[2023-01-02] 经济学人 - 武汉肺炎正在席卷中国
![]() As cases surge, the country says it will end its isolation
随着病例激增，该国表示将结束隔离
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After nearly three years of self-imposed isolation, China is opening up again. The domestic travel restrictions, mass-testing requirements and draconian lockdowns of the “zero-covid” policy were scrapped in early December. On January 8th China will reopen its borders, too. People arriving from abroad will no longer have to quarantine. More flights into China will be allowed. Visas will be granted to business travellers and students (though not yet to tourists). And Chinese nationals will be allowed to travel abroad without needing to provide the authorities with a reason.
经过近三年的自我隔离，中国再次开放。国内旅行限制、大规模检测要求和严格的“动态清零”政策封锁已于 12 月初取消。1 月 8 日中国将重新开放边境来自国外的人将不再需要隔离。将允许更多航班进入中国。将向商务旅客和学生（但尚未向游客提供签证）发放签证。中国公民将被允许出国旅行而无需提供当局有理由。
But for a sense of how much the covid situation in China has changed look at Japan and India. They are now demanding that incoming Chinese travellers take a covid test first. In the span of a couple of months, China has gone from being a country with an incredibly small number of infections to, perhaps, the world’s largest covid hotspot.
但要了解中国的武汉肺炎情况发生了多大变化，请看看日本和印度。他们现在要求入境的中国游客首先进行武汉肺炎测试。在几个月的时间里，中国已经从一个感染人数极少的国家变成了一个，也许是世界上最大的武汉肺炎热点国家。
It is hard to gauge how many Chinese people have been infected so far. The central government is probably modelling the outbreak, but the data it releases to the public are useless. It had been reporting only a few thousand new cases a day, nowhere near the real number. Some regional governments have provided more plausible estimates. Officials in Zhejiang, a wealthy eastern province with a population of about 65m, said on December 25th that they were seeing 1m new infections a day. They expect that number to double by around the new year.
很难估计到目前为止有多少中国人被感染。中央政府可能正在模拟疫情，但它向公众发布的数据是没有用的。它每天只报告几千个新病例，远不及实际数字。一些地方政府提供了更合理的估计。浙江是一个拥有约 6500 万人口的东部富裕省份，其官员在 12 月 25 日表示，他们在新的一年里每天都会看到 100 万新感染病例。
Most of China’s population has never been exposed to covid and many old people are undervaccinated. So while the Omicron variant of the virus will cause relatively mild symptoms in most people, a large number of Chinese are still vulnerable to severe illness. The country’s weak health-care system is already under huge pressure. At a hospital in Beijing your correspondent saw elderly patients breathing from oxygen tanks on gurneys that spilled out into packed corridors and waiting rooms. Videos circulating online show similar scenes across China. There have been reports of patients being turned away from hospitals in smaller cities owing to a lack of beds. Officials say there are around 10 intensive-care unit (icu) beds per 100,000 people in the country, well below what is needed. Medical staff are in short supply, too. A health official has warned that some regions are approaching the “critical point” in icu-bed supply.
中国大部分人口从未接触过武汉肺炎病毒，许多老年人未接种疫苗。因此，虽然该病毒的 Omicron 变种会导致大多数人出现相对较轻的症状，但仍有大量中国人容易患重病。国家的健康状况不佳- 医疗系统已经承受巨大压力。在北京的一家医院，你的记者看到老年患者躺在轮床上呼吸着氧气罐，这些患者溢出到拥挤的走廊和候诊室。网上流传的视频显示中国各地类似的场景。有报道称患者由于缺乏床位而被小城市的医院拒之门外。官员们表示，该国每 10 万人约有 10 张重症监护病房 (icu) 床位，远低于需要。医务人员也供不应求一位卫生官员警告说，一些地区正在接近加护病床供应的“临界点”。
Drugs used to treat covid are in high demand. Many pharmacies have run out of fever medicine and painkillers. Paxlovid, an antiviral that helps prevent severe sickness, is especially sought after. Prices of the drug have surged; many hospitals are reportedly short of it. Some have sought unauthorised versions of Paxlovid sent in from abroad. Meanwhile, WeChat, a ubiquitous messaging app, has launched a function that tries to connect individuals in need of fever drugs and other supplies with those who have them.
用于治疗武汉肺炎的药物需求量很大。许多药店已经用完了退烧药和止痛药。一种有助于预防重病的抗病毒药物Paxlovid尤其受到追捧。药物价格飙升；一些人寻求未经授权的Paxlovid版本从国外寄来。与此同时，无处不在的消息应用程序微信推出了一项功能，试图将需要退烧药和其他用品的人与拥有这些物品的人联系起来。
According to the government, only 13 people have died from covid so far in December. The real toll is undoubtedly much higher. China only counts as covid deaths those who die from respiratory failure or pneumonia. But the virus often causes death by damaging other organs. (Britain, for example, counts anyone who dies after recently testing positive for the virus as a covid death.) China’s crematoriums are busy. Police have been stationed outside one in Beijing that has attracted reporters. Earlier this month Airfinity, a London-based data firm, estimated that over 5,000 people were probably dying of covid in China every day. Our model predicts that in a worst-case scenario 1.5m Chinese people will die from the virus in the coming months.
据政府统计，12 月至今只有 13 人死于武汉肺炎。实际死亡人数无疑要高得多。中国只将死于呼吸衰竭或肺炎的人算作武汉肺炎死亡。但病毒往往通过损害其他器官而导致死亡（例如，英国将最近病毒检测呈阳性后死亡的人计为武汉肺炎死亡。）中国的火葬场很忙。警察在北京火葬场外驻守，吸引了记者。本月早些时候，总部位于伦敦的 Airfinity数据公司估计，中国每天可能有超过 5,000 人死于武汉肺炎。我们的模型预测，在最坏的情况下，未来几个月将有 150 万中国人死于该病毒。
In China, as elsewhere, vaccination is the best tool for reducing mortality. Three shots of a Chinese vaccine provide reasonable protection against severe illness and death. But, as of late November, only 40% of those aged over 80 had received three shots. Some were jabbed so long ago that the effectiveness of the vaccine will be wearing off. As cases surged in early December, China stepped up its efforts. The average number of doses administered went up from under 1m per day to over 3m on December 21st. But since then the campaign appears to have slowed again. More effective foreign vaccines are still banned.
在中国，与其他地方一样，疫苗接种是降低死亡率的最佳工具。接种三针中国疫苗可提供针对严重疾病和死亡的合理保护。但截至 11 月下旬，只有 40% 的 80 岁以上老年人接种了三针疫苗。有些疫苗打得太久了，疫苗的效力会逐渐减弱。随着12月初病例激增，中国加大力度，平均接种剂量从每天不到100万剂增加到12月21日的300万剂以上。但从那以后，这场运动似乎再次放缓。更有效的外国疫苗仍然被禁止。
China could have done more to prepare for this moment, by stockpiling drugs, administering vaccines with more urgency and producing treatment guidelines. Now officials are trying to spin the situation. They have renamed the disease caused by the virus from the “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to the milder sounding “novel coronavirus infection”. At a news conference on December 27th Li Bin of the National Health Commission said that China is “fighting a battle that we prepared for. We’re absolutely not just passively letting go.”
中国本可以为这一刻做更多的准备，通过储备药物、更紧迫地接种疫苗和制定治疗指南。现在官员们正在试图扭转局势。他们把病毒引起的疾病从“新型冠状病毒肺炎”改名为“新型冠状病毒感染”。12 月 27 日，国家卫健委李斌在新闻发布会上表示，中国正在“打一场有备而来的仗，绝不会被动放手”。
But a hint of how poorly things are going can be detected in the actions of China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping. When the virus was under control, Mr Xi was hailed as the “commander-in-chief” of the “people’s war” on covid. He spoke often about the need to persevere with zero-covid. Since cases began to surge, though, he has remained largely quiet, making only oblique references to the outbreak. On December 26th he said the country’s “epidemic prevention and control faces new circumstances and new tasks”. That is something of an understatement.
但从中国最高领导人习近平的行动中可以看出事情进展有多么糟糕。他以前经常说要坚持动态清零，但自从病例开始激增以来，他基本上保持沉默，只是间接提及疫情。12月26日，他说国家“疫情防控面临新形势和新任务”。
As the number of infections shot up in early December, the streets of Beijing and other large cities emptied. Now they are slowly filling up again. But the epidemic is far from over. In the coming weeks millions of people will travel back to their home towns for the lunar new year. They will spread the virus into rural areas with threadbare health systems. There are likely to be multiple waves of the virus. As bad as things are today in China, the real test is yet to come.■
随着 12 月初感染人数激增，北京和其他大城市的街道空无一人。现在他们又慢慢填满了。但疫情远未结束。未来几周，数百万人将返回家园农历新年的城镇。他们将病毒传播到卫生系统破旧的农村地区。可能会出现多波病毒。尽管中国今天的情况很糟糕，但真正的考验还没有到来。■标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。欢迎爱国红狼们去肏下面这几个他们的妈![]() ![]() ![]() [ 此貼被津味杂谈在2023-01-02 11:09重新編輯 ]
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