经济学人扉页文章Why are so many governments getting it wrong

09.28｜经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 Why are so many governments getting it wrong

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今天羚羊君（公众：aa-acad）给大家分享的是经济学人2020年9月25日期刊中扉页文章的第一篇：Why are so many governments getting it wrong？

这篇文章谈论到了各国政府在应对新冠疫情时失败，并分析了病毒对社会、经济的影响，以及对新冠肺炎的治疗。

想要阅读往期内容，可以在公众号右下角点击"更多资讯-长文阅读"进入专栏。

01

Why are so many governments getting it wrong？

为什么那么多政府在抗疫上存在误区

Witchin the next few days the global recorded deaths from covid-19 will surpass 1m. Perhaps another 1m have gone unrecorded. Since the start of the pandemic, nine months ago, the weekly cases logged by the World Health Organisation have been trending very slowly upwards and, in the seven days to September 20th, breached 2m for the first time. The virus is burning through parts of the emerging world. India has been registering over 90,000 cases a day. Some European countries that thought they had suppressed the disease are in the throes of a second wave. In America the official death toll this week exceeded 200,000; the seven-day case total is rising in 26 states.

在接下来的几天内，covid-19记录的全球死亡人数将超过100万。 也许还有另100万仍未记录。 自大流行开始以来（九个月前），世界卫生组织记录的每周病例呈缓慢上升趋势，在截至9月20日的七天内，首次突破200万例。 该病毒正在新兴世界的某些地区燃烧。 印度每天记录的病例超过90,000件。 一些认为自己已经抑制了这种疾病的欧洲国家正处于第二波的阵痛中。 在美国，本周的官方死亡人数超过20万人。 在26个州中，每周病例总数仍在上升。

02

Those figures represent a lot of suffering. Roughly 1% of survivors have long-term viral damage such as crippling fatigue and scarred lungs. In developing countries, especially, bereavement is compounded by poverty and hunger (see article). The northern winter will force people indoors, where the disease spreads much more easily than in the open air. Seasonal flu could add to the burden on health systems.

Amid the gloom, keep three things in mind. The statistics contain good news as well as bad. Treatments and medicines are making covid-19 less deadly: new vaccines and drugs will soon add to their effects. And societies have the tools to control the disease today. Yet it is here, in the basics of public health, where too many governments are still failing their people. Covid-19 will remain a threat for months, possibly years. They must do better.

这些数字代表了许多苦难。 大约1％的幸存者患有长期病毒性损害，例如严重疲劳和肺部结疤。 特别是在发展中国家，丧亲与贫穷和饥饿加在一起（见文章）。 北部的冬季将迫使人们进入室内，这种疾病在室内传播比在露天传播容易得多。 同时季节性流感可能会增加卫生系统的负担。

在这样严峻的情况下，请牢记三件事。 统计数据既有好消息也有坏消息。 治疗和药物使covid-19的致命性降低：新的疫苗和药物将很快增加其功效。 当今社会拥有控制疾病的工具。 然而，及时是以有这些公共健康的基础，仍然有太多的政府使人民感到失望。 Covid-19将持续数月甚至数年的威胁。 政府必须要做得更好。

03

Start with the numbers. The increase in Europe’s diagnosed cases reflects reality, but the global effect is an artefact of extra testing, which picks up cases that would have been missed. As the Briefing in this issue explains, our modelling suggests that the total number of actual infections has fallen substantially from its peak of over 5m a day in May. Extra testing is one reason why the fatality rate of the disease appears to be falling. In addition, countries like India, with an average age of 28, suffer fewer deaths because the virus is easier on the young than the elderly.

从数字开始。 欧洲确诊病例的增加反映了现实，但是额外的病毒检测会对全球产生影响，这样会把本来被遗漏的病例计算进来。 正如本期简报所阐述的那样，我们的模型表明，实际感染的总数已从5月每天超过500万的峰值大幅下降。 进行额外检测是该疾病的死亡率似乎正在下降的原因之一。 此外，像印度这样的平均年龄为28岁的国家，其死亡人数要少一些，因为在印度，年轻人比老年人更容易感染到病毒。

04

The fall in fatalities also reflects medical progress. Doctors now understand that organs other than the lungs, such as the heart and kidneys, are at risk and treat symptoms early. In British intensive-care wards, 90% of patients were on ventilators at the start of the pandemic; in June just 30% were. Drugs, including dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, reduce deaths in seriously ill patients by 20-30%. Fatalities in Europe are 90% lower than in the spring, though this gap will narrow as the disease spreads back into vulnerable groups.

More progress is in store. Monoclonal antibodies, which disable the virus, could be available by the end of the year. Although they are expensive, they promise to be useful after someone is infected or, for the high-risk, prophylactically. Vaccines will almost certainly follow, possibly very soon. As different medicines use different lines of attack, the benefits can be cumulative.

死亡人数的下降也反映了医学的进步。 现在，医生了解到，除肺外的其他器官（如心脏和肾脏）都会受到病毒威胁，并尽早治疗症状。 在英国的重症监护病房，大流行开始时有90％的患者使用呼吸机。 6月只有30％。 包括地塞米松（一种廉价的类固醇）在内的药物可将重症患者的死亡率降低20-30％。 欧洲的死亡人数比春季减少了90％，不过随着疾病传播回脆弱人群，这一差距将缩小。

抗疫还有更多的进展。 可以抑制这种病毒的单克隆抗体将在今年年底上市。 尽管它们很昂贵，但它们承诺在某人被感染后或对高危人群进行预防后会有用。 几乎可以肯定很快可以接种疫苗。 由于不同的药物使用不同的攻击路线，因此药效是可以累积的。

05

Yet, in the best of all possible worlds, the pandemic will remain a part of daily life well into 2021. Even if a vaccine emerges, nobody expects it to be 100% effective. Protection may be temporary or weak in the elderly, whose immune systems are less responsive. Making and administering billions of doses will take much of next year. Early vaccines may well need two shots, and complex “cold chains” to keep fresh. Medical glass could run short. There may be fights over who gets supplies first, leaving pools of infection among those who cannot elbow their way to the front of the queue. Multi-country polls suggest that a quarter of adults (including half of Russians) would refuse vaccination—another reason why the disease may persist.

然而，在所有可能情况中，最好的情况是，到2021年，大流行仍将是日常生活的一部分。即使出现了疫苗，也没有人期望它能100％有效。 老年人的免疫系统反应较弱，因此保护可能是暂时的，效力也是较小的。 预计明年将能生产数十亿剂剂量。 早期疫苗很可能需要两次注射，并且需要复杂的“冷链”以保持新鲜。 医用玻璃有可能会用完。 也可能有人会抢先获得疫苗供应，而那些排上队的人则可能更容易受到感染。多个国家的民意测验显示，四分之一的成年人（包括一半的俄罗斯人）会拒绝接种疫苗，这是该疾病可能持续的另一个原因。

06

Hence for the foreseeable future the first line of defence against covid-19 will remain testing and tracing. There is no mystery about what this involves. And yet countries like America, Britain, Israel and Spain persist in getting it disastrously wrong.

One problem is the desire to escape a trade-off between shutting down to keep people alive and staying open so that life goes on. The right lauds Sweden for supposedly letting the virus rip while it makes a priority of the economy and liberty. But Sweden has a fatality rate of 58.1 per 100,000 and saw GDP fall by 8.3% in the second quarter alone, worse on both counts than Denmark, Finland and Norway. The left lauds New Zealand, which has shut down to save lives. It has suffered only 0.5 deaths per 100,000, but in the second quarter its economy shrank by 12.2%. By contrast, Taiwan remained more open but has seen 0.03 deaths per 100,000 and a 1.4% fall in GDP.

因此，在可预见的将来，人们仍然需要持续监测和追踪针对covid-19的第一道防线。这些涉及什么并不神秘。 但是，像美国，英国，以色列和西班牙这样的国家仍然坚持灾难性的错误。

一个问题是人们想要避免在保持封闭和全面开放之间进行权衡，以使生活继续下去。 右派赞扬瑞典，瑞典的做法是让病毒在经济和自由作为优先考虑的前提下予以消灭。 但瑞典的死亡率为每10万人中58.1％，仅第二季度国内生产总值就下降了8.3％，两者均比丹麦，芬兰和挪威差。 左派赞扬新西兰，该国已关闭以挽救生命。 每10万人中只有0.5人死亡，但第二季度经济萎缩了12.2％。 相比之下，台湾更加开放，但每10万人中有0.03人死亡，GDP下降了1.4％。

07

Blanket lockdowns like the new one in Israel are a sign that policy has failed. They are costly and unsustainable. Countries like Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have used fine-grained testing and tracing to spot individual super-spreading venues and slow the spread using quarantines. Germany identified abattoirs; South Korea contained outbreaks in a bar and churches. If testing is slow, as in France, it will fail. If contact-tracing is not trusted, as in Israel, where the job fell to the intelligence services, people will evade detection.

像以色列新一轮那样的一揽子禁运标志着政策失败。 它们既要求人们付出昂贵的代价又不可持续。 像德国，韩国和台湾这样的国家已经使用了细粒度的测试和跟踪来发现各个超级传播场所，并通过隔离来减慢传播速度。 德国确定了屠宰场； 韩国在一家酒吧和教堂中爆发疫情。 如果测试很慢，例如在法国，它将是失败的。 如果人们不信任联系人追踪（例如在以色列，工作归情报部门所有），人们将逃避侦查。

08

Governments must identify the trade-offs that make most economic and social sense. Masks are cheap and convenient and they work. Opening schools, as in Denmark and Germany, should be a priority; opening noisy, uninhibited places like bars should not. Governments, like Britain’s, that bark out a series of ever-changing orders which are broken with impunity by their own officials will find that compliance is low. Those, like British Columbia’s, that set principles and invite individuals, schools and workplaces to devise their own plans for realising them, will be able to sustain the effort in the months ahead.

政府必须确定最具有经济和社会意义的权衡取舍。 口罩既便宜又方便并且行之有效。 像丹麦和德国一样，开放学校应该作为一个优先事项； 开放嘈杂，人们不受阻碍的地方，如酒吧等，是不应该的。 像英国这样的政府，发出一系列不断变化的命令，而这些命令被其本国官员无罪无罚地破坏，命令的遵守程度将会很低。 像不列颠哥伦比亚省那样设定原则并邀请个人，学校和工作场所自行制定计划以便于更好地实现计划，这样做将能够使人们在未来几个月持续努力。

09

When covid-19 struck, governments were taken by surprise and pulled the emergency brake. Today they have no such excuse. In the rush to normality, Spain let down its guard. Britain’s testing is not working, though cases have been climbing since July. America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, once the world’s most respected public-health body, has been plagued by errors, poor leadership and presidential denigration. Israel’s leaders fell victim to hubris and infighting. The pandemic is far from over. It will abate, but governments must get a grip.

当covid-19袭击时，各国政府措手不及，并紧急刹车。 现如今，他们没有这样的借口。 在急于恢复正常状态的过程中，西班牙放松了警惕。 尽管自7月份以来案件数量一直在上升，但英国的病毒检测无法正常进行。 美国疾病控制与预防中心曾经是世界上最受尊敬的公共卫生机构，但一直受到错误，领导能力差和总统诋毁的困扰。 以色列领导人沦为狂妄自大和内f的受害者。 大流行还没有结束。 疾病的流行虽然会减缓，但是政府必须控制住疾病。

经济学人一般目录大纲：

The world this week：简单梳理本周的时事Leaders：社论，对本周热点事件进行评论Briefing：简报，对一个特定热点话题深度讨论Letter：读者来信，对往期文章的评论Sections：各大洲及中美英三国的本周热点事件报道Business：商业新闻Finances and economics：财经新闻Science and technology：科技新闻Books and arts：文化书籍，书评和文化现象讨论Economic and financial indicators：商业及财经指数

Buttonwood：金融专栏Schumpeter：商业专栏Bartleby：职场专栏Bagehot：英国专栏Charlemagne：欧洲专栏Lexington：美国专栏Banyan：亚洲专栏