Restarting Europe’s engine: Germany’s lockdown lightens

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. For nearly two weeks, Saudi Arabia has observed a ceasefire in Yemen, suspending its side in a long and messy war. It was supposed to be a compassionate measure as COVID 19 threatened an already broken country. In truth, there's more to it than that. And the theme of vengeance has been a driving force in art since the Greeks, particularly in times of social upheaval. Now there's a resurgence featuring lots of female vigilantes righting the wrongs of sexual abuse and domestic violence. But first, Europe's largest economy has begun tentative steps towards reopening. From today, smaller non essential stores in Germany will begin trading again. Schools will restart early next month. Germany has recorded a similar number of cases to some of the hardest hit countries in Europe, but has had many fewer deaths. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a former scientist, has been widely praised for clearly communicating details of epidemiology as she's laid out her policies. But another reason for Germany's numbers so far, as with other countries that have largely escaped dramatic scenes and high death tolls, is its focus on testing.

Germany has tested extremely widely.

Tom Nuttall is our Berlin bureau chief.

It's actually quite hard to get very reliable data on this, but it looks like. And Germany is testing about 100,000 people a day. That's the target, for example, that Britain is aiming at, rather controversially, for the end of this month. Germany's been there for a while. There has been a bit more contract tracing here in the early stages of the crisis, so that people who were found to have been infected with COVID 19 could have their contacts traced, put in quarantine. Obviously, that slows the spread somewhat. The widespread testing helps explain the low death rate, but in a way, it's a sort of statistical artifact. You catch a larger number of mild or asymptomatic cases, you raise the denominator, and therefore it looks like you have a very low death rate. But actually, Germany is probably just identifying more of the people who have it compared to other countries. On the political side, Germany is a federal country with a lot of responsibilities devolved to the Bundeslender. The 16 federal states. Healthcare is extremely decentralized here. You have a very wide network of laboratories, which helps explain why they were able to ramp up the testing so much. And implementation of the various restrictive measures that have been put in place has been left in the hands of the 16 states. That has been a fractious process at times, because, as you would expect, these politicians do not always agree with each other on what should be open, what should be closed, how fast, how slow things should go. But what it does mean is that when they are able to find agreement, it means that, A, you have national concord, and B, you have the ability to implement these things properly because responsibility and accountability lies at a local level rather than at a national one. Some people in Germany point to France, which is a much more centralized country where edicts are simply issued from President Macron in the Elysee palace and draw a favorable comparison for Germany, where things, the argument goes, have been able to be implemented a little bit more efficiently.

And so what's your view about the exit strategy that the German authorities are carrying out now? Do you think this is about the right time, about the right pace?

Yeah, it's interesting. Last week when they announced that they were going to reopen some of these shops, there was the start of the reopening of some schools. They were the first real murmurs of discontent from some quarters. So, for example, it seems like in the discussion between Angela Merkel and the 16 leaders of the states, there was some controversy over exactly what the threshold for the size of shops that would be allowed to reopen would be. The compromise that they struck was 800 square meters. One retail group has said this is totally arbitrary, totally unfair. One group of department stores is even taking them to court to challenge this. There are also a few moments of discontent in the press. The issue of kindergartens and kitas is very controversial because there's no specific policy on that, but some indications that they might not open until after the summer. That's obviously extremely difficult for people who are working with small children. And I think possibly one reason for this is simply, in a way, Germany is sort of a victim of its own success, in that we haven't felt like we've been really walloped by this thing like they clearly have in Italy and Spain, where I think support for lockdowns remains pretty strong. And therefore, in some quarters, perhaps there might be a feeling of, well, why can't we move a little bit more quickly? We've handled this thing fairly well, so let's move a little bit more quickly so that we don't have a recession that's deeper than it might otherwise need to be. But the overall strategy is very, very cautiously. There may possibly be sort of two steps forward, one step depending on how things go. The indicator that they seem to be monitoring particularly closely is the reproduction rate of the virus. How many people, each infected person goes on to infect themselves. That's now, I believe, at about 0.7 less than 1, which is why the curve has flattened. But if, with the cautious easing of some of these measures, that number starts to creep up again, which is certainly possible, then the government has given every indication that it won't hesitate to reimpose some of those measures. Measures if it considers it necessary. At our press conference last week, Angela Merkel described how a different reproduction rate of 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 would overload the German healthcare capacity at different points, June, July or October, to indicate why it was that the government was watching this particular figure so carefully. And I think for some Germans and also for some foreigners, watching a national leader speak with such fluency and such confidence about relatively technical matters was sort of reassuring, certainly in comparison to the techniques that some other national leaders have used, the rhetorical techniques that some other national leaders have used during this crisis.

And what about looking outside Germany itself, Germany as part of Europe, how do you think it's evident recovery is affecting matters more widely?

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think Germany is increasingly seen in Europe and elsewhere as a model for the way in which it's handled this crisis domestically, both in terms of health policy and also the economic and the fiscal response. But then there's a separate debate which is what's happening inside the eurozone. And this is going to be the subject of what could be a pretty test virtual meeting of the European Council, the EU's heads of government on Thursday where they are going to discuss the details of a post crisis recovery fund. As we discussed last week, a lot of this is going to center around the controversial issue of so called Corona bonds, essentially debt that would be jointly guaranteed by every eurozone member. This is going to be the subject of what may be a pretty testy discussion amongst the leaders on in particular countries that have been hard hit by this. France, Italy and Spain chief among them are going to be putting a lot of pressure on Germany in particular to relax what has been its pretty rigid stance on Corona bonds to get behind some sort of common debt instrument that could help fund recovery in countries that have been especially hard hit by this crisis.

Tom, thanks very much for your time.

Great pleasure. Thanks Jason.

There isn't a single facet of life almost anywhere on the planet that has not been affected upended by the COVID 19 pandemic. On economist Radio, we're speaking to our international network of correspondents to understand what's happening and what will happen, reporting on the science.

Even when we do get some signals.

Of efficacy from some of these vaccines.

We then have a new problem which.

Is making enough of it. On the economics, things are getting pretty ugly. Investors are running away from assets they see as risky.

And on the politics of COVID 19.

There is the risk that skepticism and fear and mistrust kind of snowballs into something that becomes as big of a problem in the fight against Covid as Covid itself.

For the latest on the pandemic and more, join us on Economist Radio. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Ten days ago, the first case of COVID 19 was confirmed in Yemen. Now aid agencies are warning the country faces a nightmare scenario. UN humanitarian chief Mark Locock warned it's in no fit shape to deal with an outbreak.

War have severely degraded Yemen's health infrastructure.

Exhausted people's immune systems and increased acute vulnerabilities. As a result, epidemiologists warn that COVID.

19 in Yemen could spread faster, more.

Widely and with deadlier consequences than in many other countries.

The case was spotted two days after Saudi Arabia called a ceasefire in its fight against a militant Shia Muslim group known as the Houthis. For more than five years, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of mostly Sunni states against the Houthis, who have displaced the internationally backed government and now control much of the country. Saudi Arabia's brutal campaign of airstrikes, essentially a front in its proxy war against Iran, has magnified what is now the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Now, the Saudis say they want to help stop the spread of coronavirus in the country and to support UN peace efforts. But critics have questioned whether humanitarian concerns are the real reason for the de escalation.

This war has just been a disaster for Yemen, which was already the region's poorest country.

Roger McShane is the Economist's Middle east editor.

I mean, it's drawn in other outside powers. Iran, for example, is arming the Houthis. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It's left most of the population in need of some sort of aid. But we got a bit of hope on April 8 when Saudi Arabia and its allies said they would lay down their arms for two weeks.

And what prompted that? Why declare something of a ceasefire now?

Well, the Saudis say the ceasefire is meant to allow Yemen to deal with COVID 19 and. And surely enough. Two days after they made the announcement, Yemen confirmed its first case of the virus. And there's probably many more cases because Yemen isn't doing much testing. But I don't think it's compassion that is truly motivating the Saudis. I mean, they've spent five years bombing Yemen, hitting homes, hitting hospitals, hitting schools, and often seemed like it was hitting these things on purpose. I think the Saudis are really looking for a way out of the war because they spent five years fighting, and yet they've been unable to push the Houthis from most of Yemen's population centers. The Saudis see no clear path to victory. Their main international ally, the uae, started backing away from the war last year. And the Saudis themselves have been sort of scaling back their intervention. The number of airstrikes they've been carrying out has decreased a ton since its peak in 2015. And in recent months, they've even held secret talks with the Houthis. So I think the Saudis are sort of seeing if they can use the pandemic as a cover to pull back further, perhaps leave Yemen while saving some face. They've said themselves that they hope the ceasefire leads to new peace talks.

And what would those peace talks look like after tensions that have lasted this long and made this much of a mess of Yemen?

Well, you know, Saudi Arabia, I think they know they're not going to be able to restore the government of Yemen, at least not in most of the country, as was their initial aim. So their goals have become much less ambitious, much more sort of inward looking. And they basically want to make sure that the Houthis don't become a persistent threat to their territory. They sort of fear the Houthis becoming something like what Hezbollah is to Israel, this sort of threat right on the other side of the border. And the Houthis in recent years have been firing missiles at Saudi oil pipelines, even at, at the capital. So the Saudis want to stamp out that threat. I think they'd be sort of happy to lock the Houthis inside Yemen, basically, if the Houthis cause problems there, the Saudis will live at that as long as they don't cause any more problems on Saudi territory.

And what about the Houthis? It's clear what Saudi Arabia wants. But how will the Houthis look at those kinds of demands?

Well, I think the Houthis know that they have the upper hand now. And they're certainly acting like it's they rejected the Saudi ceasefire, they're now taking part in it on the ground. They're making gains in places like Jof and Marib in the north. These are important places. Marib especially is important. It's an oil and gas hub and it's home to bases that Saudi Arabia's local allies use to wage war in the north. So if Marib falls, it's going to be very hard for the Saudi led coalition to continue fighting effectively in the north. And at the same time, the Houthis, they're making demands on the Saudis. Right before Saudi Arabia announced their ceasefire, the Houthis released a peace plan which calls on Saudi Arabia to do things like lift its blockade of Yemen, pay reparations for the damage they've caused, and even to pay 10 years worth of government salaries. And most importantly, it's called on the Saudis to recognize the Houthis as Yemen's legitimate rulers.

I mean, it sounds like a set of demands that it's going to be very difficult to reach an agreement on. I mean, what happens if there's not a deal struck this time?

Yeah, well, there's some thought that the Houthis might launch a ground assault into Saudi territory in the south of that country. I mean, the sad thing with all this is that even if the Saudis cave and pull out tomorrow, the fighting isn't going to stop in Yemen. The Houthis are not exactly popular in the territory they control. They would continue to be challenged by local forces in the south of Yemen, there would still be fighting between separatists and forces loyal to the government. That's been going on for months. And there are still jihadists ready to take advantage of all the chaos in Yemen.

And this all happening with the backdrop of a looming COVID 19 crisis in the country, a country we've been hearing for years is already a humanitarian disaster.

Yeah, I mean, the war has devastated the health system in Yemen, which wasn't in great shape beforehand. It's in no way equipped to handle a big outbreak. I mean, when I was last there, visited a hospital in Hodeida, and you had doctors already then sort of saying they were having to choose between which patients to treat. And we got something of a bigger preview of this in recent years when Yemen was hit by cholera. We were talking about hundreds of thousands of cases, nearly 4,000 deaths. And the UN is very worried about what's happening now about the threat of COVID sort of spreading across the country if things aren't taken care of quickly. And there's a real risk that any outbreak would be even deadlier than the outbreak of cholera was.

Roger, thanks very much for your time.

My pleasure.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the economist. To get 12 issues for $12 or £12, just go to economist.com radiooffer for as long as there's been crime going unpunished, there have been tales of people trying to avenge those responsible. From the ancient Greeks through Shakespeare to post war cowboys and vigilantes, revenge drives drama.

Revenge has been an inspiration for dramatists for millennia.

Rachel Lloyd edits Prospero, the Economist's culture blog.

It's really not a new subject, but it comes in and out of fashion. The current wave of interest is in female vigilantes who are righting wrongs, particularly pertaining to sexual abuse, but also domestic violence. The latest example is a film called Promising Young Woman, which follows the protagonist who starts by going out to bars. Every week I go to a club, I act like I'm too drunk to, and every week a nice guy comes over to see if I'm okay shaming these men for their predatory behavior. But it turns into a film about avenging her friend's rape and eventual suicide. She targets everyone she thinks is responsible for her friend's death.

It's every guy's worst nightmare getting accused like that.

Can you guess what every woman's worst nightmare is? So, the university official who dismissed her case, a friend who wasn't helpful, a lawyer who bullied her, and the man himself.

And you Say, that's just the latest example. There are, there are many these days.

There are many films, plays and TV series, all depicting women taking revenge. Sweet Vicious was a TV show which depicted student vigilantes avenging campus rapes. There was the Nightingale, set in 1820s Tasmania, which also was a rape revenge film. And MFA, which was also dealing with campus rapes.

And so how much does the sort of new resurgence of the theme kind of fit with the historical precedent? How much does this look like revenge dramas as we've always known them?

Revenge is popular at times of political and social upheaval, at times when themes of power and justice are being questioned. So in the ancient Greek period, the Athenian courts were debating causation and guilt and how cycles of violence could be stopped. In early modern Britain, the law was changing from a system of private redress to central administration. Old habits, such as duelling, persisted because ordinary people weren't convinced that the law would protect them. This was a time that Thomas Middleton and his contemporaries were writing. He produced a play called Women Beware Women, which was first produced in 1623, which follows a young bride who's sexually assaulted by a powerful duke.

And so how do you think these different cases and these revivals even reflect the period of flux that we find.

Ourselves in now because of the intimate relationship between revenge dramas and the law? It's not that surprising that the focus is on sexual violence. In recent years, you've seen a number of high profile cases which have shown the difficulty of prosecuting sexual crimes. When these are in the ether, they're going to inspire dramatists who try and write some kind of fantastical justice and some kind of answer to this. So a common theme in these plays is how women are failed by institutions. Many of the characters seek redress through formal channels. And in MFA and in promising young women, the protagonists look to university officials. Both of them are women who do nothing and who rebut them, saying that it's too much of a he said, she said case. So they must take the law into their own hands.

And so for the authors and the playwrights here, it's a sense of catharsis for them to put these out in the world.

Definitely. It's a sense that if you've been wronged, you can see someone on screen, right or wrong. We like to see justice being done. So there is something very cathartic about these, about these stories. All of them are interested not just in one bad guy, they're interested in the whole system. It's not just the rapist who needs to be vanquished. It's this whole way of thinking that women shouldn't be believed and that. And that the law is there to protect men and not women. I mean, these are questions that aren't new. These are problems that aren't new. Medea, which was first produced in 431 BC, looked at a woman being wronged by a man. But also, revenge has not lost its appeal over the centuries. It's actually the oldest form of drama. A wrongs B, B gets revenge on A, it creates plots, it's satisfying to watch, and it's unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Rachel, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you for having.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow.