Merkel’s Moment Arrives as Virus Tests Leaders’ Grasp of Facts
- Chancellor’s matter-of-fact approach helps reassure Germans
- Merkel ‘almost acting like a doctor’ to anxious public
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When Angela Merkel says it’s serious, Germans know by now that she means it.
Merkel’s speech on the unparalleled threat posed by the coronavirus was the first crisis address to the nation of her more than 14 years in office. How the German public responds to her plea for solidarity will likely determine history’s view of her chancellorship.