专访比尔·盖茨：人类下一次将面临什么样的危机？

Derek: So how did it feel to make this prediction and then have the world essentially not listen and not prepare?
看到自己当年的预测被所有人毫不在意地当作耳旁风，心里是个什么滋味？


Bill Gates: Well there's no good feeling that comes on something like this saying I told you so.
我看到危机如我预言的那样爆发时，心里当然是非常难过的。


If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war.
假设在未来几十年里有什么能消灭超过一千万人口的灾难，那有高度传染性的病毒比起战争来说更有可能。


You know I just think back and could I have been more persuasive.
我现在回想起来，只恨自己的演讲不够有说服力。


We've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.
我们对于防疫系统的投入真的太少了。


We're not ready for the next epidemic.
我们根本没有准备好应对下次流行性疾病。


Derek: How did you make such a prescient prediction?
你是怎么做出这么有先见之明的预测的？


How did you know this was going to happen?
你怎么知道这种事情会发生呢？


BG（Bill Gates）: Well there's a number of respiratory viruses and from time to time one will come along that's very transmissive and causes some level of fatalities.
通过呼吸道传染的病毒数不胜数，时不时就会出现一种传染性很强、造成不少人丧生的呼吸道病毒。


Respiratory diseases are very scary because you're still walking around on a plane, a bus when you're infectious unlike some other diseases like ebola where you're mostly in a hospital bed by the time the viral load infects other people.
呼吸道病毒非常可怕，因为患者往往在患病时还在搭乘飞机、巴士这类公共交通，而反观其它类型的疾病，比如埃博拉病毒，等病人能够传播病毒的时候，一般就已经躺医院病床上了。


Derek: Hey, so recently I got the chance to interview Bill Gates when his foundation's annual letter came out.
最近，借盖茨基金会年度公开信发布的机会，我有幸采访了比尔·盖茨。


I'll link to it in the description and we talked about lots of things including conspiracy theories and misinformation but about the pandemic.
我会把公开信链接放在简介里面，我们讨论了不少东西，包括阴谋论和误导。


I wanted to know if so many people could see this coming and the costs of prevention were relatively small, then why wasn't more done about it?
不过关于这次疫情，我想知道一点，如果有许多人能可以预知到这次的展开，并且防疫的花费相对比较小，为什么我们当时不多做防备呢？


BG: Well there's some risks like earthquakes where we see small earthquakes all the time.
有些危机，比如说地震，几乎随时都会发生。


Or you know the history of war or fire or hurricanes so you don't forget.
又比如战争、火灾、飓风这样的历史性灾难，因此我们不会忘记它们的可怕。


These pandemics only come along so irregularly that being lulled into a sense of security where it probably won't be a problem in the next few years, why should we put money into that?
但传染病的发生毫无规律， 以至于人们产生了虚假的安全感，我们原本假想近几年“大概”不会爆发传染病，那还投钱干什么呢？


You don't buy the insurance policy, basically.
于是大家都不怎么买预防政策的账了。


This one will help us understand it needs to be a priority.
这次疫情让人们明白，预防胜于治疗。


Derek: I feel like humans have an issue though with fighting the last battle potentially, so if we focus on pandemics now and there isn't one say for another hundred years
我感觉，当今的人们讨论起来会认为这是最后一战，我想说，如果我们能关注疫情，这可能是以后几世纪都不会发生的了。


What is the next disaster?
下一个灾难是什么？


What is the one that we're not prepared for?
下一个我们不足以应对的灾难是什么？


BG: Well, I'd point out two: One is climate change.
我想说两点，其一是气候变化。


Every year that would be a death toll even greater than we've had in this pandemic.
每年死于气候变化的人数其实都多于这次疫情的死亡人数。


Also, related to pandemics is something people don't like to talk about much which is bioterrorism, that somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus and so that means the cost the chance of running into this is more than just the naturally cost epidemics like the current one.
其二跟传染病有关，很多人如今不愿谈及这个，生物恐怖主义，想破坏社会秩序的人可能有能力制造病毒，这意味着人造病毒爆发的可能性和危害要更甚于这次的流行病毒。


Derek: It feels to me like there's something similar about pandemics and you know climate change or like asteroid impact, which is that you know they're not very tangible but you could do a little bit.
我感觉传染病跟气候变化、小行星撞击有点共同之处，它们都是那种我们没有什么办法，但是又能做出一些改变的类型。


I don't know it seems like humans are not very good at those sorts of problems.
我不知道，但是感觉人类不擅长处理这类问题。


BG: Well，my favorite writer, Vaclav Smil, you know wrote about all the potential kinds of disasters like you know the risk of an asteroid, the risk of a you know yellowstone-like eruption and in fact he showed that pandemics were significantly the biggest thing other than a human-caused nuclear war that we needed to be more prepared for.
唔，我喜欢的作家Václav Smil写过各种潜在的灾难，比如小行星撞击，黄石公园的火山大爆发，而他展示给我们的是，传染病很明显是除了核战争以外最严重，我们最应该做足准备的灾难。


Derek: So what changes do we put in place to be readier for the next one and is it possible that covid-19 could be the last global pandemic?
那我们应该改变哪些东西，才能让我们更好地应对下一次疫情？有没有可能让“新冠”成为最后一次全球性的传染病？


BG: Well certainly there will be more pandemics.
好吧，以后一定会有更多的流行性疾病。


The ways that humans interact with other species, these viruses are coming across a species barrier whether it's from bats or monkeys or.
人类与其他物种的互动，会让病毒的传播跨越物种间的藩篱，病毒可能会在蝙蝠、猴子等动物身上传播。


Derek: But you don't think we could increase our preparedness to such a level that it never sort of becomes this global issue?
但你不觉得只要我们的准备工作足够完备，就能阻止新生的传染病在全球范围爆发吗？


BG: We could increase our preparedness so we never have a death toll uh anywhere near what we have today.
我们可以做更充分的准备，来避免再次出现这次这么高的死亡数。


You know pandemics can be worse in terms of the fatalities.
毕竟还可能出现致命性更高的疾病。


Smallpox was a over 30 per cent fatality.
比如天花的死亡率超过30%。


You know so a little bit we were lucky that the fatality here is not not super high, but we can nip it in the bud
所以不幸中的万幸，新冠病毒的死亡率并不非常高，但我们可以将其扼杀在萌芽状态。


It'll still get to a lot of countries, but the number of deaths you know uh with the right system should be a tenth of what we we've seen here.
病毒还是会传播到许多国家，但在合理的医疗系统下，死亡人数应该只有目前的1/10。

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