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| As Covid barrels through China, scientists around the world are searching for clues about an outbreak with sprawling consequences — for the health of hundreds of millions of Chinese people, the global economy and the future of the pandemic. |
| 随着新冠疫情肆虐中国，全球各地的科学家都在寻找线索，探究这场疫情暴发对数亿中国人的健康、全球经济和疫情的未来发展将产生的深远影响。 |
| But in the absence of credible information from the Chinese government, it is a big scientific guessing game to determine the size and severity of the surge in the world’s most populous country. |
| 但在中国政府不提供可靠信息的情况下，要判断全球人口第一大国的疫情规模和严重程度，堪称一场大型科学猜谜游戏。 |
| In Hong Kong, one team of researchers pored over passenger data from five Beijing subway lines to determine the potential spread. In Seattle, a group of modelers tried in vain to reverse-engineer an unverified government leak detailing case numbers from Chinese health officials. In Britain, scientists are coming up with their own efficacy estimates of Chinese vaccines. |
| 在香港，一个研究团队仔细研究了北京五条地铁线路的乘客数据，以确定潜在的传播范围。在西雅图，一个建模团队试图对一份未经证实的政府泄露文件——其中详细介绍了中国卫生官员提供的病例数量——进行逆推还原，但没有成功。在英国，科学家正在对中国疫苗的效力进行评估。 |
| Any personal anecdote or social media report from China — scarce medicines, overrun hospitals, overflowing crematories — is possible fodder for researchers’ models. |
| 任何来自中国的个人经历或社交媒体报告的情况——药品短缺、医院人满为患，火葬场不堪重负——都能给研究人员的模型提供依据。 |
| They are all attempting to understand the same things: How quickly is the virus spreading in the country? How many people are dying? Could China be the source of a new and dangerous variant? |
| 他们都在努力了解同一件事：病毒在中国传播的速度有多快？有多少人正在死去？中国可能出现某种新的危险变异株吗？ |
| As scientists sift through varied sources of shaky information, they are bracing for potentially catastrophic outcomes. Barring new precautionary steps, some worst-case estimates suggest that Covid could kill as many people in China in the next four months as it has Americans during the entire three-year pandemic. |
| 随着科学家筛选各种不可靠的信息来源，他们正在为潜在灾难性后果做准备。除非采取新的预防措施，否则一些最坏情况的预估表明，未来四个月，新冠病毒在中国造成的死亡人数可能与美国在整个三年疫情期间的死亡人数相当。 |
| Without satisfying answers, some countries are putting limits on Chinese travelers, albeit based in part on unfounded fears or political motivations. The United States, Italy and Japan have said they will require a negative Covid test for those coming from China, citing concerns that the surge in cases in China could produce new, more threatening variants. |
| 由于没有令人满意的答案，一些国家开始限制中国旅客入境，尽管部分决策是基于毫无根据的恐惧或政治动机。美国、意大利和日本表示，他们将要求来自中国的旅客提供新冠阴性检测结果，理由是担心中国感染激增可能会制造更可怕的新变异株。 |
| While researchers and virologists said the new measures would most likely do little, if anything, to blunt the spread, the policies reflect the limited visibility into the outbreak. Scientists’ models generally point to an explosive spread and a high death rate, given how many people in China have little to no immunity to Omicron subvariants. But even their estimates are all over the place. |
| 尽管研究人员和病毒学家表示，这些新措施很可能无助于遏制疫情传播，但这些政策反映了对疫情了解的有限。因为许多中国民众对奥密克戎亚型变异株几乎没有免疫力，科学家的模型往往都指向爆炸性的传播模式和高死亡率的结果。但即便是他们的估算也存在偏差。 |
| In the bleakest of several scenarios of what the end of China’s “zero Covid” policy might mean, nearly a million people could die during the early months of reopening, Hong Kong researchers reported this month in a study partly funded by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, though the study does not provide an exact time period. |
| 香港研究人员本月在一项由中国疾控中心部分资助的研究中报告称，中国结束“新冠清零”政策可能导致的几种情况中，最悲观的结果就是在重新开放的最初几个月造成近100万人死亡。不过，该研究没有提供确切时间节点。 |
| An American group estimated as many as half a million deaths by April and another million by the end of 2023 if China rejects social-distancing mandates. Airfinity, a British-based analytics company, this week offered an even more dire short-term forecast: 1.7 million Covid deaths by the end of April. |
| 一个美国组织估计，如果中国不做社交距离的强制要求，到4月将有多达50万人死亡，到2023年底还会有100万人死亡。总部位于英国的分析公司Airfinity本周给出了一个更可怕的短期预测：到4月底，新冠死亡人数将达到170万。 |
| Until this month, the world seemed to have a reasonably clear understanding of what was happening with the virus in China. The ruling Communist Party proudly published low daily case numbers and deaths as a testament to its stringent “zero Covid” policy. A countrywide system of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing largely kept the virus at bay. |
| 直到本月，世界似乎对中国的病毒传播情况都还有相当清楚的认识。执政的共产党自豪地公布很少的每日感染和死亡数字，以此证明其严厉“新冠清零”政策的合理性。全国范围的封锁、隔离和大规模检测在很大程度上阻止了病毒的传播。 |
| But in early December, the government abruptly abandoned “zero Covid,” leaving the scientific community largely in the dark. |
| 但到12月初，政府突然放弃“新冠清零”，将科学界基本蒙在鼓里。 |
| “Nobody, nobody has a clue,” said Siddharth Sridhar, a clinical virologist with a focus on emerging infectious diseases. |
| “没有人，没有人能想到，”专注研究新发传染病的临床病毒学家薛达(Siddharth Sridhar)说。 |
| Predicting the path of the pandemic has always been difficult. Even in places like Britain with reliable data, forecasts have often been far off the mark. But scientists have generally used reported Covid deaths as a dependable barometer to determine the potential size of an outbreak. |
| 预测疫情传播路径一直很困难。即使在英国这样有可靠数据的地方，预测结果也常与实际相去甚远。但科学家通常将报告的新冠死亡数视为可靠标尺，来确定疫情的潜在规模。 |
| The data coming from the Chinese government can’t be trusted anymore. Officially, China has claimed just 12 deaths from Covid since Dec. 1. The country has said it will only count those who die from respiratory failure directly linked to an infection, leaving out vast numbers who died because Covid aggravated underlying diseases or caused heart or liver failure. |
| 来自中国政府的数据不再可信。据官方统计，自12月1日以来，中国仅公布了12例新冠死亡。该国表示，将只统计感染直接导致的呼吸衰竭死亡病例，不会包括大量因新冠导致基础疾病加重或心脏肝脏衰竭的死亡。 |
| Experts say the sheer speed of the spread would suggest a much higher number of deaths. One city last week reported half a million cases in one day. Another reported a million. |
| 专家表示，这种传播速度意味着死亡人数要高得多。上周一座城市报告了50万单日新增病例。另一座城市报告了100万。 |
| There are also indications that officials are pressuring doctors and crematories to avoid categorizing even respiratory deaths as virus related. |
| 还有迹象表明，官员正在对医生和殡仪馆施压，连与病毒相关的呼吸道死亡都不能被算为新冠死。 |
| One doctor at a private hospital in Beijing said he and his colleagues found a typed note on a hospital desk in recent days urging them to “try not to write respiratory failure caused by Covid” as the primary cause of death. The note was shared with The New York Times. |
| 北京一家私立医院的一名医生说，最近几天，他和同事在医院桌上发现了一张打印好的便条，要求他们“尽量不要写重症新冠肺炎造成的呼吸衰竭”为主要死因。《纽约时报》查看了这张纸条。 |
| The doctor said it was not clear if the message was generated internally or sent from government officials. But similar warnings have been circulating on Chinese social media telling doctors not to “carelessly write Covid” on death certificates. |
| 这名医生说，目前还不清楚这条信息是内部发出的，还是政府官员发出的。但中国社交媒体上也流传着类似的警告，告诫医生不要在死亡证明上“随意填写新冠”。 |
| Several modelers have even been skeptical of leaked information from government officials on case counts, which have been used to assess the scale of China’s outbreak. One recent estimate, making the rounds in news reports and on Chinese social media, cited data from national health officials that 250 million people had been infected in the first 20 days of December. |
| 一些建模者甚至对政府官员泄露的病例数信息表示怀疑，这些数据一直被用来评估中国疫情的规模。最近在新闻报道和中国社交媒体上流传的一项估计，引用了国家卫生官员的数据，称在12月的前20天里，有2.5亿人被感染。 |
| Some scientists said that such massive figures indicated either that China had been suppressing data for months or that it was trying to make it seem like the outbreak had peaked. |
| 一些科学家表示，如此庞大的数据表明，中国要么数月来一直在压制数据，要么是在试图让疫情看起来已经达到顶峰。 |
| “Either they know something we don’t,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, “or they’re trying to say the worst is already over.” |
| “要么他们知道一些我们不知道的事情，”华盛顿大学健康指标与评估研究所所长克里斯托弗·默里说，“要么他们是在试图说，最糟糕的时候已经过去了。” |
| “I suspect it’s now the latter,” he said, referring to the idea that China was trying to make it look like the worst had passed. It seems unlikely that China would have been able to fake the numbers for months without raising suspicions, he said. |
| “我怀疑现在是后者，”他说，指的是中国试图让最糟糕的时期看起来已经过去。他说，中国似乎不太可能在几个月的时间里伪造数据而不引起怀疑。 |
| The about-face on China’s messaging is also complicating scientists’ assessments. Just a month ago, China’s state-controlled media was warning about the dangers of the virus. Now, it is saying the current Omicron variant is mild and the outbreak is manageable. |
| 中国在信息传递方面的大转变也让科学家的评估变得复杂。就在一个月前，中国国家控制的媒体还在警告病毒的危险。现在，它表示目前的奥密克戎变异株是温和的，疫情是可控的。 |
| Scientists and public health experts, though, are worried that Omicron has looked less severe in other places in large part because those populations had huge stores of immunity, including from past infections — a set of circumstances that does not hold in China. If China tries to soldier through its outbreak, without reimposing public health measures or ramping up vaccinations, scientists are concerned that many more may needlessly die. |
| 然而，科学家和公共卫生专家担心，奥密克戎毒株在其他地方看起来没有那么严重，这在很大程度上是因为这些地方的人口拥有大量免疫力，包括从过去的感染中获得的免疫力——这种情况在中国并不存在。科学家们担心，如果中国试图在不重新采取公共卫生措施或加大疫苗接种力度的情况下撑过暴发期，可能会有更多人不必要地死亡。 |
| The Hong Kong researchers, for example, found that administering more fourth vaccine doses and antiviral medications and using social-distancing measures could save at least 250,000 lives during China’s reopening. Dr. Murray’s team, too, found that social-distancing mandates could help spare hospitals from a concentrated surge of patients, reducing the death toll by 200,000 by April and by even more when combined with greater masking and antiviral use. |
| 例如，香港研究人员发现，在中国重新开放期间，注射更多第四剂疫苗，使用抗病毒药物，并采取社交距离措施，可以挽救至少25万人的生命。默里的团队也发现，保持社交距离的要求可以帮助医院避免患者集中激增，到4月，可以减少20万的死亡人数，如果结合更多口罩和抗病毒药物的使用，死亡人数会减少更多。 |
| How the Chinese public perceives the threat of the outbreak will also be important for its trajectory. Even if people decide to start taking more precautions for only a short period, scientists said, it could mean the difference between hospitals being able to treat their sickest patients or being completely overwhelmed. |
| 中国公众如何看待疫情威胁也将对疫情发展轨迹产生重要影响。科学家说，即使只是决定在短时间内开始采取更多的预防措施，也将带来很大的区别，决定了医院是能够治疗病情最严重的病人，还是完全不堪重负。 |
| The vaccination rate in the country is another major variable. While 90 percent of the population has received two shots, the booster rate is much lower for older Chinese people. The World Health Organization has said three shots are crucial with Chinese vaccines that use inactivated virus. |
| 中国的疫苗接种率是另一个主要变量。虽然90%的人都接种过两次疫苗，但老年人的接种率要低得多。世界卫生组织表示，中国使用灭活病毒的疫苗，三次注射至关重要。 |
| Extra protection from additional doses should arrive in less than two weeks for people with previous shots, said James Trauer, an expert on modeling infectious diseases at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. And he noted that the size of the country means that the outbreak will not reach everyone at the same time, giving some places extra time to get more people inoculated. |
| 澳大利亚墨尔本莫纳什大学传染病建模专家詹姆斯·特劳尔说，对于以前注射过疫苗的人来说，加强针可以在不到两周的时间内产生额外保护。他指出，这个国家的规模意味着疫情不会同时蔓延到所有人，这给了一些地方更多时间，让更多人接种疫苗。 |
| Scientists are studying transportation patterns to understand how fast the outbreak might spread, but the picture isn’t clear. |
| 科学家们正在研究交通模式，以了解疫情传播的速度，但目前情况尚不清楚。 |
| The Hong Kong scientists, in their recent study, analyzed passenger data from a handful of Beijing subway lines. The information, they said, suggested that mobility in the city had dropped to low levels as people stayed home to protect themselves against the virus. |
| 香港科学家在最近的研究中分析了北京几条地铁线路的乘客数据。他们说，这些信息表明，由于人们待在家里保护自己免受病毒感染，城市的流动性已降至较低水平。 |
| But Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there were some indications that at least in big cities, foot traffic was picking up and restaurants were getting busier. |
| 但美国外交关系委员会全球健康高级研究员黄严忠表示，有迹象表明，至少在大城市，人流量正在增加，餐馆也越来越繁忙。 |
| “That sort of seems to challenge the notion that people are actually exercising precaution,” he said. |
| “这似乎在某种程度上与人们实际上在采取预防措施的观念相悖，”他说。 |
| Without better indications of how often Covid infections are turning deadly in China, many scientists have leaned on comparisons with Hong Kong. The Chinese territory, which like China had also been slow to encourage vaccines, was particularly vulnerable when Omicron began spreading there in early 2022. |
| 由于无从判断新冠病毒感染在中国变得有多么致命，许多科学家都依赖于与香港的比较。和中国一样，这块属于中国的领土在鼓励接种疫苗方面行动迟缓，因此奥密克戎于2022年初开始传播时，香港显得尤为脆弱。 |
| Some models have assumed that China would experience an infection fatality ratio very similar to Hong Kong’s in the early stages of its outbreak. Back then, nearly 10,000 people in a territory of 7.5 million died within months of Omicron spreading. A comparable toll in China, with its 1.4 billion people, would be far higher. |
| 一些模型假设，在疫情暴发的早期阶段，中国将经历与香港非常相似的感染病死率。当时，在奥密克戎病毒传播的几个月内，这个有750万人口的领土上有近一万人死亡。在有14亿人口的中国，死亡数字可能会高得多。 |
| But there are also important differences. China has stronger vaccine coverage in its older population than Hong Kong did at the start of its surge. |
| 但也有重要的区别。中国老年人口的疫苗覆盖率高于香港病例激增之初的水平。 |
| Based on the timing of their respective outbreaks, though, China’s population-wide vaccination drive was earlier than in Hong Kong, meaning the effects of inoculations had longer to wane. Hong Kong also provided the option of Western vaccines with newer mRNA technology, while China relied exclusively on homegrown, less effective vaccines. Hospitals may also have a harder time handling the surge in some parts of China. |
| 不过，根据各自暴发疫情的时间，中国的全民疫苗接种运动比香港早，这意味着疫苗接种效果减弱的时间更长。香港还提供了使用较新的mRNA技术的西方疫苗，而中国大陆则完全依赖效果较差的国产疫苗。中国部分地区的医院可能也更难应对激增的疫情。 |
| The general lack of clarity has led to worries that the size of the outbreak could create more opportunities for the virus circulating through China — imported versions of Omicron — to mutate into a more dangerous variant. |
| 总体上缺乏明确性导致人们担心，疫情的规模可能为在中国传播的病毒——输入版奥密克戎病毒——创造更多机会，变异成更危险的毒株。 |
| But scientists are skeptical of such a scenario in China’s current outbreak. |
| 但科学家们对中国当前疫情会演变为这种情况持怀疑态度。 |
| Variants similar to those that China has reported were largely outcompeted months ago in the United States by more contagious or more elusive Omicron subvariants. After Italy mandated testing for travelers from China, it said the first cases it sequenced were all caused by an Omicron variant already present in Italy. European Union health officials said on Thursday that screening travelers from China was unjustified. |
| 几个月前，在美国，与中国报告的变异株类似的病毒基本上被更具传染性、更难以捉摸的奥密克戎亚变异株所取代。在意大利要求对来自中国的旅行者进行检测后，它表示，它测序的第一批病例都是由意大利已经存在的奥密克戎变种引起的。欧盟卫生官员周四表示，对来自中国的游客进行筛查是不合理的。 |
| “We’ve had a huge number of infections internationally,” said James Wood, an infectious disease expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, estimating that most people globally had caught the virus. “That’s a lot more infections than have occurred in China alone.” |
| “我们在国际上有大量的感染病例，”悉尼新南威尔士大学传染病专家詹姆斯·伍德说，他估计全球大多数人都感染了这种病毒。“这比中国一国的感染人数多得多。” |
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