经济学人下载:流行病威胁下世界经济的良药(1)

Leaders 

来源于3月7日刊《社论》版块

The right medicine for the world economy 

世界经济的良药

The pandemic threatens an economic crisis as well as a health crisis. Both need fixing 

流行病威胁着经济危机和健康危机。两者都需要解决

It is not a fair fight, but it is a fight that many countries will face all the same. Left to itself, the covid-19 pandemic doubles every five to six days. When you get your next issue of The Economist the outbreak could in theory have infected twice as many people as today. Governments can slow that ferocious pace, but bureaucratic time is not the same as virus time. And at the moment governments across the world are being left flat-footed. 

这场战斗并不公平，但这场战斗许多国家都终将面对。如果任其发展，每过5到6天，covid-19流行病就会扩大一倍。当你看到下一期《经济学家》杂志时，疫情爆发理论上感染的人数可能是今天的两倍。政府可以放慢这一惊人的速度，但政府举措没有跟上病毒发展速度。

The disease is in 85 countries and territories, up from 50 a week earlier. Over 95,000 cases and 3,200 deaths have been recorded. Yet our analysis, based on patterns of travel to and from China, suggests that many countries which have spotted tens of cases have hundreds more circulating undetected. Iran, South Korea and Italy are exporting the virus. America has registered 159 cases in 14 states but as of March 1st it had, indefensibly, tested just 472 people when South Korea was testing 10,000 a day. Now that America is looking, it is sure to find scores of infections—and possibly unearth a runaway epidemic. 

目前已有85个国家和地区出现这种疾病，而一周前只有50个。记录在案的病例超过9.5万例，死亡3200例。然而，我们基于来往中国的旅行模式进行的分析表明，许多国家已经发现了数十例，还有数百例在未被发现的情况下传播。伊朗、韩国和意大利都在输出病毒。美国已经在14个州登记了159例病例，但截至3月1日，美国仅对472人进行了检测，而韩国当时每天检测1万人。现在美国正在寻找，肯定会发现大量的感染，并可能发展为失控的流行病。

Wherever the virus takes hold, containing it and mitigating its effects will involve more than doctors and paramedics. The World Health Organisation has distilled lessons from China for how health-care systems should cope. The same thinking is needed across the government, especially over how to protect people and companies as supply chains fracture and the worried and the ill shut themselves away. 

无论病毒在哪里出现，遏制病毒并减轻其影响不仅仅只有医护人员就行了。世界卫生组织已经从中国身上总结出应对卫生保健体系的经验教训。整个政府都需要同样的思考，尤其是在供应链断裂、忧虑者和患者之际，如何为个人和企业提供保护。