed the mask of this is is that the cancer in the u.k. where you are. are as much as it is in the united states for example or continental europe you know we always hear that in europe the the patient the consumer has a lot more price protection compared to what people in the united states are facing . yes absolutely i think you know one of the things that maybe poses in a better position than and sadly are our friends in the us is that the investment and the and the national health service and across europe in socialized health care systems i think the u.s. is to be exposed because you've got it credibly dysfunctional prosector of them and health care system that it's very inequitable but in the u.k. our national have services been severely underfunded for many years now but despite what we have got some protections around prices and access to medicines but really

what we're talking about in this instance is how quickly we can get vaccines and treatments at ready to go and to respond to this epidemic and what we know is that many years ago 'd there were promising vaccines which were developed with taxpayer funds and which sounded shelf because they could attract funding from the pharmaceutical sector it's taken 3 to make them ready for use more quickly now that and that's because they didn't see a profit in not and so we're really playing catch up and and even if we get some of the problems in boxes that are coming through right now with public funding support that they're going to be to do that for many of the people that are going to lose their rights over the coming months weeks there are we've got 30 seconds that to ask you but these vaccines when the vaccine is finally developed do you think it's going to be distributed to all the people who need it equitably and will it be distributed for free. i mean it didn't try to question us as i question is that we simply do not know that much of the investment has been made public sector nice

added of us has come with no strings attached we're having over the keys to investments and we've got no guarantees that the companies will make it accessible or affordable so that's one of the 1st things that all of our government should be doing a case in and drug companies that are working with them to develop these vaccines guarantees that every person in the world that needs to get there but the price that their companies or. with just treatment campaign it's good talking with you or unfortunately we're out of time we appreciate your insights tonight. the days almost on the conversation continues online and don't forget no matter what happens between now and then tomorrow is another day we'll see that everybody.

comes. to the complex right promises to respect the will nigeria's government sponsored by the international community of serious human rights abuses i guess this week here in london is climate how much the country's information minister how does he defend against the country's many critics when the evidence of wrongdoing is so compelling .

current or soon the final months of 1945 nazi germany and 30 candidates military strength in the morning is raging on all sides but defeat is inevitable blind fascism continues to annihilate countless lives as a final contingent of people children our sense of the franks. the 5 minutes on d. w. . 4 form. or. staying up to date don't miss our highlights w. program online w. dot com highlights.

i think there's been a lot of. listeners in addition when it comes to feel depressed we do an extremely very well you ranked 120th out of 180 countries some of glorious record is that list of things that a lot of things neurons and a lot of fun this chief miller something has to be that you're covering up damaging evidence.