Closed by covid-19

迫于covid-19而关闭

Paying to stop the pandemic

花钱消灾

The struggle to save lives and the economy is likely to present agonising choices

拯救生命和经济的斗争可能会带来痛苦的选择

词汇

Agonising/烦恼的，苦闷的

Mar 19th 2020 |

PLANET EARTH is shutting down. In the struggle to get a grip on covid-19, one country after another is demanding that its citizens shun society. As that sends economies reeling, desperate governments are trying to tide over companies and consumers by handing out trillions of dollars in aid and loan guarantees. Nobody can be sure how well these rescues will work.

地球正在关闭。在努力控制covid-19的过程中，一个又一个国家要求其公民远离社会。随着经济陷入困境，绝望的政府正试图通过提供数万亿美元的援助和贷款担保来帮助企业和消费者渡过难关。没有人能肯定这些救援措施会有多有效。

词汇

Shun/避开，回避

Reeling/蹒跚的；卷起的

 （这段话我按照要求删了，麻烦审核的大爷放我这篇文章通过，读者们自己打开期刊看。）

Barely 12 weeks after the first reports of people mysteriously falling ill in Wuhan, in central China, the world is beginning to grasp the pandemic’s true human and economic toll. As of March 18th SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind covid-19, had registered 134,000 infections outside China in 155 countries and territories. In just seven days that is an increase of almost 90,000 cases and 43 countries and territories. The real number of cases is thought to be at least an order of magnitude greater.

在中国中部城市武汉首次报告有人神秘患病仅12周后，世界开始了解这场流感的真实伤亡和经济损失。截至3月18日，SARS-CoV-2，即covt -19背后的病毒，已经在155个国家和地区登记了13.4万例感染病例。在短短7天内，就增加了近9万例病例，涉及43个国家和地区。实际病例数被认为（比预期）至少要大一个数量级。

Spooked, governments are rushing to impose controls that would have been unimaginable only a few weeks ago. Scores of countries, including many in Africa and Latin America, have barred travellers from places where the virus is rife. Times Square is deserted, the City of London is dark and in France, Italy and Spain cafés, bars and restaurants have bolted their doors. Everywhere empty stadiums echo to absent crowds.

各国政府惊慌失措，纷纷采取控制措施，这在几周前还是不可想象的。许多国家，包括非洲和拉丁美洲的许多国家，已经禁止旅行者进入病毒流行的地方。时代广场上空无一人，伦敦金融城一片漆黑，而在法国、意大利和西班牙，咖啡馆、酒吧和餐馆都已紧闭大门。空无一人的体育场到处回响着缺席的人群（这句话按照字面理解是这样，但总觉得好奇怪）。

词汇

Bar/禁止；阻拦

Rife/普遍的；流行的

Bolt/闩上，拴住

It has become clear that the economy is taking a much worse battering than analysts had expected. Data for January and February show that industrial output in China, which had been forecast to fall by 3% compared with a year earlier, was down by 13.5%. Retail sales were not 4% lower, but 20.5%. Fixed-asset investment, which measures the spending on such things as machinery and infrastructure, declined by 24%, six times more than predicted. That has sent economic forecasters the world over scurrying to revise down their predictions. Faced with the most brutal recession in living memory, governments are setting out rescue packages on a scale that exceeds even the financial crisis of 2007-09.

很明显，经济遭受的打击比分析师预期的要严重得多。1月和2月的数据显示，中国的工业产出下降了13.5%，而此前的预测是同比下降3%。零售额下降了20.5%，而不是4%。用于衡量固定资产投资的机器和基础设施等支出的下降了24%，是预期的六倍。这使得世界各地的经济预测者急忙下调他们的预测。面对人们记忆中最严重的经济衰退，各国政府制定的救助计划规模甚至超过了2007-09年的金融危机。

This is the backdrop for fundamental choices about how to manage the disease. Using an epidemiological model, a group from Imperial College in London this week set out a framework to help policymakers think about what lies ahead. It is bleak.

这是关于如何控制这种疾病的基本选择的背景。伦敦帝国理工学院(Imperial College)的一个小组利用流行病学模型，于本周制定了一个框架，以帮助政策制定者思考未来的发展。但前景是黯淡的。

词汇

Backdrop/背景

One approach is mitigation, “flattening the curve” to make the pandemic less intense by, say, isolating cases and quarantining infected households. The other is to suppress it with a broader range of measures, including shutting in everybody, other than those who cannot work from home, and closing schools and universities. Mitigation curbs the pandemic, suppression aims to stop it in its tracks.

The modellers found that, were the virus left to spread, it would cause around 2.2m deaths in America and 500,000 in Britain by the end of summer. In advanced economies, they concluded, three months of curve-flattening, including two-week quarantines of infected households, would at best prevent only about half of these. Moreover, peak demand for intensive care would still be eight times the surge capacity of Britain’s National Health Service, leading to many more deaths that the model did not attempt to compute. If that pattern holds in other parts of Europe, even its best-resourced health systems, including Germany’s, would be overwhelmed.

建模者发现，如果病毒继续传播，到夏末，美国将有220万人死亡，英国将有50万人死亡。他们的结论是，在发达经济体中，三个月的曲线变平，包括对受感染家庭进行两周的隔离，最多只能预防其中的一半。此外，重症监护需求的峰值仍将是英国国民医疗服务(nhs)激增能力的8倍，这将导致更多的死亡，而该模型并没有试图去计算这些死亡。如果这种模式在欧洲其他地区也适用，那么即使是欧洲资源最丰富的卫生系统，包括德国，也会不堪重负。

词汇

No wonder governments are opting for the more stringent controls needed to suppress the pandemic. Suppression has the advantage that it has worked in China. On March 18th Italy added 4,207 new cases whereas Wuhan counted none at all. China has recorded a total of just over 80,000 cases in a population of 1.4bn people. For comparison, the Imperial group estimated that the virus left to itself would infect more than 80% of the population in Britain and America.

难怪各国政府选择采取更严格的控制措施来遏制流感爆发。压制的优势在于它在中国奏效了。3月18日，意大利增加了4207个新病例，而武汉一个也没有。中国有14亿人口，总共有8万多病例。作为比较，帝国集团估计，这种病毒会感染英国和美国80%以上的人口。

词汇

But that is why suppression has a sting in its tail. By keeping infection rates relatively low, it leaves many people susceptible to the virus. And since covid-19 is now so widespread, within countries and around the world, the Imperial model suggests that epidemics would return within a few weeks of the restrictions being lifted. To avoid this, countries must suppress the disease each time it resurfaces, spending at least half their time in lockdown. This on-off cycle must be repeated until either the disease has worked through the population or there is a vaccine which could be months away, if one works at all.

但这就是为什么要从根部抑制疾病。即便保持感染率相对较低，许多人依旧容易感染这种病毒。由于covid-19目前在各国和世界各地非常普遍，帝国模型表明，在限制解除后的几周内，流行病将卷土重来。为了避免这种情况，各国必须在疾病每次重新出现时加以控制，至少要把一半的时间花在防范上。这种时断时续的循环必须不断重复，直到这种疾病在人群中再也不起作用，或者有可能在几个月后出现疫苗，如果有一种疫苗起作用的话。

This is just a model, and models are just educated guesses based on the best evidence. Hence the importance of watching China to see if life there can return to normal without the disease breaking out again. The hope is that teams of epidemiologists can test on a massive scale so as to catch new cases early, trace their contacts and quarantine them without turning society upside down. Perhaps they will be helped by new drugs, such as a Japanese antiviral compound which China this week said was promising.

这只是一个模型，模型只是基于最佳证据的有根据的猜测。因此，关注中国的重要性在于，看看中国的生活是否能够恢复正常，且不会再次爆发疾病。人们希望流行病学家小组能够大规模地进行检测，以便及早发现新病例，追踪接触者并对他们进行隔离，而不会使社会发生翻天覆地的变化。或许他们将得到新药的帮助，比如中国本周表示前景看好的一种日本抗病毒化合物。

词汇

But this is just a hope, and hope is not a policy. The bitter truth is that mitigation costs too many lives and suppression may be economically unsustainable. After a few iterations governments might not have the capacity to carry businesses and consumers. Ordinary people might not tolerate the upheaval. The cost of repeated isolation, measured by mental well-being and the long-term health of the rest of the population, might not justify it.

但这只是一个希望，而希望不是政策。痛苦的事实是，缓解代价太大，镇压在经济上可能是不可持续的。经过几次反复，政府可能没有能力承载企业和消费者。普通人可能无法忍受这种剧变。以心理健康和其他人群的长期健康来衡量，反复隔离的代价可能并不值得。

词汇

In the real world there are trade-offs between the two strategies, though governments can make both more efficient. South Korea, China and Italy have shown that this starts with mass-testing. The more clearly you can identify who has the disease, the less you must depend upon indiscriminate restrictions. Tests for antibodies to the virus, picking up who has been infected and recovered, are needed to supplement today’s which are only valid just before and during the illness. That will let immune people go about their business in the knowledge that they cannot be a source of further infections.

在现实世界中，这两种策略之间存在权衡，尽管政府可以让两者都更有效率。韩国、中国和意大利已经表明，这要从大规模试验开始。你越能清楚地识别出谁患有这种疾病，你就越能不依赖于不分青红皂白的限制。对病毒抗体的检测，挑选出已经被感染和康复的人，这些将用于补充当日的检测，这些检测只在疾病之前和期间有效。这将让免疫的人知道他们不能成为进一步感染的来源，从而继续他们的工作。

A second line of attack is to use technology to administer quarantines and social distancing. China is using apps to certify who is clear of the disease and who is not. Both it and South Korea are using big data and social media to trace infections, alert people to hotspots and round up contacts. South Korea changed the law to allow the state to gain access to medical records and share them without a warrant. In normal times many democracies might find that too intrusive. Times are not normal.

Last, governments should invest in health care, even if their efforts take months to bear fruit and may never be needed. They should increase the surge capacity of intensive care. Countries like Britain and America are desperately short of beds, specialists and ventilators. They should define the best treatment protocols, develop vaccines and test new therapeutic drugs. All this would make mitigation less lethal and suppression cheaper.

最后，政府应该投资于医疗保健，即使他们的努力需要几个月才会有成果，而且可能永远都不需要。他们应该增加重症监护的应对能力。像英国和美国这样的国家极度缺乏床位、专家和呼吸机。他们应该制定最好的治疗方案，开发疫苗和测试新的治疗药物。所有这些都将使缓解措施不那么致命，抑制措施更便宜。

词汇

Be under no illusions. Such measures might still not prevent the pandemic from extracting a heavy toll. Today governments seem to be committed to suppression, whatever the cost. But if the disease is not conquered quickly, they will edge towards mitigation, even if that will result in many more deaths. Understandably, just now that is not a trade-off any government is willing to contemplate. They may soon have no choice.

但不要抱有幻想。这些措施可能仍然无法阻止流感大流行造成重大损失。今天，政府似乎决心不惜一切代价进行镇压。但是如果这种疾病不能很快被征服，他们将倾向于缓解，即使这将导致更多的死亡。可以理解的是，目前任何政府都不愿意考虑这种“交易”。但他们可能很快就会别无选择。