THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
the coronavirus outbreak
BY LOVEDAY MORRIS,
LUISA BECK
AND RICK NOACKberlin — In a rare televised
message, something previously
reserved for her New Year speech-
es, German Chancellor Angela
Merkel on Wednesday impressed
upon the country’s 87 million
people that they face their gravest
crisis since World War II.
She said she was addressing
the people in this “unusual for-
mat” — for the first time during
her 14 years at the helm — to
share the details of what is guid-
ing her as chancellor.
“It is serious,” she said. “Take it
seriously.”
Merkel’s remarks were an indi-
cation that the weight of the
pandemic was being felt in Ber-
lin, after what some criticized as a
slow and haphazard German re-
sponse, lacking in central leader-
ship.
Merkel initially played an al-
most invisible role. It was not
until after Germany’s biggest t ab-
loid, Bild, questioned her absence
— with the front page headline
“No appearance, no speech, no
leadership in the crisis” — that
Merkel made her first public
comments on March 11.
Germany’s efforts have been
hampered by the logistics of hav-
ing to coordinate among the
16 health ministers and state
premiers across the country, who
ultimately bear responsibility for
enacting — or not, as the case has
been on occasion — central rec-
ommendations from the Robert
Koch Institute, the federal agency
responsible for infectious disease
control.
Underscoring the lack of coor-
dination, Gerald Gaß, president
of the German Association of
Hospitals, said he had been sur-
prised by the Berlin state govern-
ment’s announcement on Tues-
day that it would build a new
hospital with capacity for 1,
patients.
The confusion over responsi-
bility and coordination at a time
of such urgency has thrown open
a debate over the very structure
of Germany’s federal system —
which traces its roots back to the
Holy Roman Empire, but was also
engineered to have weak central
power in the wake of Nazi rule.
The Rheinische Post newspa-
per described the flaws in the
country’s coronavirus response
as a “German tragedy.” T he politi-
cal magazine Cicero commented:
“Federalism can be deadly.”
“This really is a stress test for
our federal system,” said Alexan-
der Kekulé, who heads the insti-
tute of medical microbiology at
the University of Halle.
He said that while Germany’s
problems may have parallels in
the United States, where each
state has been making its own
determinations, the Robert Koch
Institute lacks the powers of the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. He noted, for
example, that one university clin-
ic in Aachen said it couldn’t stick
to 14-day quarantine rules for
asymptomatic people exposed to
the virus, as it would impact
staffing levels.
In recent days, German states
have sought to act with more
coordination, issuing a set of
guidelines for countrywide clo-
sures.
The measures — which includ-
ed the shuttering of bars, night-
clubs and nonessential shops, as
well as restrictions on restaurant
hours — have come alongside
grim predictions from German
virologists.
Germany’s confirmed cases
jumped by more than more than
1,000 overnight Tuesday, to a
total of 8,198, according to the
Robert Koch Institute, which
warned that infections were
growing at an exponential rate.
The institute upgraded its assess-
ment of the risk level for Germa-
ny from “moderate” to “severe.”
If effective measures aren’t
taken, researchers warned,
10 million Germans could be
infected in the next three months.
Still, some state governments
have resisted the supposedly
agreed-upon guidelines.
The local premier of Thuringia
said he wouldn’t be closing play-
grounds for now, though some
areas shut theirs anyway. The
southwestern German town of
Schramberg also kept play-
grounds open on Tuesday. The
local newspaper, Schwarzwälder
Bote, quoted the mayor as saying
it was not the federal governmentbut rather the regional minister-
president of Baden-Württemberg
who was in charge.
“We have the different states
with their different bodies, and
each state has different solu-
tions,” said Martin Scherer, vice
president of the German College
of General Practitioners and
Family Physicians. “It’s quite dif-
ficult to find a common line, but
we do all that we can.”
He said that for “some weeks”
the coordination of central play-
ers had been slow. But all
16 health ministers have begun
participating in a teleconference
call each day in an attempt to
coordinate the response.
There are some who argue that
Germany’s decentralized system
has advantages in a national
emergency. Monika Bachmann,
the health minister of the west-
ern state of Saarland, said it has
allowed each state to address
their individual needs.
“We face special challenges be-
cause this is a high-risk area,” she
said. “That’s why we’re in need of
unique measures.”
It has also helped with rolling
out testing, said Christian Dros-
ten, the director of the Institute
for Virology at Berlin’s Charite
hospital, allowing Germany to
track infections more quickly.
“This gave us an extreme ad-
vantage in recognizing the epi-
demic in Germany,” he told re-
porters.
Despite a surge in confirmed
cases, Germany as of Wednesday
had officially recorded 12 deaths
linked to the coronavirus, a rela-
tively low rate of fatalities that
health authorities said they were
looking into further.
But officials agree that figure
will no doubt rise. Merkel called
on all Germans to play their part
to limit the damage.
“I’m absolutely sure we will
overcome this crisis,” she said in
her speech. “But how many casu-
alties will there be? How many
loved ones will we lose?”
To a large extent, it is in “our
hands,” Merkel added.
“These are not simply abstract
numbers in statistics, but that is a
father or grandfather, a mother
or grandmother, a partner,” she
said. “A nd we are a community in
which every life and every person
counts.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Merkel makes a rare televised speech
German chancellor says
the pandemic presents
gravest crisis since WWIIGluck grimaced and pointed to
his cellphone. “A ll day, all day, I
was getting calls from people
who were being sacked.”David L. Stern, Kyiv
In Kyiv, restaurants, gyms,
shopping malls, clubs and other
public venues have been shut-
tered and the metro closed.
My wife, Yana, and I are prac-
ticing social distancing as thegovernment “recommends.” Both
of us are working from home and
venture out only as needed. From
our window, we see pedestrians
on the street and strollers in the
park across the street, but the
number of people is definitely
diminished.
So far, there isn’t a complete
lockdown. But many anticipate
that it is just a matter of time. It’s
widely feared that Ukraine’shealth-care system is woefully
unprepared for even a medium
surge in cases. The best we can
hope for is to minimize the im-
pact. But in telephone calls, social
media postings and rushed con-
versations on the street, there’s a
palpable anxiety that this will fall
short.
We’ll make a food run a little
later. We’re taking turns prepar-
ing meals. To night she’ll make
chicken soup. Last night was my
turn — calamari risotto. (The
calamari was bought frozen, be-
fore all this began.)Diana Hubbell, Berlin
“Hamsterkäufer,” a man in the
drugstore store muttered, shak-BY BRIAN MURPHYThere are different ways to
measure the global war against
the coronavirus pandemic.
One is stepping back to view
the massive retrenching of bor-
der closings, cities on lockdown
and every other major disruption
in a nervous world. Another way
is through individual lives and
the daily observations just out-
side their doorsteps or right be-
low their windows.
These snapshots — postcards
from a moment in time during
the coronavirus outbreak — are
fleeting by nature. But they are
strands for the countless stories
that will be told and retold for
years among family and friends
on what happened during the
virus.
The Washington Post asked
contributors in Europe, now the
center of the pandemic, to offer
their postcards.
Christine Spolar, London
Cafe Kick is the sort of London
sports bar ready to pull pints at
8 a.m. or pour shots through
midnight for its foosball-playing
crowd. This week, you could have
rolled a bowling ball down its
empty floorboards. Owner Ga-
reth Kerr usually counts on serv-
ing up to 50 lunches a day. On
Monday, he sold three.
In my neighborhood in central
London, the local wine bar is
running low on cash. Down the
street, the oldest Italian deli/piz-
zeria in the city decided to order
100 cases of dry pasta Monday for
customers who are too fearful to
eat in a crowd.
“I’ve sold more pasta like that
in five days than I have in a
month,” said Felice Sula, the co-
owner of Te rroni of Clerkenwell,
one of the last vestiges of Lon-
don’s Little Italy. “I might have to
cut back on the dinner hours, but
I want to stay open. This place is
part of the community.”
Quality Wines is an indepen-
dent wine bar usually teeming
with customers at dusk. Tuesday
at 6 p.m., manager Gus Gluck was
pulling chairs up on the bar and
mopping the floor. For now, Qual-
ity Wines will rely on retail wine
sales and takeaway orders.
ing his head. We were both star-
ing at the vacant shelves where
the toilet paper had been. Literal-
ly translated as “hamster buyers,”
the German slang for “hoarders”
ranks right up there with Kum-
merspeck (“grief bacon,” or the
fat put on after a breakup) as one
of the better words this oddly
specific language has produced.
Last w eekend, it was the word I
kept overhearing as I raced
around Kreuzberg before the
shops closed.
While Berliners cleared the
supermarkets of flour, yeast and
every conceivable shape of pasta,
I found myself impulse-purchas-
ing with erratic abandon — a
venison salami from my butcher,
sumac and a pound of olives from
my Turkish grocer, a rare bottle of
maple syrup from the fancy Bio-
Markt.
As I looked around a small
kitchen supply shop, the French
cashier received the news that
her store would shut down until
Easter, at least.
She told me it was the right
thing, that she’d been on the
phone with her family in Paris
and her friend in Milan and only
hoped we could stop it in time.
Still, with her husband’s bar
closed, she didn’t know what she
would do if the business folded. I
said I was sorry — what else was
there to say? — and bought more
things I didn’t need.Pamela Rolfe, Madrid
After stocking the house with
food and supplies for the lock-
down and given I don’t have a pet
to walk, allowing me the luxury of
a quick foray outdoors, picking
up my daughter at the airport
was the big adventure for the
week.
The decision to bring her home
to Madrid after her U.S. universi-
ty s hifted all classes online for the
rest of the semester seemed like a
race against time before Spain
closed the borders. Border cross-
ing by land has stopped and the
government is urging Spaniards
abroad to hurry home.
Driving to Adolfo Suarez Ma-
drid-Barajas Airport along Ma-
drid’s main highways was weird.
All the electronic billboards ad-
monished me to “Stay at Home.”In the half-hour drive, I passed
four cars and wondered where
they were going. The empty park-
ing lot at the airport was an eerie
reminder that life is on pause in
Madrid. Only long-term cars
were scattered in the internation-
al parking lot, while the string of
eight vehicles waiting for travel-
ers to emerge from baggage claim
respected social distancing and
left unusually wide spaces be-
tween them, with drivers not
leaving their seat.
Rebeca collects her bag and
shows up. We scurry home quick-
ly. Not only are we relieved she is
back in the nest, but we’re glad
we weren’t stopped by the police
and forced to justify why we
ventured outdoors or receive a
hefty fine.Dariusz Kalan, Warsaw
Tuesday morning, I bumped
into my n eighbor, an elderly man.
I volunteered to shop for him.
He thanked and added reso-
lutely: “Everything will be fine.
We survived the Germans, the
Russians and Jaruzelski.” He re-
ferred to destruction of Warsaw
in World War II and the martial
law introduced in the early 1980s
by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, de
facto dictator of communist Po-
land.
Ye t I couldn’t help thinking
that this city, always standing up
to danger, has never faced that
kind of enemy: invisible, impos-
ing patience and self-discipline
rather than the ability to take
risks.
For many fellow citizens who
work a 9 to 5 job, it’s becoming
frustrating to stay h ome all day —
with no one to talk to or, on the
contrary, with too many of the
same faces hanging around.
Early in the morning, I see
Górczewska Street, connecting
my district Wola with the city
center, eerily empty. Small shops
display signs specifying the maxi-
mum allowed inside — one at a
grocery store where I buy cheese
and meat, and two at my favorite
bakery, Galeria Wypieków. Those
who form lines outside stay calm-
ly at least one meter apart.
I wonder how long this calm
can last.
[email protected]Postcards from Europe: Snapshots of life in nervous world
HENRY NICHOLLS/REUTERSCOURTESY OF OLIVIER LAURENTABOVE: A man sits alone
outside a pub on Carnaby
Street in London on
Tuesday. LEFT: A postcard
from London, where
restaurants and bars are
less crowded or closing as a
result of the response to the
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