國家地理:為什么病毒讓我們措手不及(4)

In countries like mine, we might have become inured to the threat of a global pandemic because we saw so many "This Is the Big One" threats flaming out, confined to regions that felt comfortably remote. Except for AIDS, raging epidemics have tended not to go global: SARS in 2003 pretty much stayed in Asia, MERS in 2012 didn't really leave the Middle East, Ebola in 2014 was mostly a West African scourge. As we kept watching ourselves dodge a bullet, it was easy to attribute susceptibility in other countries to behaviors that didn't exist in ours. Most of us didn't ride camels, didn't eat monkeys, didn't handle live bats or civet cats in the marketplace.

身處在美國這樣的國家，我們可能對全球大流行病的威脅已經(jīng)有點(diǎn)無感，因?yàn)榭催^太多“最大疫病來襲”這類雷聲大雨點(diǎn)小的威脅，最后局限在離我們很遙遠(yuǎn)的地方，讓我們感覺不到危險。除了艾滋病，肆虐的流行病往往沒有蔓延到全球：2003年的SARS幾乎完全限于亞洲，2012年的MERS一直留在中東，2014年的埃博拉主要是西非的災(zāi)難。眼看我們每次都逃過一劫，很容易把其他國家的易感染性歸因于一些只存在于那些國家的行為。我們大多數(shù)人不騎駱駝、不吃猴子、不會在市場里接觸活體蝙蝠或果子貍。

This "othering" of the threat has, in many ways, been our undoing all along. In rereading my book recently, I found a sentence that highlights the persistence of this shameful attitude. "Ask a field virologist what constitutes an epidemic worth looking into," I wrote, "and he'll answer with characteristic cynicism, 'The death of one white person.'"

這種把威脅“他者化”的作法，從很多方面來說正是我們?nèi)绱舜嗳醯脑?。我最近重新閱讀自己的書籍時，發(fā)現(xiàn)有一句話凸顯了這種可恥的心態(tài)的持續(xù)存在?！半S便問一個臨床病毒學(xué)者，什么事情會讓一場流行病值得研究？”我寫道：“他會以他們這一行特有的嘲諷態(tài)度告訴你：‘當(dāng)一個白人死去。’”

I've turned my file drawers inside out looking for an old notebook that might contain the name of one such "field virologist," to no avail. But even without that crucial confirmation, I believe in the essential point of that haunting sentence. We've been "othering" away the safety of our species for decades. We're doing it still, fostering an official and personal complacency that ultimately brought humanity to its knees.

我翻遍文件柜，想找一本舊筆記本，里面可能記下了這位“臨床病毒學(xué)者”的名字，卻一無所獲。但即使缺少這個關(guān)鍵證據(jù)，我仍相信這句令人難忘的話所傳達(dá)的核心重點(diǎn)。我們的“他者化”心態(tài)在過去數(shù)十年來持續(xù)危害我們物種的安全，至今我們還在這么做，這助長了政府和個人輕忽大意的態(tài)度，最終讓全人類屈服。