The Fear Equation

By Michael Specter

∷管利民 选注

In early March of 2003, when SARS1. SARS: 非典型性肺炎，一种由SARS冠状病毒引起的急性呼吸道传染病。swept into Hong Kong from Southern China, the streets of one of the world’s most densely populated areas were practically deserted. Venders in kiosks sold face masks and hand sanitizer to anyone brave,2. kiosk: 户外报刊亭；hand sanitizer: 洗手液。or foolish, enough to leave home. The fear of a new highly contagious disease is understandable, and, with no effective treatment or vaccine for SARS, it was dif ficult to know what to do. The World Health Organization recommended that of ficials in the countries most affected warn people with a fever to stay off international flights. Hong Kong went further, using infrared scanners and thermometers to take the temperature of more than thirty-six million passengers as they arrived.3. infrared scanner: 红外扫描仪；thermometer: 温度计。Nineteen hundred and twentyone of them had a fever, and forty were admitted to the hospital.None developed SARS. (Canada and Singapore also scanned arriving passengers. Neither country found anyone with SARS.)

In October, 2014, the Obama Administration announced that, at five major U.S. airports, passengers arriving from Liberia, Guinea,and Sierra Leone will be checked for fever.4. Liberia: 利比里亚；Guinea: 几内亚；Sierra Leone: 塞拉利昂。以上三个均为西非国家。That measure isn’t likely to be any more effective at detecting the Ebola virus5. Ebola virus: 埃博拉病毒，以首次爆发该疫情的非洲刚果民主共和国埃博拉河命名。罹患此病者有高达50%至90%的致死率。目前尚未辨认出任何有能力在病症爆发时存活的动物宿主，也未有任何疫苗被证实有效。than it was at finding SARS. Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to receive a diagnosis of Ebola in the United States, died not long ago, in Dallas. But before he left Liberia, as part of a routine scan at the Monrovia airport, a technician who had been trained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took his temperature with a type of infrared thermometer that had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.6. Monrovia: 蒙罗维亚（利比里亚首都）；Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 疾病防控中心；Food and Drug Administration: 美国食品和药物管理局。Duncan had no fever, which isn’t surprising, as it can take as long as three weeks for Ebola to cause symptoms (and until people develop symptoms they are not contagious).7. 邓肯没有发热症状，这不足为奇，因为埃博拉病毒的潜伏期往往长达三周，在此期间，病毒携带者并无传染性。Senator Charles E. Schumer, of New York, said, “Taking temperatures and learning more about passengers coming here from West Africa will provide another necessary line of defense against this epidemic.8. 对那些来自西非的入境者，测试体温，掌握更多相关的信息，是遏制埃博拉疫情蔓延的一道必要防线。When it comes to Ebola, you can’t be too careful. As we saw in Dallas, all it takes is one case to discombobulate9. discombobulate: 扰乱。an entire city.”

2014年10月8日，美国第一例埃博拉患者不治身亡。关于埃博拉的第一波恐慌在全美蔓延开来。不久，第二例、第三例埃博拉病例接踵而至，在世界范围内也引发了对疫情蔓延扩大的担忧。面对这种严峻的形势，也许人们只有直面内心恐惧，才能最终度过这次难关。

Actually, all it takes to discombobulate a city is a few irrational decisions and some irresponsible statements.10. 事实上，仅是一些非理性的决策和不负责任的言论就可以扰乱一个城市。Several politicians, like Governor Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana, have turned the epidemic into fodder for their campaign to halt immigration.11. fodder: 素材；halt: 使停止。Jindal, and others, have suggested that we ought to simply close our borders to people coming from West Africa.That would only increase the isolation of countries that have already been devastated and make it harder to deliver essential aid there. As Bruce Aylward, the assistant director general of the W.H.O., has pointed out, travel bans make the world sicker, not safer. He said recently, “The more dif ficulty you have with travel and trade, the harder it is to have an appropriate response.” He added, “which means this disease is getting more and more ahead of us.”

Fear is not a weakness; it’s how people respond to danger. Unless it is calibrated properly, however,fear quickly turns into panic, and panic moves faster than any virus.12. 除非能正视对埃博拉的恐惧，否则，恐惧会变成恐慌，而恐慌蔓延的速度将远甚于病毒。calibrate: 调整，校准。Diseases that get the most attention and cause the greatest anxiety are rarely those which claim the most lives. Malaria, tuberculosis,and H.I.V. have killed hundreds of thousands of people this year.13. malaria: 疟疾；tuberculosis: 肺结核。H.I.V.:人类免疫缺陷病毒，该病毒破坏人体的免疫能力，导致各种疾病及癌症得以在人体内生存，发展到最后，导致艾滋病（获得性免疫缺陷综合征）。Fewer than a thousand people died in the 2003 SARS epidemic, but a report by the National Academy of Sciences14. National Academy of Sciences: 美国国家科学院，1863年3月3日由林肯总统签署法案创立，是民间的、非营利的、科学家的荣誉性自治组织，其下不设科研机构。notes that its cost to the global economy—not only in medical expenditures but in lost trade, productivity, and investment—was almost forty billion dollars.

At least four thousand people have already died of Ebola,the economic impact of the epidemic has been calamitous15. calamitous: 灾难性的。,and every day the numbers get worse. But we need to stop acting as if the tragedy unfolding in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone could happen here on anything like the same scale. There will be more cases of Ebola in the United States, but unless something remarkably unlikely develops, such as a mutation16. mutation: 突变。that makes it easier for the virus to spread, the epidemic can be stopped. Ebola is dif ficult to contract, and although viruses mutate constantly, once they are established in humans they do not generally alter their mode of transmission.

That message is not getting through. According to a Harris poll17. Harris poll: 美国哈里斯民意调查。taken just before Duncan’s diagnosis, forty per cent of Americans believed that Ebola represented a major or a moderate threat to public health in the United States. Thirtyseven per cent thought that the H1N118. H1N1: 甲型H1N1流感病毒，主要为呼吸道传播。2009年3至4月，墨西哥爆发疫潮，百多人感染，随后传播到全世界。据美国CDC估计，截至2010年3月，已致5,900万美国人染病，12,000人死亡。in fluenza epidemic of 2009 posed a similar threat. The two outbreaks are not comparable. H1N1 infected about twenty per cent of the world’s population, including sixty million Americans. A catastrophe was averted owing solely to a biological fluke: the death rate of those infected was unusually low—there were more than twelve thousand fatalities in the U.S.,19. owe to: 由于； fluke: 侥幸；fatality: 死亡者，死亡事故。but that is far fewer than die from the flu in most years.

Our response to pandemics—whether SARS, avian in fluenza,MERS, or Ebola—has become predictable.20. pandemics: 流行病；avian in fluenza: 禽流感；MERS: 中东呼吸综合征（Middle East Respiratory Syndrome ）。因和造成SARS的病毒相似，故俗称新SARS，2012年9月发现于一位曾经去过沙特阿拉伯的卡塔尔病患身上。First, there is the panic.Then, as the pandemic ebbs21. ebb: 衰退。, we forget. We can’t afford to do either.This epidemic won’t be over soon, but that is even more reason to focus on what works. Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone all need more money, more health-care workers, and more troops to help coordinate relief efforts.22. 利比里亚、加纳和塞拉利昂，都需要更多的资金，更多的医护人员，更多的部队帮助开展救援工作。relief efforts:救灾工作。In the short term, the only way to halt the epidemic is with better infection-control measures. In Senegal and Nigeria,two countries where poverty and health problems are pervasive, the most basic such measures—contact tracing, quarantine, and proper protections for health workers—seem to have had a positive effect.23. Senegal: 塞内加尔，西非国家；Nigeria:尼日利亚，西非国家；pervasive: 普遍的；contact tracing: 接触者追踪；quarantine: 检疫，隔离。(Part of the success in Nigeria is also due to the fact that of ficials made an enormous effort to keep the virus out of Lagos24. Lagos: 拉各斯（尼日利亚首都）。, a city of twenty million people.)

We also need to take better advantage of our scienti fic tools.Advances in molecular and synthetic biology have begun to provide a sophisticated understanding of the genetic composition of viruses.25. molecular and synthetic biology: 分子生物学及合成生物学；sophisticated:复杂的；genetic composition: 遗传组成。We are increasingly able to make vaccines by assembling26. assemble: 组合。synthetic proteins as if they were molecular Legos. Rob Carlson, the author of “Biology Is Technology,”who has written widely about genetic engineering and vaccine development,says, “We could have pushed the development of a synthetic Ebola vaccine a decade ago. We had the skills,but we chose not to pursue it. Why?Because we weren’t the people getting sick.” One day, a virus that matches our sense of doom may come along. Until then, we will need to rely on data and evidence—not theatrics27. theatrics: 故作姿态，夸张的行为。or fear.