为什么世界更关心新型冠状病毒而不是流感呢

为什么世界更关心新型冠状病毒而不是流感呢

The number of people who are infected with the new coronavirus that is spreading from China is dwarfed by those affected by a far more common respiratory illness: seasonal flu.

与季节性流感这一更为常见的呼吸道疾病相比，从中国传播的新型冠状病毒的感染人数相形见绌。

Every year there are as many as 5 million severe flu cases worldwide and hundreds of thousands of deaths. By contrast, so far there have been about 17.000 cases of coronavirus, most of them mild.

全世界每年有多达500万例严重流感病例，数十万人死亡。相比之下，迄今为止约有1.7万例冠状病毒感染病例，其中大多数病情较轻。

Yet governments are responding to the new outbreak with drastic measures — airlifting their citizens out of China; shutting down border crossings; and in, the case of United States, barring or quarantining travelers from China's most affected province, Hubei.

然而，各国政府正采取严厉措施应对新的疫情——将本国公民空运出境;关闭边境口岸;在美国，禁止或隔离来自中国受影响最严重的湖北省的旅客。

Why has the reaction been so aggressive?

为什么反应如此激烈?

A major factor is the uncertainty surrounding this new virus, says Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

美国国家过敏和传染病研究所所长安东尼·福奇说，一个主要因素是围绕这种新病毒的不确定性。

When it comes to the flu, Fauci said at a news conference Friday, "there's a certainty. I can tell you, 'Guaranteed, that as we get into March and April, the flu cases are going to go down.' You could predict pretty accurately what the range of the mortality is and the hospitalizations."

当谈到流感时，福奇在周五的新闻发布会上说，“这是肯定的。我可以肯定地告诉你，随着进入3月和4月，流感病例将会下降。’你可以非常准确地预测死亡率和住院治疗的范围。”

But health officials don't know how deadly this new virus is. And right now it does seem to be more of a killer than the flu.

但是卫生官员不知道这种新病毒有多致命。现在它似乎比流感更致命。

"For flu one can roughly say that maybe 1 in 1.000 or less of infected people dies," says Christian Althaus, a computational epidemiologist at the University of Bern, Switzerland. "But for this new coronavirus it could well be about 1 percent."

瑞士伯尔尼大学的计算流行病学家克里斯蒂安奥尔索斯说:“对于流感来说，大概每1000个感染者中就有一个或者更少的人死亡。”“但对于这种新型冠状病毒来说，它很可能是1%左右。”

In other words, a death rate that's about ten times greater than the flu's.

换句话说，死亡率是流感的十倍。

But even if the death rate for the new coronavirus turns out to more on par with the flu, Althaus says there's another consideration: If officials could permanently eliminate the flu, they would. The trouble is the flu is already too widespread. By contrast, this new coronavirus has only just started circulating in humans.

但是，即使这种新型冠状病毒的死亡率与流感不相上下，奥尔索斯说，还有另一个考虑:如果官员们能够永久性地消灭这种流感，他们就会这么做。问题是流感已经传播得太广了。相比之下，这种新型冠状病毒才刚刚开始在人类中传播。

"We basically have the opportunity to prevent spread of a new respiratory disease in the first place," says Althaus.

“我们基本上有机会在一开始就阻止一种新的呼吸道疾病的传播，”奥尔索斯说。

Indeed, Althaus notes, nearly 20 years ago the world succeeded in eliminating another coronavirus — the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS — which infected at least 8.000 people globally and killed hundreds.

事实上，奥尔索斯指出，近20年前，世界成功地消灭了另一种冠状病毒，即导致全球至少8000人感染、导致数百人死亡的非典病毒。

That said, he notes an important difference. With SARS, says Althaus, "the majority of infected individuals [did] not transmit the infection at all." Instead the disease mostly spread through what's known as "super-spreader events": Rare cases of people who shed an unusual amount of the virus, for instance. Or particular hospitals that had terrible infection control — such that lots of health workers there got sick and then passed the disease on further.

这就是说，他注意到了一个重要的不同之处。奥尔索斯说，对于SARS，“大多数感染者根本不会传播感染。”相反，这种疾病主要是通过所谓的“超级传播者事件”传播的：例如，罕见的人排出了不同寻常数量的病毒。或者某些医院的感染控制非常糟糕，以至于那里的许多卫生工作者生病了，然后将疾病进一步传播。

"Just a small fraction of infected individuals can infect a lot of additional people — like 10. 20 or 30 people," says Althaus.

奥尔索斯说:“一小部分感染者可以感染很多人，比如10人、20人或30人。”

As scary as that sounds, this pattern of spread is actually easier to contain. With SARS officials were able to put most of their energy into identifying the super-spreading sources.

听起来很可怕，但这种传播模式实际上更容易控制。通过非典，官员们能够把大部分精力投入到识别超级传播源上。

Meanwhile, the latest estimates suggest there could be tens of thousands more infections in China that have not yet been diagnosed.

与此同时，最新的估计显示，中国可能还有数万人尚未确诊。