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| In early December, China suddenly reversed its “zero Covid” policy. That set off a wave of infections that has swept across the nation, overwhelming hospitals and funeral parlors. | 去年12月初，中国突然逆转了其“新冠清零”政策。这引发了一波席卷全国的感染浪潮，医院和殡仪馆人满为患。 |
| Two events this month could further inflame the already raging outbreak. On Sunday, the country will reopen to tourists, and visitors will no longer be required to quarantine upon arrival. A few weeks later, China will celebrate Lunar New Year, the country’s biggest holiday — typically the largest annual migration of people on the planet. | 本月发生的两件事可能会进一步加剧已经肆虐的疫情。周日，中国将向游客重新开放，旅客在抵达时将不再被要求隔离。几周后，中国将迎来春节，这是该国最重要的节日，通常也意味着一年中全球规模最大的一次人口流动。 |
| For insight into the situation in China, I spoke with Keith Bradsher, The Times’s Beijing bureau chief. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. | 为了深入了解中国的情况，我采访了《纽约时报》北京分社社长柏凯斯(Keith Bradsher)。为方便阅读，本文经过了编辑。 |
| For those who aren’t familiar, what was life like in China before the restrictions were removed? | 对不了解情况的人来说，在取消新冠限制之前，中国的生活是什么样的？ |
| Almost overnight, the rules changed on Dec. 7. Until then, people were at constant risk of being sealed in a hospital room for weeks if they caught a Covid infection. Until Dec. 7, people who even went to the same shop or eatery as someone who later turned out to be infected, or even passed an infected person on the street, could end up being taken away to a quarantine center for a prolonged stay, sometimes with meager food and sanitation, or sealed in their homes. | 12月7日，规定几乎是在一夜之间改变的。在那之前，若是感染新冠，就会面临被封锁在病房里数周的风险。在12月7日之前，哪怕是与后来被确诊阳性的人去过同一家商店或餐馆，或者甚至只是在街上与感染者擦肩而过，都有可能被带到隔离中心关上很久，那里的饮食和卫生条件有时很差，要么就被封锁在家中。 |
| In big cities like Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen, it became necessary to line up every two or three days and sometimes daily at sidewalk booths for P.C.R. tests, all tracked by the health codes on our cellphones. | 在北京、上海或深圳这样的大城市，每隔两三天、有时甚至每天都要在人行道上的岗亭排队做核酸，所有检测都会被手机上的健康码记录下来。 |
| Because of the extreme sensitivity of the tests, an infected person could be kept in isolation for weeks or even months. And even after people left quarantine they could face permanent discrimination. There were some places that you weren’t allowed to go if you ever had Covid, like some government offices. | 由于核酸检测极其灵敏，感染者可能被隔离数周乃至数月之久。即便结束隔离，也可能面临永久的歧视。一些诸如政府办公室的场所是不允许得过新冠的人进入的。 |
| So what do things look like now? | 现在情况如何了？ |
| After Dec. 7, life was transformed. The good news was that we could suddenly move around without worrying about being locked up in a hospital or quarantine center. But the cost in illness and death has been high. | 12月7日之后，生活彻底变了。好消息是，我们一下子都能四处活动，不用再担心被关进医院或隔离中心。但疾病和死亡的代价是很大的。 |
| We went from medics being responsible for detaining people to suddenly caring for a lot of sick people. We’ve gone from funeral homes allowing lengthy services for as many as 100 guests to lacking adequate cremation capacity and barely allowing immediate family members to say goodbye. | 医务人员从负责扣押民众突然变成了要救治大量病患。以往能让上百名客户举办长时间葬礼的殡仪馆，现在没有足够的火化能力，连直系亲属都很难有机会与遗体道别。 |
| We’ve seen hospitals practically overflowing, with little space left for more sick people. There’s an acute shortage of ventilators. There is an acute shortage of ibuprofen. Even hospitals don’t have enough ibuprofen to bring down the fevers of the very sick. | 医院基本都人满为患，几乎没有空间容纳更多病人。呼吸机严重短缺。布洛芬严重短缺。哪怕是医院也没有足够的布洛芬为症状严重的患者退烧。 |
| All of these are scenes that were witnessed in the West when the pandemic first emerged in early 2020. But in China, it has been a surprise that there were not more preparations for the change in direction. | 2020年初疫情刚出现时，西方国家都经历过这些情况。但令人惊讶的是，中国没有做更多的准备来应对政策方向的转变。 |
| What do you mean? | 你的意思是？ |
| The vaccination program nearly ground to a halt in late spring without ever reaching many of the country’s older adults, who tended to resist vaccination. Many thought they could hide indefinitely from the virus. Their faith in China’s vaccine industry had also been damaged by vaccine scandals before the pandemic, even though there is no evidence of safety problems for the Covid vaccines. | 疫苗接种在春季末就接近停滞，许多老年人根本没打上，他们往往也抵制疫苗。许多人以为自己能永远躲避病毒。虽然没有证据表明新冠疫苗存在安全问题，但他们对中国疫苗行业的信心已经因疫情前的疫苗丑闻受损。 |
| The spread of the virus is extraordinary because not only do you have a population with almost zero past exposure or immunity, but now — in a policy about-face — you have towns encouraging people to come to work even if they are positive for Covid, as long as they are not especially feverish. I’ve been talking to companies in northern China, and some have told me that anywhere from 80 to 100 percent of their staff members have been infected. | 病毒的传播速度惊人，因为不仅这里的人口过去几乎没有接触过病毒或得到免疫，而且现在政策的急转弯还让一些城镇鼓励民众哪怕感染了也要出来工作，只要发烧不是特别严重就行。我采访过中国北方的企业，有些企业告诉我，他们80%到100%的员工都被感染了。 |
| Why did China change its policy so quickly? | 中国政策的改变为何如此迅速？ |
| China faced several big challenges. There was mounting domestic unhappiness with the burden of quarantine and frequent testing, which resulted in street protests. China was also losing control of the virus even before the policy change on Dec. 7. The death rate began to spike upwards right after the loosening of restrictions, even though it takes the virus a couple weeks to reach the fatal phase. The immediate jump in activity at funeral homes suggested that there were a lot more people who were infected right before the policy change but were hiding at home. | 中国面临了几大挑战。国内对隔离和频繁检测所造成的负担愈发不满，导致街头抗议爆发。早在12月7日政策改变前，中国也已经失去了对病毒的控制。尽管病毒需要数周的传播才能达到致命阶段，但在放松限制后，死亡率立刻开始飙升。殡仪馆工作量的迅速增加表明，在政策改变之前就有更多人被感染，但他们都躲在家里。 |
| Finally, the economy was in terrible shape through the autumn because people in China stopped going out to shop or to restaurants for fear of being infected. At the same time, overseas demand for goods from China was withering. | 最后，整个秋季的经济状况都非常糟糕，因为害怕被感染的中国人都停止外出购物或就餐。与此同时，海外对中国产品的需求正在萎缩。 |
| How are the Chinese people feeling? | 中国人民的感受如何？ |
| Absolutely everyone seems to know some elderly person about whom he or she is deeply worried right now — because the threat of serious illness from Covid increases with age. The country is experiencing a terrifying surge, and yet cities are encouraging travel for Lunar New Year, which starts in less than three weeks. We will likely see surges in rural areas, where many of the residents are elderly. | 基本每个人似乎都认识一些让他们现在非常担心的老人，因为新冠重症疾病的威胁与年龄成正比。中国正在经历可怕的感染新增，但城市都在鼓励民众在三周内即将到来的春节出游。我们可能会看到农村地区的感染激增，那里的许多居民都是老年人。 |
| What would a rural surge look like? | 农村感染浪潮会是什么样？ |
| There was a study back in 2007 by the agriculture ministry which surveyed 3,000 villages. They found that in 90 percent of those villages, there were essentially no able-bodied people between the ages of 16 and 40 who had stayed. Almost all had gone to the cities to find jobs. So rural areas often have lots of grandparents raising grandchildren while the middle generation works in the cities. The fear is that just as the virus has raced through the population in Chinese cities, it will now race through Chinese villages in the next several weeks. | 农业部在2007年做过一项针对3000个村庄的调查。他们发现，九成村庄里16岁到40岁之间身体健全的人口基本都没有留下。几乎所有人都去城市找工作了。因此，农村地区通常有很多照料孙辈的老人，而中间的一代则在城市工作。令人担忧的是，就像病毒在中国城市人口中迅速传播一样，它未来几周将在中国农村蔓延。 |
| The other scary part in all of this is that this is the first wave, and it’s mostly being driven by earlier versions of Omicron. So people in China are acquiring resistance to Omicron subvariants that are already fading away globally. As China reopens its borders in the coming weeks, there is a possibility that the latest immune-evading subvariants may come next, as they have already become prevalent in parts of the United States. If that happens, residents may face further illness instead of a hoped-for single wave that quickly disappears. | 另一个可怕之处在于，这第一波感染主要是由奥密克戎早期变异株带来的。因此，中国人能够抵御的奥密克戎亚种变异株在全球范围内已经逐渐消失。随着中国在未来几周重开边境，能够逃避免疫的最新亚型变异株可能会传播开来，就像它们已经在美国部分地区大肆传播一样。如果发生这种情况，中国居民可能会面临更多疾病，而不是他们所希望的只传一波就迅速结束的疫情。 |
| What will China’s reopening mean for the course of the pandemic? | 中国重新开放对整个疫情的进程有怎样的影响？ |
| It’s unclear that this will cause new variants to emerge. Some scientists have said that what’s happening in China is less likely to affect the rest of the world because it’s basically exposing a low-immunity population to variants that have already circulated a lot globally. | 尚不清楚这是否会导致新变异株的出现。有科学家宣称，中国的疫情不太可能影响全球，因为这基本上就是让一个低免疫人群接触到已经在全球广泛传播的变异株。 |
| I think the tragedy here is less of a global tragedy and more of a tragedy of China. It’s a tragedy of the loss of so much of its older generation, which is now being sacrificed in a race to reopen and restart the economy quickly. | 我认为，这里发生的悲剧与其说是全球性的，不如说是中国的悲剧。为了尽快重新开放和重启经济，牺牲了这么多老年人，这真的非常悲哀。 |
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