【齐心抗疫】之专家意见：是否该为中国新冠病毒恐慌

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Should you panic about the coronavirus from China? Here’s what the experts say
专家意见：是否该为中国的新冠病毒恐慌？



By EMILY BAUMGAERTNER STAFF WRITER
JAN. 24, 2020

文 | 本报记者 艾米丽·鲍姆格特纳
2020年1月24日

It’s a virus scientists have never seen before. Health officials don’t know exactly where it came from, but it has traveled more than 7,000 miles since it was discovered late last month in central China. New infections are confirmed every day despite an unprecedented quarantine. The death toll is rising, too.

这是一种专家们从未见过的病毒。即使卫生署的官员们并不确定这种病毒究竟源自何地，但在它穿越7000英里抵达美国之前，它就已经出现在了12月末的中国中部。然而即使中国政府建立了空前的检疫隔离区，每天依然有新的病例被确诊感染。同时因该病毒而死亡的人数也在不断地攀升。

                               
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If this were a Hollywood movie, now would be time to panic. In real life, however, all that most Americans need to do is wash their hands and proceed with their usual weekend plans.

如果这是一部好莱坞电影，那现在就该到人人恐慌的情节了。但在现实生活中，多数美国人该做的是勤洗手，然后继续他们的周末计划。

“Don’t panic unless you’re paid to panic,” said Brandon Brown, an epidemiologist at UC Riverside who has studied many deadly outbreaks.

布兰登·布朗告诉我们：“不要恐慌，除非你是被雇来制造恐慌的。”他是加州大学河滨分校的一名流行病学家，曾研究过多起致命病毒爆发事件。

“Public health workers should be on the lookout. The government should be ready to provide resources. Transmitting timely facts to the public is key,” Brown said. “But for everyone else: Breathe.”

“从事公共卫生事业的工作者们需要格外留神，政府同时也应该做好提供相关信息的准备，因为关键是要及时向公众告知真实情况，”布朗强调，“除此之外，一般人无需过于紧张。”

More than three weeks into the outbreak that has spread to at least 1,354 people in 11 countries and territories, scientists have learned some important things about the virus.

距离这场疫情的爆发已经超过三周，它涉及11个国家或地区，危及了至少1354人。目前，针对这一病毒专家们了解到了一些重要的事实：

It is a coronavirus, which makes it a relative of the pathogens that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. Those diseases have sickened thousands of people around the world and caused hundreds of deaths.

Other coronaviruses result in nothing worse than a common cold.

不像其他类型的冠状病毒那样最多只会引起普通流感，这种病毒与“重症急性呼吸综合症”（简称SARS）以及“中东呼吸综合征”（简称MERS）属于同源性冠状病毒，而SARS和MERS曾在世界范围内致病上千人，还造成上百起的死亡病例。

In addition to humans, coronaviruses can sicken cows, pigs, cats, chickens, camels, bats and other animals. Most of the outbreak’s early victims said they had visited a large seafood and live animal market in the Chinese megacity of Wuhan, suggesting that the virus originated in another species before jumping to humans.

冠状病毒的感染对象除了人类，还包括牛、猪、猫、鸡、骆驼、蝙蝠和其他动物。这场疫情的早期受害者大多表示自己曾去过中国特大城市之一武汉的一家大型海鲜活物市场，说明在这种病毒传染到人类身上之前，它曾寄宿在其他物种之上。

When experts examined the organism’s genetic code, they found a sequence that was entirely new to science. That means many people have not had a chance to develop sufficient natural immunity to the coronavirus that has been dubbed 2019-nCoV — an important consideration since vaccines take years to develop.

当专家们检查这种有机体的遗传密码时，他们发现了一个对于科学界而言全新的基因序列。这意味着许多人是没有机会自体培养出足够的天然免疫力来抵抗这种被称为“2019-nCoV”的冠状病毒的。这种说法来源于多年研制疫苗的经验。

Fortunately, the virus seems to cause only minor symptoms — such as fever and difficulty with breathing — in people who are young and healthy. Most of the 41 deaths tied to the coronavirus to date have been in people who were at least 50 years old with underlying medical problems or weakened immune systems, Chinese officials said.

幸运的是，这种病毒似乎只会导致青壮年人群出现较为轻微的症状，例如发烧和呼吸困难。在该病毒造成的41起死亡病例中，大多数患者的年龄至少都在50岁以上并且有潜在的健康隐患或是较为脆弱的免疫系统，中国官方表示。

“We don’t have evidence yet to suggest this is any more virulent than the flu you see in the U.S. each year,” said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiology researcher at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Most people, with proper medical attention, will do just fine.”

“我们还没有证据表明这种病毒会比美国每年都有的流感更致命，”迈克尔·米纳博士，一名来自哈佛大学陈冯富珍公共卫生学院的流行病学研究专员说道，“只要有合理的健康意识，大多数人都会没事的。”

In fact, it’s possible that hundreds or even thousands of people in China and elsewhere have been infected but have had such mild reactions that no one even noticed, said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some might have fought off the bug without showing any outward symptoms at all.

约翰·霍普金斯大学布隆博格公共卫生学院健康安全中心的负责人汤姆·英格勒斯比博士如此告诉我们：事实上，在中国或是其他地区，可能已有成百上千的感染者，但因症状不明显而无人注意。甚至可能有些人已经战胜了这个疾病却根本没有显现任何外露的症状。

“It’s too soon to know,” Inglesby said. “Often in new outbreaks, the most serious or severe cases are recognized first,” and that may result in a skewed picture of just how dangerous the virus truly is.

“现在下结论还为时过早，”英格勒斯比认为，“通常在新疫情爆发的时候，最早发现的会是最严重的病例。”这就可能使公众误以为这个病毒真如最重症病例那般可怕。

Epidemiologists are also trying to nail down when the new coronavirus gained the ability to jump directly from human to human. More than 85% of patients identified in the past week said they had not visited the Wuhan market that is believed to be ground zero for the outbreak. (The market is now closed.)

同时，流行病学家也在想尽办法弄清这种新型冠状病毒是什么时候开始变成可以直接人传人的。在过去的一周内，超过85%的确诊患者都表示自己并没有去过那个被认为是疫情始发地的武汉市场。（目前这个市场处于关停状态）。

“It is clear the growing outbreak is no longer due to ongoing exposures at the Huanan seafood market,” according to the latest situation report from the World Health Organization.

根据来自世界卫生组织最新的情况汇报：“很明显，目前正处于上升期的疫情爆发已经不能归因于与武汉海鲜市场的持续性接触。”

Patients in Guangdong province have spread the virus to family members who had not traveled to Wuhan, which is about 600 miles away. The WHO also reports a few cases of hospital employees and other healthcare workers becoming sick after treating infected patients.

广东省境内被确诊的患者已经将这一病毒传染给了他们从未去武汉旅游过的家人——这两地之间相隔约有600英里左右。同时，世界卫生组织也报道了几起医务人员和其他医疗卫生工作者因治疗确诊患者而感染的事件。

                               
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Public health officials said they expect to see human-to-human transmissions continue in the short term. That means new cases are sure to emerge throughout Asia, and even in the United States.
公共卫生官方表示，他们预计短时间内人传人的现象将会持续。这也就意味着在整个亚洲甚至是在美国必定会出现新的病例。

Information is spreading faster than the pathogen — and that’s just as novel.
信息传递的速度可比病原体传递的还快——这正是新奇之处。

The 2003 SARS outbreak that began in China’s Guangdong province in 2002 sickened 8,098 people and killed 774 in 29 countries by the time it ended in 2003. But in the outbreak’s early days, the Chinese government obfuscated the number of cases, hindering foreign leaders’ efforts to help citizens’ ability to protect themselves. The resulting public backlash prompted the dismissals of the country’s health minister and mayor of Beijing.
2003年的SARS于2002年在中国的广东省开始爆发，这场疫情到在2003年结束为止席卷了29个国家，有8098人感染，774人死亡。在疫情爆发之初，中国政府有意瞒报了SARS感染者的数量，抑制了其他国家领导人保护本国公民免受SARS危害的能力。结果，公众的强烈反对使得国家卫生部部长和北京市长下台。

This time around, Chinese officials have moved swiftly to alert other countries to the outbreak’s developments. They’ve also shared the virus’ genetic sequence, which can help epidemiologists track its spread and make predictions about what it might do next.
这一次，中国官方行动迅速，马上就警示其他国家关于疫情爆发的情况。中国官方还分享了病毒的基因组序列，从而帮助流行病学家们追踪病毒的传播范围并预测病毒之后的变化。

“This is definitely not 2003,” said Rebecca Katz, the director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University. “The speed with which this virus was identified is testament to that.”
“这已经不是2003年了”，乔治城大学全球健康科学中心的主任丽贝卡·卡茨说道，“把这种病毒鉴定出来的速度就是有力的证明。”

Within 24 hours of receiving the coronavirus’s genome, the CDCprogrammed a real-time diagnostic test called an RT-PCR assay, said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the agency’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The tool quickly confirmed that a man in Washington state and a woman in Chicago were infected with 2019-nCoV and not some other pneumonia-causing virus. Other institutions around the world have used the genetic code to design similar tests.
美国国家免疫与呼吸道疾病防控中心机构的主任南希·梅森尼尔说，在获得了冠状病毒基因组的24小时内，美国疾病防控中心（CDC）就研发出了一种叫做RT-PCR技术①的即时检测手段。该技术迅速确认了一名华盛顿州男性和一名芝加哥女性感染了新型冠状病毒而不是其他导致肺炎的病毒。世界各地的其他机构也利用病毒的基因序列来研发类似的检测手段。

That leads to another reason to avoid alarm: The rapidly rising case counts may be deceiving you. Before these new tools were developed, doctors had no surefire way to confirm a case of 2019-nCoV. That means that, as testing becomes available, infections appear to skyrocket.
这就是无需恐慌的另一个理由：病例数量的快速增长可能会欺骗你。在这些新检测手段开发出来前，医生并不能确诊患者感染新型冠状病毒。这也就意味着一旦有相应的检测手段，感染病例的数量会猛然激增。

“You’ll see a spike of 300 cases, but maybe those 300 were there all along,” Mina said. “This might not reflect a growing epidemic as much as it reflects better detection.”
“你将会看到感染病例突然增加了300起，但是这300个或许是早已存在的”，迈纳说道，“这反映出更好的检测手段，却不代表能反映出病例的切实增长情况。”

Until they have a better count of the number of people infected, experts can’t calculate the coronavirus’s death rate. And since viruses are capable of mutating quickly, much of the information scientists have gathered may only be temporarily accurate.
直到有了更确切的感染人数，专家们才能计算出冠状病毒的致死率。而且因为病毒能迅速变异，所以科学家们获得的许多信息可能都只是暂时准确的。

“In any evolving outbreak, you need to make response decisions with imperfect information,” Katz said.
卡茨说：“在任何疫情爆发时，你需要利用不那么完美的信息做出负责任的决定。”

Mina said he has “absolute faith” in the CDC’s ability to stay on top of the situation. The health agency alerted doctors in early January to be on the lookout for patients who might have the virus, and last week it began screening passengers at U.S. airports that receive flights from Wuhan.
迈纳说，他有绝对的信心，相信美国疾病防控中心有能力掌控局势。卫生机构在一月初告诫医生监测可能携带病毒的患者，而在上周，有接收武汉航班的美国机场开始监测乘客。

But the CDC isn’t running the show, and questions still abound about global preparedness. On Thursday, WHO officials said the outbreak did not rise to the level of “a global health emergency,” but that “it may yet become one.”
然而，美国疾病防控中心并没有掌控好局势，并且全球应对疫情所做的准备依旧存在问题。世界卫生组织在周四表示，疫情爆发还没有上升到“全球突发卫生事件”的地步，然而“这或许将成为事实”。

Dr. Guan Yi is almost certain that it will. Yi, an infectious disease expert at the University of Hong Kong, told reporters that even the drastic quarantine measures affecting 36 million people in and around Wuhan won’t be enough to keep the coronavirus from spreading because the Chinese government acted too late.
管轶医生几乎确定将会如此。他是香港大学的传染病专家。他告诉记者，因为中国政府反应不及时，所以即使武汉及其附近的360万人都受严格的隔离措施影响，也不足以阻止冠状病毒的传播。

Yi also said he visited markets in Wuhan after the outbreak began and was dismayed by the lack of hygiene he observed there. Though he has put his expertise to use to fight SARS and several influenza outbreaks involving novel strains from birds and pigs, this is the first time he has felt hopeless, he said.
管轶还表示，他曾在疫情爆发后前往武汉的市场，并失望的发现那里依然缺乏卫生保障。他说，虽然自己曾有用专业知识抗击SARS及几起源于禽类和猪的新型流感的经历，但这是首次感觉到无助。

Indeed, Mina said some pathogens prove to outsmart even the world’s best public health agencies — and when they’ve never been seen before, they have a competitive advantage.
迈纳承认，有些病原体确实甚至让世界上最好的公共卫生机构都头疼。而且如果这些病原体之前从未被发现，那它们在这场抗争中占有优势。

“Something as horrific as Ebola can seem better than this, because we’ve had years to understand it. At least we would really know the beast we’re up against,” he said. “As humans, we are always fearful of the unknown.”
“恐怖如埃博拉的疫情似乎也比这次好，因为我们已经花了不少年月去了解它，至少我们充分认识到了自己所面对的东西”，他表示，“我们人类对未知事物总是感到害怕。”

Times staff writer Richard Read contributed to this report from Seattle.
《洛杉矶时报》特约撰稿理查德·里德在西雅图为您报道。

注释：
①该技术可以用来检测RNA病毒

文章来源：https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-01-24/china-coronavirus-panic

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penz

恐慌有什么用？小心注意要紧

joooo99

注意自身的防护很重要