[2023-01-17]华盛顿邮报 - 社论：世界需要中国坦白武汉肺炎死亡人数

Scenes from a troubling recent Post report out of China: Nearly 100 people waiting in line at 3 a.m. outside a funeral home in the eastern province of Shandong. Scalpers selling slots for cremation in Shanghai, jacking up the price as though they were concert tickets. A Beijing funeral home that constructed an extra parking lot last month, with more than 100 cars visible in a satellite image.
《华盛顿邮报》最近关于中国的一篇报道的描述了一则令人不安的场景：凌晨 3 点，东部省份山东省一家殡仪馆外有近 100 人在排队等候。 黄牛在上海卖火葬位，像演唱会门票一样抬高价格。 北京一家殡仪馆上个月增建了一个停车场，卫星图像显示有 100 多辆汽车。

These snapshots confirmed what most people already suspected — that China’s hasty exit from its “zero covid” policy has caused massive suffering and death — a fact China finally acknowledged on Saturday after intense international pressure. Until that point, Chinese officials had reported just 37 covid deaths since Dec. 7, when all testing, quarantine and lockdown measures were lifted. Suddenly that number has soared to 59,938.
这些快照证实了大多数人已经怀疑的——中国仓促退出其“动态清零”政策已经造成了巨大的痛苦和死亡——在巨大的国际压力下，中国终于在周六承认了这一事实。 在那之前，自 12 月 7 日所有检测、检疫和封锁措施取消以来，中国官方仅报告了 37 例武汉肺炎死亡病例。 突然间，这个数字飙升至 59,938。

Dishonesty about the true breadth of the pandemic in China constitutes a threat to public health worldwide. Scientists need to know whether transmission patterns have changed, new variants have emerged or the incidence of long covid has increased. Epidemiologists must be able to assess whether the world should prepare for a new global outbreak. And the people of China deserve to know the true scale of the calamity descending on their country.
中国对待疫情的不诚实是对全球公共卫生的威胁。 科学家们需要知道传播模式是否发生了变化，是否出现了新的变种，或者长武汉肺炎的发病率是否有所增加。 流行病学家必须能够评估世界是否应该为新的全球爆发做好准备。 中国人民应该知道降临在他们国家的灾难的真实规模。

Reliable coronavirus data is hard to come by in many parts of the world. But when it comes to undercounting, China has been in a class by itself. For three full years, right up to the day it ended zero covid, China had reported just over 5,200 covid deaths, an absurdly low number even considering the harsh measures instituted to keep the virus in check.
在世界许多地方很难获得可靠的冠状病毒数据。 但在低估方面，中国一直独树一帜。 整整三年，直到动态清零结束的那一天，中国报告的武汉肺炎 死亡人数刚刚超过 5,200 人，即使考虑到为控制病毒而采取的严厉措施，这个数字也低得离谱。

Without the government providing reliable information, outside epidemiologists, public health experts, journalists and others stepped in, parsing through anecdotal accounts, online postings, statistical modeling and satellite images. Reports of overwhelmed hospitals and overflowing funeral homes circulated on the internet and in the international media. The World Health Organization called on Beijing to release more detailed information, warning that the way China categorized cause of death “will very much underestimate the true death toll associated with covid.”
在政府不提供可靠信息的情况下，外部流行病学家、公共卫生专家、记者和其他人介入，通过轶事报道、在线帖子、统计模型和卫星图像进行分析。 关于医院不堪重负和殡仪馆人满为患的报道在互联网和国际媒体上流传。 世界卫生组织呼吁北京发布更详细的信息，警告说中国对死因的分类方式“将大大低估与武汉肺炎相关的真实死亡人数。”

Until now, China has counted only fatalities in which a scan showed lung damage caused by the virus — meaning if covid were merely a contributing factor, the death wasn’t counted, in defiance of WHO guidelines. With Saturday’s announcement, China acceded to the criticism and said the revised figure included 54,435 people who had covid but died of other underlying illnesses.
到目前为止，中国只统计了扫描显示病毒引起肺部损伤的死亡人数——这意味着如果武汉肺炎只是一个促成因素，那么死亡人数就没有被计算在内，这违反了世卫组织的指导方针。 随着周六的宣布，中国接受了批评，并表示修订后的数字包括 54,435 名患有武汉肺炎但死于其他基础疾病的人。

But even the acknowledgment of nearly 60,000 covid-related deaths should be considered an undercount. Notably, those deaths were reported from hospitals and did not include people who died at home. Some researchers estimated that China was already seeing 9,000 deaths a day during December.
但即使承认近 60,000 例与武汉肺炎相关的死亡也应被视为低估。 值得注意的是，这些死亡报告来自医院，不包括在家中死亡的人。 一些研究人员估计，中国在 12 月期间每天已经有 9,000 人死亡。

From the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese government has relied on secrecy, obfuscation, intimidation and fabrication to draw a veil over the origins of the virus as well as its contagion and death toll. In early 2020, it concealed the person-to-person transmissibility of the virus for more than 20 days, admitting it only when it became obvious. Once China acknowledged covid was indeed contagious, it introduced its zero-covid policy, in which people were forced to quarantine and take daily tests. Patients were forcibly removed from their homes to government-run covid centers. People who had been exposed sometimes had their doors welded shut. Buildings, and sometimes entire cities, were locked down, with residents forbidden to leave their homes.
从疫情开始，中国政府就依靠保密、混淆视听、恐吓和捏造来掩盖病毒的来源、传播和死亡人数。 2020年初，隐瞒病毒人传人20多天，到明显时才承认。 中国一承认武汉肺炎确实具有传染性，马上就推出动态清零政策，人们被迫隔离并进行日常检测。 患者被强行从家中转移到政府运营的隔离中心。密接人群的家门会被焊死。 大楼，有时甚至整个城市都被封锁，居民被禁止离开家园。

These measures, the government said, kept the disease in check and the death rate low, proving the superiority of its repressive political system. While refrigerated trailers for the dead lined streets around New York hospitals beginning in the spring of 2020, no such scenes played out in China.
政府表示，这些措施使疾病得到控制，死亡率保持在较低水平，证明了其专制政治制度的优越性。 然而2020年春天冷冻车在纽约医院周围死寂的街道上出现的场景，并没有在中国上演。

But zero covid could not go on indefinitely. When the economy stalled and public frustration erupted, China abruptly dropped it. The turnabout left a populace especially vulnerable to the virus — with little previous exposure and protected by locally made vaccines that are based on the original virus rather than the omicron subvariants that are now dominant. They are markedly less effective than the mRNA vaccines developed in the West.
但动态清零不可能无限期地持续下去。 当经济停滞、公众不满情绪爆发时，中国突然放弃了它。 这一转变使民众特别容易感染这种病毒——之前几乎没有接触过这种病毒，特别是还受到基于原始病毒而不是现在占主导地位的 omicron 亚变体研发的中国疫苗的保护。 它们的效果明显不如西方开发的 mRNA 疫苗。

As expected, the disease exploded. China’s refusal to acknowledge what was obvious to the world led to an outpouring of criticism and dire forecasts.
不出所料，疾病大爆发了。 中国拒绝承认在全世界看来是显而易见的事情，并导致了大量批评和可怕的预测。

A global health research institute based at the University of Washington in Seattle predicted the Chinese death toll could be “well over 1 million during 2023.” Worse, the British health data firm Airfinity predicted 1.7 million people will die across China just by the end of April.
位于西雅图华盛顿大学的一家全球健康研究机构预测，中国的死亡人数可能“在 2023 年超过 100 万”。 更糟糕的是，英国健康数据公司 Airfinity 预测，仅到 4 月底，中国各地将有 170 万人死亡。

Hundreds of millions of Chinese will be traveling for the Lunar New Year that begins Jan. 22, raising the likelihood that they will carry the disease to rural areas that are far less prepared to deal with it. Yet the Chinese announcement on Saturday asserted that “the national emergency peak has passed.”
数以亿计的中国人将在 1 月 22 日开始的农历新年期间出行，这增加了他们将这种疾病带到远没有做好应对准备的农村地区的可能性。 然而，中国周六的声明声称“国家紧急高峰期已经过去”。

Given China’s policy of concealment, there is little reason for anyone to believe this. Distrust of Chinese pronouncements has already led 20 countries, including the United States, to impose new requirements on Chinese travelers, including negative coronavirus tests. Chinese officials have called the measures discriminatory. But there is good cause for the world to be wary.
鉴于中国的隐瞒政策，任何人都没有理由相信这一点。 对中国声明的不信任已经导致包括美国在内的 20 个国家对中国游客提出新要求，包括武汉肺炎检测呈阴性。 中国官员称这些措施具有歧视性。 但世界有充分的理由保持警惕。

The international community should keep the pressure on Chinese officials to come clean about the real scale of the current crisis and allow independent outsiders access to make their own assessments. What China and the world need in a pandemic is truth and transparency all the time, not just when it is no longer possible to lie. The release of the new figures on Saturday was a start, but only just a start.
国际社会应该继续向中国政府施压，要求他们坦白当前危机的真实规模，并允许独立的局外人进行自己的评估。 中国和世界在疫情中需要的是始终，而不是只在无法自圆其说的时候，保持真实和透明。 周六发布的新数据是一个开始，但仅仅是一个开始。

标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。

一边沉痛哀悼因武汉肺炎而亡，并在火葬场排队等烧，连数字都算不上的家里老人；一边看到武汉肺炎四个字在草榴跳脚骂街。孝，真鸡巴孝！哈哈哈！

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