Transcripts For DW The Day 20240713

Thats. In the coronavirus is dramatically changing life in our country at this time and a concept of normality of public life and of social contact is being tested as never before millions if you cannot work cannot take your children to school kindergartens. Theseus sentiments and tools are closed. And perhaps most difficult to pull we cannot have the contacts to one another that we otherwise take for granted its natural that in a situation like this all of us have many questions and concerns about how things will continue. On 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 europes worst crisis since the 2nd world war tonight german chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the nation to describe 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 end here too 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 walk to help and no one knows if it will stay that way what we do know is that america 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 am 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. Even. 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. 100 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. 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 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 according to an allied these patients are 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 living yetta meant 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. Levy and work and yet through 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. Its 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 all adjust 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 your will to stick to the rules we have put in place for the forseeable future when we as a government will continually check which restrictions we can left but also which need to be kept in place of all who was formerly not who it is and that they will cut we are a democracy we dont 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 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. Of 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. It was a speech unlike any other that i go america has ever delivered lets take this story now to our chief Political Correspondent melinda crane good evening to you melinda 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 havent 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 us 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. Its 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 zol lot of people out in the parks and on the streets today and they were not socially distance to they were in groups they were playing soccer so theres still quite a ways to go and particularly again when you look at polls some young people between 20 and 29 say i dont know you know im im 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 are unfairly and 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 mainly Linear Television whether they will now get behind this i think remains to be seen and certainly that complete lockdown is an option in the government tool box if it appears that theyre not on board really weve 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 are going miracle brings to a crisis that demands this type of grubby talk that were see. Well yes frankly she has borrowed a book from the french president in my call 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 were 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 the Political Correspondent political you as always melinda thank you. Were 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 socalled corona bar and such a measure would essentially 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. Beardsleys here with me now its it appears not to be a taboo anymore here in germany but im going to ask you all the countries here in europe do you get the impression that they are recognizing the severity of this crisis deborah and i think they are i think the question is whether they can come up with stimulus packages that address those needs and thats what everyones racing to do right now we saw one trillion dollars just of course from a 3rd piece of legislation in the u. S. In europe youre asking what the e. U. Spain and italy for example if you look at their stimulus packages theyre trying to put money directly in the hands of individuals spain for example paying mortgage mortgage payments at least giving out vouchers for babysitting what theyre recognizing is that everyone is in a cash crunch thats 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 lacked that next payments they couldnt pay their employees and once employees werent paid and they couldnt make their payment and so shes the circular activity that keeps getting worse and worse depending on how long this lasts and that will be the big question thats what makes this thing so bad is that there is uncertainty we dont know if this is going to be a few months 4 months 6 months what you know that theres any example in history where we. On purpose basically turned off the Global Economy like what were trying to do now with all of this were talking about countries having to take on a lot more debt and we know you know the day after tomorrow thats going to be not good absolutely and its going to be an interesting question Going Forward to create that liquidity someone has to buy that debt and that means that theres going to have to be a lot more confidence in the system theres going to have to be Bank Regulators for example who allow banks to dig into their buffers theres 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 is going to have to be investors who take another look at debt saddled countries and say were not going to pull out yet there have to be guarantees that allowed a system to stand up its 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 dont 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 corona bonds or as you said euro bonds basically its been around forever this idea has theres going to have to get another look from germany in particular and thats going to be a massive question Going Forward germany obviously very very hesitant to put it even charitably any idea of financing other nations pending and so this is an unprecedented situation as youve said and will the question is will germany respond with unprecedented measures including perhaps settling some more yeah i mean we we cannot stress enough all the years youve covered this ive 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 ill 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 then of course you get. All the way out and you step out of the 30000 level the basic sort 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 cant fly between one country and the next thats being tested on another level though regardless of this being a virus a lot of companies have taken on too much debt there was little investments in some countries as were seeing in Health Care Systems thats all being exposed now Central Banks in particular we take a look at they used up all their weapons frankly in the recession not to say use them all up but they had really recovered Interest Rates werent 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 cant really go much further down than that so they were still recovering from the last recession what are they going to do this time theres a question thats 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 guaranteed basic guaranteed income in the making there is an amazing the republican president is the one whos having to new urgency measures. You know basically suggested by the democrats we should say and he accepted them but basically hes going to be the one whos 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 encouraged things through stimulus tax and things like that now the governments going to have to play a massive role just saves on these industries the Airline Industry will have more as its facing probably the biggest challenge ever boeing the air Aerospace Industry it asked for a 60000000000. 00 bailout today thats 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 Attendants with the 737 max problem now you can imagine if theres going to be. Domestic traffic so the flight crew the pilots were talking about massive layoffs g. M. Ford i believe that were talking 150000 workers in their plants alone from suspending production in europe yeah it is a crisis that you know we havent seen anything like it before thats for sure even if theres 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. Its one of the great features of our lives that we dont tend to impose those sorts of restrictions on people in this in this country but i have to tell you we will rue nothing 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 are the spores just theyre saying we will rule nothing else out and talk about that and more im joined now from london by durban mcdonald hes from the Campaign Just treatment which is demanding that access to medicine comes before drug Company Profits its 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 upon further steps that were taken and air this weekend and and initial steps were taken at the start of the previous week some of those steps we think need to go much further much faster we are to be concerned about the amount of testing thats happening and within the Health System at the moment in comparison to whats been done in other countries particularly testing being made available for Health Care Workers who really are the heroes of their standing incredible work were already hearing reports from doctors that i have you know some of the toughest days of their lives and theyre doing that often without the protective equipment that they need to keep themselves safe and so i think there definitely prudence 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 speed rossley with which people get tested and treated and care for but i think what we really are seeing in this is that 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 were 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 weve relied on the far product profit driven pharmaceutical system to deliver us vaccines and treatments for these kinds of identical on the other leaf failed us in this instance with that and i think thats lethal because people are exposed the mask it is is it is that the cancer in the you carry it where you 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 this isnt a better position than and sadly are our friends in the us is that the investment in and the National Health service and across europe in socialized Health Care Systems i think the u. S. Is to be exposed because youve got and it credibly dysfunctional across a driven and Health Care System that its very inequitable what in the u. K. Are not and have services been severely underfunded for many years now but despite we have got some protections around prices and access to medicines but really what were talking about in this instance is how quickly we can get vaccines in treatments and 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 couldnt attract funding from the pharmaceutical sector its taken 3 to make them ready for use more quickly and thats because they didnt see a profit in not and so were really playing catch up and and even if we get some of the problems in vaccines that are coming through right now with public funding support that theyre going to be to do that for many of the people that are going to lose their rights over the coming months and weeks there are weve got 30 seconds that to ask you but that these vaccines when the vaccine is finally developed do you think its going to be distributed to all the people who need it equitably and will it be distributed for free. I mean it didnt chance to question us as i question is that we simply do not know that much of the investment has been made but the Public Sector in these at the top of us has come with no Strings Attached were having over the keys to his investments and weve got no guarantees the companies will make them accessible or affordable so thats one of the 1st things that all of our government should be doing is in the end Drug Companies that are working with them to develop these vaccines guarantees that every person in the world needs to get the price that their countries or. With just Treatment Campaign good talking with you or unfortunately were out of time we appreciate your insights tonight. The days almost on the conversation continues online and dont forget no matter what happens between now and then tomorrow is another day well see that everybody. Europes schools are closing. In italy lessons have been taking place in the coalmine for several weeks now because the internet drastic measures an exceptionally challenging time for teachers and students can come much from students learned during this time of corona. Focus on europe. 90 minutes on d w. To. The global corona crisis and you can find more Information Online at e. W. Dot com and on t. W. Social media channels. Each step tells my story. Of the people who planned to me bill to me dedicated to. My not to dumb to campaign and to. Listen closely and i will tell you about those who built me up. On dont do slow me down. I am not too dumb to pass the. Months my 15 days for centuries on top of company my country through its finest our lives. Until the day i merely vanished from the big. Guy still not a done deal. A fool and. How does a virus spread. Why do we panic and when well all miss. Just 3 of the topics covered and a weekly radio show is called spectrum if you would like any information on the crawl of virus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you get your podcast you can also find us at. This is g w news wire from the berlin tonight in the un president of fight against the coronavirus german chancellor Angela Merkel calls for unprecedented solidarity. The situation is serious take it seriously since germany cation know that since the 2nd world war there has been no challenge to a nation that has demanded such a degree of common and united action the chancellor calling on everyone in germany to protect the most vulnerable including