关注疫情信息的你，来认识一下他吧

Throughout the current epidemic I have been awoken not by the usual traffic noise, which has obviously not been as voluble of late, but by the ping of a WeChat message on my iPad.

这段时间早上叫醒我的不仅有外面汽车的声音，还有我的微信提示音。

The reason why the message's arrival breaks the pre-dawn silence is that it is from somewhere in a different time zone — California or, more often, Israel.

拂晓前收到微信的原因在于，发信息的那个人远在加州或者以色列。

I, like many others, have been receiving daily analyses of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak from Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who has a tendency to move around somewhat.

我和很多人一样，每天都能收到斯坦佛大学结构生物学教授Michael Levitt发来的疫情数据分析。

He is best known for winning the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2013, along with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel.

他和Martin Karplus与Arieh Warshel一起，于2013年获得了诺贝尔化学奖。

During this crisis, he has hit a new kind of fame for his extensive statistical work on the data being released by the Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization about the virus.

疫情期间，他通过中国政府和世界卫生组织发布的数据进行分析。

He has appeared on Chinese TV and done a number of media interviews. I myself caught up with him on the phone last month from Stanford and have been exchanging friendly messages ever since.

他接受过很多采访，也出现在中国的节目里。我上个月和他通过电话，之后就一直保持联系。

Why his work has attracted so much attention is that he was one of the first to observe that China was actually winning the war against the virus.

他的分析之所以引发关注，是因为他是最早认为中国已经赢得抗疫战争的人之一。

"Contrary to the prevailing world hysteria, the epidemic is almost all over in China," he says. 

他说：“与其它国家相比，中国的疫情已经基本结束了。”

His forecasts have been lent weight by people on the ground such as Bruce Aylward, an epidemiologist who led an advance team from the World Health Organization to Wuhan, who said on Feb 24 in Beijing that China is the only country to have ever turned around a serious and large-scale outbreak. 

世卫组织专家Bruce Aylward也支持他的理论。Aylward在2月24日在北京表示，中国是唯一一个扭转广泛严重疫情的国家。

Levitt is not an epidemiologist but a molecular biologist and one who specializes in computer modeling, which makes his analysis all the more unique. He once worked with the co-discover of DNA, Francis Crick.

Levitt擅长建模，这使他的分析更加突出。他曾和DNA的发现者之一Francis Crick共事。

He decided to track this virus because of a special interest in China. He married his Israeli second wife, Shoshan, a curator of Chinese art and who teaches Hebrew at Peking University, in Shanghai in March last year.

他基于对中国的特殊兴趣而开始追踪新冠病毒。他和第二任以色列妻子于去年三月在上海结婚，妻子是北京大学的希伯来语教师。

One thing he noted early was that there is a much higher death rate in Wuhan than elsewhere, where many were exposed to animal-to-human transmission from the wet market.

他的早期发现之一就是新冠肺炎病毒在武汉的致死率高于其它地区。

He believes the molecular structure of the virus becomes effectively "sugar-coated" when passed between humans and is less dangerous.

他认为病毒的分子结构在人传人时会改变，降低了危险性。

Levitt does not play down the seriousness of the outbreak in China or now elsewhere in the world.

他肯定了中国和世界对待疫情的严肃态度。

Yet, he says there needs to be some proportion, pointing out someone over the age of 80 in the US has a more 0.9 percent of dying every month anyway.

不过他也表示，有些美国人在八十多岁时，每个月的死亡概率会比别人高0.9%。

"The death rate if you contract it (the virus) is 2 percent. I am 73 years old now and so I have got a similar rate of dying every year. That's life," he says.

他说：“新冠病毒的致死率是2%。我现在73岁，每年的死亡概率其实也差不多，这就是生命。”

Although he acknowledges that this crisis has hit China hard, he believes there will be a huge focus on developing drugs in China that can be used to fight infections such as this.

虽然他承认疫情严重打击了中国，但他相信中国会专注研究治疗各种传染病的药物。

Although there is an international effort to come up with a vaccine for the virus, this is not where the big money is for Western pharmaceutical companies.

国际社会虽然也在研发疫苗，但这并非西方国家制药公司的重点。

He says that is in anti-cancer drugs, particularly those for prolonging life, which are in demand by often wealthy patients.

他表示，有钱人更关心抗癌药和延长生命的药物。

"If you can extend somebody's life by a year, it is easily worth half a million dollars," he says.

“如果能延长生命一年，绝对值50万美元。”

He believes therefore that after the setback of this epidemic it may be China which may take the lead in fighting pandemics.

所以他相信疫情结束后，中国才是抗击传染病的领头羊。