The ravages of time

时间的摧残

Throughout history, pandemics have had profound economic effects

纵观历史，流行病对经济产生了深远的影响

Pandemic//既代表瘟疫，也有流行病的意思，该次表意轻重在文中随内容改变

Long-run economic effects are not always dreadful

长期的经济影响并不总是可怕的

PANDEMICS ARE the inevitable attendants of economic progress. 流行病是经济发展的必然产物。 Interconnected trade networks and teeming cities have made societies both richer and more vulnerable, from the empires of antiquity to the integrated global economy of the present.从古代帝国到今天的全球经济一体化，相互联系的贸易网络和拥挤的城市让社会变得更富有，也让社会变得更脆弱。 The effects of covid-19 will be very different from those of past pathogens, which struck populations far poorer than people today, and with less knowledge of things like viruses and bacteria. covid-19的影响将与过去的致病菌大不相同，过去致病菌袭击的人群较当下群体更穷，人们对病毒和细菌等致病因素的了解也更少。The toll should be on a different scale than that exacted by the Black Death or Spanish flu. (如今的疫情)死亡人数应该与黑死病或西班牙流感造成的死亡人数有所不同。Even so, the ravages of the past offer some guide as to how the global economy may change as a result of the coronavirus.即便如此，过去的灾难也为全球经济如何因冠状病毒而改变提供了一些指导。

词汇

Attendants/随员，陪从

Teeming/热闹的，拥挤的

Antiquity/  高龄；古物；古代的遗物

Pathogen/病原体；病菌

Though the human costs of pandemics are dreadful, the long-run economic effects are not always so. 尽管疫情造成的人类损失是可怕的，但长期的经济影响并不总是如此。The Black Death carried off an astounding one-third to two-thirds of the population of Europe, leaving lasting scars. 黑死病夺去了欧洲令人惊骇的三分之一到三分之二的人口，留下了永恒的的伤疤。 But in the wake of the plague there was far more arable acreage than workers to farm it. 但在鼠疫之后，可耕种的土地面积远远超过了工人的耕种面积。 The sudden scarcity of workers raised labourers’ bargaining power relative to landlords and contributed to the breakdown of the feudal economy. 工人的突然短缺提高了劳动者相对于地主的议价能力，并导致了封建经济的崩溃。

词汇

Astounding/令人震惊的；令人惊骇的

Arable/可耕种的，适宜耕种的

Landlord/老板；地主

It seems also to have ushered parts of north-west Europe onto a more promising growth path. 这似乎也将欧洲西北部的部分地区引入了一条更有前途的增长道路。Real incomes of European workers rose sharply following the pandemic, which struck the continent from 1347 to 1351. 从1347年到1351年，在疫情爆发之后，欧洲工人的实际收入大幅增长。In pre-industrial times, higher incomes usually enabled faster population growth, which eventually squeezed incomes back to subsistence levels (as observed by Thomas Malthus). 在前工业时代，更高的收入通常会带来更快的人口增长，这最终会将收入压缩到仅能维持生计的水平(正如托马斯•马尔萨斯(Thomas Malthus)所观察到的)。But in parts of Europe, Malthusian rules did not reassert themselves after the pandemic receded. 但在欧洲部分地区，马尔萨斯规则并没有在疫情消退后重新确立。 Nico Voigtländer, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Hans-Joachim Voth, now of the University of Zurich, argue that the high incomes induced by plague led to more spending on manufactured goods produced in cities, and thus to higher rates of urbanisation. 加州大学洛杉矶分校的Nico Voigtlander和现在苏黎世大学的Hans-Joachim Voth认为，由疫情引起的高收入导致了更多的消费在城市生产的制成品上，从而导致了更高的城市化率。 The plague effectively shoved parts of Europe from a low-wage, less urbanised equilibrium on a path more congenial to the development of a commercial, and then an industrial, economy. 这场瘟疫有效地将欧洲部分地区从低工资、低城市化的均衡状态，推到了一条更适合商业、然后是工业经济发展的道路上。

词汇

Usher/迎接；开辟

Subsistence/生活；生存；存在

Reassert/重复主张；再断言

Urbanisation/  城市化

Equilibrium/均衡；平静；保持平衡的能力

Something similar occurred in the aftermath of the Spanish flu, which killed between 20m and 100m people from 1918 to 1920. 类似的情况也发生在西班牙流感之后。1918年至1920年，西班牙流感导致2000万至1亿人死亡。The industrial economies of the early 20th century were no longer bound by Malthusian constraints. 20世纪初的工业经济不再受马尔萨斯规则的约束。Even so, reckon Elizabeth Brainerd, now at Brandeis University, and Mark Siegler, of California State University, American states harder hit by the disease grew faster in its aftermath. 尽管如此，现在布兰迪斯大学的Elizabeth Brainerd和加州州立大学的Mark Siegler认为，美国受艾滋病打击更严重的州在灾后发展得更快。After controlling for a range of economic and demographic factors, they find that one additional death per thousand people was associated with an increase in average annual growth of real income per person over the next decade of at least 0.15 percentage points. 在控制了一系列经济和人口因素后，他们发现每千人多死一人，在未来十年人均实际收入的年平均增长率至少会增加0.15个百分点。Though the toll of covid-19 is likely to be too low to boost real wages, it may force firms to embrace new technologies in order to operate while warehouses and offices are empty, with lasting effects on growth and productivity. 尽管cod -19的也许带来的影响（灾害）不大，无法提高实际工资，但它可能会迫使企业采用新技术，以便在仓库和办公室空无一人的情况下运营，从而对增长和生产率产生持久影响。

词汇

Aftermath/后果；余波

More often, though, a pandemic’s economic consequences are unambiguously negative. 不过，更常见的情况是，流行性疾病带来的经济后果无疑是负面的。Trade links which spread a pathogen can themselves be undone by its effects. 传播病原体的贸易链接本身也可能因其影响而被破坏。 During the Roman Empire, a high degree of specialisation and trade lifted incomes to levels that would not be reached again for more than a millennium. 在罗马帝国时期，高度的专业化和贸易使人们的收入达到了一个千年以后才会达到的水平。 Alas, the same links facilitated the spread of disease. 唉，这种的链接也促进了疾病的传播。The Roman economy was dealt a blow in the late second century AD, when an outbreak of what is thought to have been smallpox ravaged the empire. 公元二世纪晚期，罗马经济遭受重创，当时爆发了一场被认为是天花的疾病，摧毁了罗马帝国。A century later, the Plague of Cyprian, which may have been a haemorrhagic fever, emptied many Roman cities and coincided with a sharp and permanent decline in economic activity, as measured by numbers of shipwrecks (a proxy for trade volumes) and levels of lead pollution (generated by mining activity). 一个世纪后，塞浦路斯的瘟疫可能是一种出血热，它使许多罗马城市变得空空如也，同时经济活动也出现了急剧和永久性的下降，这是通过沉船数量(贸易总量的一个指标)和铅污染水平(由采矿活动产生)来衡量的。 Reduced trade fed a cycle of falling incomes and weakened state capacity from which the western empire never recovered. 贸易的减少导致了收入的下降和国家能力的削弱，西罗马帝国再也没有从中恢复过来。

词汇

Millennium/千年期

Alas/唉（表悲伤、遗憾）

Smallpox/天花

Haemorrhagic/出血的

Shipwreck/ 海难；遇难船

 

More recently, trade may well have tumbled as a result of Spanish flu, had the first world war not already brought a curtain down on the industrialised world’s first great era of globalisation. 最近，如果第一次世界大战还没有给工业化世界第一个伟大的全球化时代画上句号，贸易很可能已经因为西班牙流感而大幅下滑 。Covid-19 also strikes at what may be the tail end of a long period of rapid global integration, which is likewise threatened by great-power competition. Covid-19同样打击了可能是长期快速全球一体化的终点，而全球一体化同样受到大国竞争的威胁。The circumstances are not identical, and trade is unlikely to suffer as badly as it did in the 1910s. 情况并不相同，贸易不太可能像20世纪10年代那样受到严重影响。Still, it would not be surprising if historians identify the pandemic as one of several consequences of globalisation that eventually precipitated a new era in global trade.

尽管如此，如果历史学家把这场疫情视为全球化的几个后果之一，也就不足为奇了。全球化最终促成了全球贸易的一个新时代。

词汇

Just as pandemics have a way of demarcating historical eras, they can also pinpoint shifts in the fortunes of some places relative to others. 正如流行病有一种划分历史时期的方法一样，它们也可以精确地指出某些地方相对于其他地方的命运的变化。 The Black Death lifted real incomes across Europe. 黑死病提高了整个欧洲的实际收入。But the fortunes of Europeans subsequently diverged, and disease again played a role. 但欧洲人的命运随后发生了变化，疾病再次扮演了重要角色。Plague returned to the continent in the 17th century in several deadly waves. 17世纪，鼠疫在几次致命的浪潮中又回到了欧洲大陆。 The effects of these outbreaks varied greatly across Europe, argues Guido Alfani, of Bocconi University in Milan. 米兰博科尼大学的Guido Alfani认为，这些爆发的影响在欧洲各地差异很大。Though at most a tenth of the population of England and Wales was lost to plague, for example, more than 40% of Italians may have died from the disease over the course of the century. 例如，尽管英格兰和威尔士至多有十分之一的人口死于鼠疫，但在本世纪内，可能有超过40%的意大利人死于鼠疫。 While Italy’s population stagnated and rates of urbanisation tumbled, north-west Europe continued to benefit from growth and urbanisation despite the pandemic. 在意大利人口停滞不前、城市化率大幅下降的同时，尽管瘟疫的爆发，西北欧仍继续从增长和城市化中受益。The fiscal capacity of Italian states suffered badly, as did the textile industries of northern Italy, and northern and southern Europe embarked on quite different economic trajectories. 意大利各州的财政能力严重受损，意大利北部的纺织业也是如此，北欧和南欧走上了截然不同的经济发展道路。

词汇

Demarcate/划分，界定

Stagnate/停滞；淤塞；变萧条

Disease is not destiny

 

In the battle against covid-19, countries’ fates are in their own hands to a far greater degree than in the pre-industrial past. 在与covid-19的斗争中，各国的命运掌握在自己手中的程度，远远超过了工业化前的过去。 Governments know much more about how epidemics can be managed. 各国政府对如何控制流行病了解得更多。 Different experiences with the disease are as much an indicator of underlying state capacity as a cause of future economic divergence. 与这种疾病有关的不同经历既是潜在国家能力的一个指标，也是未来经济分化的一个原因。Still, history reveals how pandemics nudge societies listing in one direction or another in a decisive and consequential direction. 尽管如此，历史揭示了瘟疫如何推动社会朝着一个或另一个方向，朝着一个决定性和结果性的方向发展。We cannot know what long-run effects covid-19 may have, but we can feel reasonably sure there will be some.我们无法知道covid-19可能会产生什么长期影响，但我们可以合理地肯定会有一些影响。