Analysis: After the cheers come jeers for Germany's Merkel over COVID-19

Chancellor Angela Merkel banged the podium in frustration as she implored Germans this month to reduce social contacts to curb the spread of COVID-19. At one point in her unusually passionate address to parliament, during which she was heckled, she brought her hands together as if in prayer. At others, she shook her fist. “I want to say this: if we have too much contact over Christmas, and afterwards it turns out that that was the last Christmas with the grandparents, then we will have really messed up and we should not mess up!” she said. Merkel’s rare show of emotion on Dec. 9 was widely seen as a sign of impatience with the difficulties - and now criticism - she faces as she tries to steer Europe’s biggest economy through a second wave of COVID-19.