為什么世界更關(guān)心新型冠狀病毒而不是流感呢

為什么世界更關(guān)心新型冠狀病毒而不是流感呢

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.

與季節(jié)性流感這一更為常見的呼吸道疾病相比，從中國傳播的新型冠狀病毒的感染人數(shù)相形見絀。

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.

全世界每年有多達500萬例嚴重流感病例，數(shù)十萬人死亡。相比之下，迄今為止約有1.7萬例冠狀病毒感染病例，其中大多數(shù)病情較輕。

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，各國政府正采取嚴厲措施應對新的疫情——將本國公民空運出境;關(guān)閉邊境口岸;在美國，禁止或隔離來自中國受影響最嚴重的湖北省的旅客。

Why has the reaction been so aggressive?

為什么反應如此激烈?

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.

美國國家過敏和傳染病研究所所長安東尼·福奇說，一個主要因素是圍繞這種新病毒的不確定性。

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."

當談到流感時，福奇在周五的新聞發(fā)布會上說，“這是肯定的。我可以肯定地告訴你，隨著進入3月和4月，流感病例將會下降。’你可以非常準確地預測死亡率和住院治療的范圍。”

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.

但是衛(wèi)生官員不知道這種新病毒有多致命。現(xiàn)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."

瑞士伯爾尼大學的計算流行病學家克里斯蒂安奧爾索斯說:“對于流感來說，大概每1000個感染者中就有一個或者更少的人死亡。”“但對于這種新型冠狀病毒來說，它很可能是1%左右。”

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

換句話說，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，即使這種新型冠狀病毒的死亡率與流感不相上下，奧爾索斯說，還有另一個考慮:如果官員們能夠永久性地消滅這種流感，他們就會這么做。問題是流感已經(jīng)傳播得太廣了。相比之下，這種新型冠狀病毒才剛剛開始在人類中傳播。

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

“我們基本上有機會在一開始就阻止一種新的呼吸道疾病的傳播，”奧爾索斯說。

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.

事實上，奧爾索斯指出，近20年前，世界成功地消滅了另一種冠狀病毒，即導致全球至少8000人感染、導致數(shù)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.

這就是說，他注意到了一個重要的不同之處。奧爾索斯說，對于SARS，“大多數(shù)感染者根本不會傳播感染。”相反，這種疾病主要是通過所謂的“超級傳播者事件”傳播的：例如，罕見的人排出了不同尋常數(shù)量的病毒。或者某些醫(yī)院的感染控制非常糟糕，以至于那里的許多衛(wèi)生工作者生病了，然后將疾病進一步傳播。

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

奧爾索斯說:“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.

聽起來很可怕，但這種傳播模式實際上更容易控制。通過非典，官員們能夠把大部分精力投入到識別超級傳播源上。

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

與此同時，最新的估計顯示，中國可能還有數(shù)萬人尚未確診。