It’s deadly serious; so even if the current threat fades, the world needs to be better armed
情况极其严重；因此即便眼下的威胁消除整个世界都需要更有效地做好应对准备。
IT IS said that no battle-plan survives contact with the enemy. This was certainly true of the plan drawn up over the past few years to combat an influenza pandemic. The generals of global health assumed that the enemy would be avian flu, probably passed from hens to humans, and that it would strike first in southern China or South-East Asia. In fact, the flu started in an unknown pig, and the attack came in Mexico, not Asia.
据说任何一份作战计划接敌后就作废了。过去几年中制定的应对流感大规模爆发的计划毫无疑问就是这样。统帅全球卫生的将军们设想敌人将是可能是由鸡只传染给人类的禽流感，并且认为它将首先在华南地区或东南亚爆发。事实上，这场流感源自某一头猪，并首先在墨西哥爆发，而非亚洲。
The hens, though, deserve some credit. The world has not had a pandemic (a global epidemic) of influenza since 1968. Four decades are long enough to forget that something is dangerous, and people might have done so had they not spent the past ten years considering the possibility that a form of bird flu which emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 might be one mutation away from going worldwide.
鸡只们则应该得到表扬。上一次流感作为世界性大规模流行病（全球性的传染病流行）爆发还要追溯到1968年。四十年时间足以久到让人忘记危险的存在，要不是人们过去十年中一直在思考一种最先于1997年在香港出现的禽流感病毒变异后在全球爆发的可能性的话，人们确实可能忘记这样的危险。
The new epidemic (see article) was raised on April 29th to just one notch below the level of a certified pandemic by the World Health Organisation. In an effort to halt the spread of the disease, Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has announced that non-essential services should close down between May 1st and 5th, and people should stay at home.
Part of the reason for worry is that, unlike ordinary flu, which mostly carries off the old, the victims of this disease are mostly young and otherwise healthy.
世界卫生组织于4月29日将这场新的大规模传染病（见文章）的威胁等级提高到只比世卫组织确证的世界性大规模流行病低一级的程度。为了防止疾病的传播，墨西哥总统费利佩•卡尔德隆已经宣布非必要的服务设施应该在5月1日-5日间关闭，而人们应该呆在家里。这样做的部分原因是因为人们担心，与普通流感一般夺去老年人生命不同，这种疾病的受害者主要是年轻人和无其他疾病者。
Still, this epidemic has not actually killed many people yet. That there have been a mere handful of confirmed deaths is probably the result of a lack of proper tests. But even if all the possibles are counted in, a couple of hundred fatalities cannot compare with the 30,000 deaths caused in America each year by seasonal influenza. So how scared should we be?
尽管如此，被这场传染病夺去生命的人实际上还不算多。仅有少数几个病人被确认为死于这一疾病，不过这可能是缺少适当的检查造成的。但即便将所有可能性都计算在内，几百例死亡无法跟美国每年死于季节性流感的三万人相提并论。那么我们应该对这一疾病有多害怕呢？
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
不该怕，也该怕
As far as this epidemic is concerned, it’s too early to tell. One unknown is how widespread the virus is in Mexico. If it is ubiquitous, and had not been noticed earlier because it emerged during the normal flu season, then this epidemic may turn out to be insignificant, at least to start with. No flu death is welcome, but in this case the new disease might not increase the immediate burden greatly. But if the new strain is relatively rare, or what is being seen now is a more dangerous mutation of what had once been a mild virus, then the proportion of infected people dying may already be high. The death-toll, then, will rise sharply as the disease spreads.
就这场传染病来说，现在就下结论还为时过早。目前还不知道这种病毒在墨西哥的传播范围有多广。如果病毒无处不在，且未能较早引起注意是因为它是在
正常的流感季节爆发，那么或许结果将证明这场传染病并不严重，至少刚开始的时候是这样。流感造成的死亡固然不幸，但在上述情况下这种新疾病或许不会立刻造成死亡人数大幅上升。但是如果这种新病毒毒株相对少见，或者我们现在发现的是一种以前较温和的病毒变异后产生的更危险的新病毒的话，那么染病患者中濒临死亡的病人所占的比例或许已经处于较高水平。这样一来，死亡人数将随着疾病的传播而急遽上升。
Either way, the authorities were right to hit red alert. Influenza pandemics seem to strike every few decades and to kill by the million—at least 1m in 1968; perhaps 100m in the “Spanish” flu of 1918-19. And even those that start mild can turn dangerous. That is because new viral diseases generally happen when a virus mutates in a way that allows it to jump species, and then continues to evolve to exploit its new host. If that evolution makes the virus more virulent, so much the worse for the host. HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, lived happily and benignly in chimpanzees before it became a scourge of people. In Mexico, the early indications are that two pig viruses that can infect people but rarely pass from person to person recombined with each other to create a virus which does so easily.
无论上述两种情况中的哪一种，各国当局启动红色警报都是正确的。流感的世界性大规模爆发似乎每隔几十年就会出现一次，每次都夺走上百万人的生命—— 1968年至少有一百万人死于流感；1918-19年的“西班牙”流感的死亡人数更是可能高达1亿人。而即便是那些爆发之初较温和的流感也可能变得危险。这是因为病毒性疾病一般发生在病毒的宿主从某个物种跳跃到另一个物种，继而进化以利用新宿主的方式变异之后。如果这种进化增强病毒毒性，对宿主的危害也就越大。人体免疫缺损病毒是引起艾滋病的病毒，这种病毒祸害人类之前就在黑猩猩身上愉快而无害地存在着。在墨西哥出现的早期迹象是两种存在于猪身上的可传染给人类但很少在人类之间传播的病毒相互结合从而产生了一种能轻易实现人际传播的新病毒。
Changes in virulence have certainly happened before in influenza epidemics, which have struck in successive waves of different severity.
The message is that it makes sense to put money and effort into containing the new infection even if it does turn out to be relatively harmless today. The more people who have the virus, the more virus particles there are for that one, fatal mutation to appear in.
病毒毒性改变肯定也存在于以前的大规模流感爆发，这些一波接一波袭来的大规模流感爆发的严重程度则各不相同。这其中包含的经验教训是即便眼下的疾病结果确实被证明相对来说危害性不大，也应该投入资金和精力来遏制这场新的传染病。感染该病毒的人数越多，就会有越多的病毒颗粒，它们累积在一起引发最后那次致命变异的几率也就越大。
Resistance is another reason to try to contain an epidemic early. New antiviral drugs that were not around during past epidemics seem to be effective against the current outbreak. But natural selection is a powerful force, and if the spread of the disease means they have to be used widely, a resistant strain of the virus could easily evolve.
病毒抗药性是要努力及早控制这场传染病的另一个原因。过去几次流感大流行时还未问世的新型的抗病毒药物似乎对抗击现在这场流感爆发是有效的。但是自然选择是一种强大的力量，而如果疾病的传播意味着这些药物将被广泛使用的话，一种具有抗药性的病毒毒株可能将轻易地进化出来。
Don’t wait till winter
别等到冬天
Now is the time to prepare for the worst. Flu—including pandemic flu—tends to be seasonal. The infection will probably tail off in the north over the next few months and head south as winter gets a grip on the Earth’s less populated hemisphere. It would make sense, therefore, to put the antiviral factories on overtime immediately, and try to develop, manufacture and distribute a vaccine.
现在就应该为最坏的状况做准备。流感——包括世界性大规模爆发的流感——一般是季节性的。未来的几个月内，这场传染病有可能在北半球减弱，并随着地球人口较为稀少的南半球进入冬天而往南迁徙。因此，明智的做法是生产抗病毒药物的厂家应立即开足马力加班加点地生产，并且努力研发、生产和分发疫苗。
Crash vaccine programmes pose their own risks. In 1976 flu vaccines killed a lot of people in America. But the growth of biotechnology means there are new ways of making vaccines and new types of vaccine to make. Mostly, these have been aimed at the threat of bird flu. But laboratories will already be clearing the decks to receive their first samples of the new swine flu, and getting to work on countermeasures.
速成的疫苗计划也有其风险。1976年美国有很多人接种流感疫苗后死亡。但是生物科技的进步意味着现在有生产疫苗的新方法，并且将有新型的疫苗问世。它们主要是以应付禽流感威胁为目标。不过一些实验室已经开始着手准备接收新的猪流感样本，从而着手研发反制措施。
And there is one further lesson. The system of checking for new diseases also needs to be improved. Partly because everyone was looking at Asia, no one was concentrating on Mexico. But as genetic sequencing becomes cheap and routine, it ought to be possible to pick dangerous mutations up quickly.
还有另外一个经验教训。搜寻新型疾病的系统也需要得到改善。这部分是因为大家都紧盯着亚洲，却没有人关注墨西哥。而随着基因排序成本降低并越来越普遍，应该有可能快速地找出危险的变异。
That would mean sending samples from doctors’ surgeries to a central laboratory dedicated to sequencing, even when nothing strange was suspected. And that would require organisation and money. Not every person with a sniffle need be tested—only a small, representative sample. But if this had happened in Mexico over the past few months, the generals of global health would have seen that something was coming down from the hills and they could have mobilised sooner.
这将意味着即便在没人怀疑有任何异样的情况下，也需要把样本从医生的手术室送到一个专门从事基因排序的中心实验室。这将需要组织和资金。不是每个流鼻涕的人都需要接受检查——只要有一小份具有代表性的样本就行了。但是如果过去几个月里墨西哥拥有这样的条件，统率世界卫生的将军们就能发现有危险逼近并且更快地动员起来。
Active caution, then, is what is called for. The world’s policymakers, most of whom live in the northern hemisphere, should not be fooled into thinking the new virus is going away for long, even if it declines over the next few months. Instead, as in any phoney war, they should use the time they have been granted to reinforce the world’s defences by stocking up with antiviral medicine and making vaccines. They should also remember that, even if this flu turns out to be less frightening than feared, it is only a matter of time before a deadlier one comes along. A drill today will help to spare millions of lives in the future.
因此，主动提高警惕已经得到呼吁。即便新病毒在未来几个月内威力减弱，世界各国的政策制定者们——他们大多数来自北半球——也不应该愚蠢地认为它在很长一段时间内都不会卷土重来。相反，就像在任何一场静坐战争中一样，他们应该利用获得的宝贵时间通过贮存抗病毒药物和研发疫苗来加固全球卫生的防御。他们还应该牢记，即便这场流感不如人们之前害怕的那样令人恐惧，一场更加致命的流感迟早会来。今天的厉兵秣马将在未来挽救数百万人的生命。
