Our New Historical Divide: B.C. and A.C. — the World Before Corona and the
World After
世界正面临新纪年法：新冠元年前和新冠元年后
原文：New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-trends.html
译文：观察者
https://www.guancha.cn/TuoMaSi-FuLiDeMan/2020_03_21_542841_s.shtml
作者：Thomas L. Friedman
译者：凯莉
Before the coronavirus crisis hit, I was toying with writing a book about
21st-century political parties, but in light of this global epidemic it’s
obvious that whatever nonfiction book you’re working on now, put it down.
There is the world B.C. — Before Corona — and the world A.C. — After
Corona. We have not even begun to fully grasp what the A.C. world will look
like, but here are some trends I’m watching.
在新冠病毒危机爆发之前，我正在酝酿一本关于21世纪政治党派的书。但随着新冠肺炎疫
情演变为全球性的大流行病，无论你在写什么非小说类的书，很明显都得放下了。当今世
界将面临新的纪年方法——新元前（新冠肺炎元年之前）和新元后。新元后的世界将会是
怎样，我们还不太清楚，但以下是我正在关注的一些趋势。
Unknown unknowns
未知的未知因素
I wrote my book “The World Is Flat” about growing global interconnectedness
in 2004. The world has gotten so much flatter and interconnected since. Heck,
when I started writing that book, Facebook was just being launched; Twitter
was only a sound; the cloud was still in the sky; 4G was a parking place;
LinkedIn was a prison; for most people, applications were what you sent to
colleges, Skype was a typo and Big Data was a rap star. And the iPhone was
still Steve Jobs’s secret pet project.
2004年我写了一本有关全球互联性日益增强的书，书名叫《世界是平的》。从那以后，世
界变得更为平坦，联系更为紧密。见鬼，当我刚开始写那本书的时候，“脸书”才刚刚推
出；“推特”还只是鸟儿的叫声；“云”还是天上的云；4G是指你家楼下的停车位；“领
英”是一家监狱；提到Applications，大多数人会认为是向大学提交的申请材料（而不是
软件应用）；看到Skype，还以为是哪个单词拼错了；“大数据”听起来像是饶舌明星的
名字；苹果手机还只是乔布斯秘密孵化的爱宠项目。
All of those connectivity tools, not to mention global trade and tourism,
exploded after 2004 and really wired the world. Which is why our planet today
is not just interconnected, it’s interdependent — and in many ways even
fused.
2004年之后，所有这些互联的沟通工具真正连接了世界，更不用说全球贸易和旅游了。这
就是为什么我们今天的世界不仅相互联结，而且相互依存——在许多方面甚至相互融合。
This has driven a lot of economic growth. But it’s also meant that when
things go bad in one place, that trouble can be transmitted farther, faster,
deeper and cheaper than ever. So, a virus-laden bat bites another mammal in
China, that mammal is sold in a Wuhan wildlife market, it infects a Chinese
diner with a new coronavirus and in a few weeks all my public schools are
closed and I’m edging six feet away from everyone in Bethesda.
这极大推动了经济增长，但这也意味着当一个地方遭遇麻烦时，这个麻烦会以更快的速度
和更低的成本传播到更远的距离、更深的层次。比如，一只携带病毒的蝙蝠在中国咬了另
一种哺乳动物，这种哺乳动物在武汉野生动物市场上出售，然后把一种新冠病毒传染给了
一家小餐馆。几周后，我附近所有的公立学校都停课了。我会和贝塞斯达居民区的每个人
都保持至少六英呎的距离。
But that’s why this virus crisis is so not over. Bill Joy, the computer
scientist who co-founded Sun Microsystems, put it to me like this: “The last
few weeks were actually pretty unsurprising and predictable in how the
pandemic spread. But we’ve now reached a point where all of our interlocking
systems, each with their own feedback loops, are all shutting down in
unpredictable ways. This will inevitably lead to some random and chaotic
consequences — like health care workers not having child care.”
尤其可见，这场病毒危机远未结束。升阳公司（译注：一家软件公司，已被甲骨文收购）
的联合创始人、计算机科学家比尔‧乔伊对我说：“前几周，这场大流行的蔓延其实看起
来相当正常，也在意料之中。但如今我们已经到了这样一个阶段，我们联锁系统中各个系
统都有自己的反馈回路，在以不可预知的方式关闭。”这将不可避免地制造一些难以预测
的混乱情况，比如医务工作者无法照顾孩子。
The power of exponentials:
指数的力量
One of the hardest things for the human mind to grasp is the power of an
exponential — something that just keeps relentlessly doubling and doubling,
like a pandemic. The brain just can’t appreciate how quickly 5,000 cases of
confirmed coronavirus infection in America can explode into one million if we
don’t lock down now.
对人类来说，最难掌控的事情之一就是指数的力量——一种持续不断地成倍增长的力量，
就像大流行病一样。随着新冠疫情在美国不断蔓延，如果我们现在不封城，确诊病例数可
能由5000例爆炸式增长到100万例的速度不是我们大脑能够运算的。
Here’s a simple way to explain the exponential threat we face — in a way an
oft-bankrupt real estate developer like Donald Trump might understand. It was
also offered by Bill Joy: “The virus is like a loan shark who charges 25
percent a day interest. We borrowed $1 (the first coronavirus to appear
here). We then fiddled for 40 days. Now we owe $7,500. If we wait three more
weeks to pay, we’ll owe almost $1 million.”
可以用一个简单的办法来解释我们面临的指数级威胁——像川普这种经常破产的房地产开
发商应该可以理解。比尔‧乔伊也提出了这种办法：“这种病毒就像高利贷，每天收取
25%的利息。起初我们借了1美元（相当于此时出现第一例新冠感染者），然后连着40天我
们虚报开支，到了现在欠了7500美元。要是再等三个星期才还款，我们就要欠将近100万
美元了。”
That’s why working every single day to slow the rate of infection and
testing everyone possible is everything. Lose that battle, lose the war.
这就是为什么，争取现在每天的宝贵时间尽力减缓传播速率、尽可能给每个人做测试才是
唯一决胜之道。输了这场战役，就输了整个战争。
That’s also why the only number I am watching now is not the Federal Reserve
’s interest rates, it’s the number of critical-care coronavirus patients
versus the number of general hospital and I.C.U. beds in the country needed
to care for them. If the second number can accommodate the first number when
the virus peaks, we’ll be O.K. If it can’t, we’re going to have
pandemonium on top of a pandemic.
这也是为什么，我现在唯一关注的数字不是美联储的利率，而是美国新冠肺炎病例数与须
用于治疗这些患者的综合医院和重症监护病房的床位数之比。在疫情高峰时期，如果床位
数足够容纳所有病例，我们就会没事；如果无法容纳，我们除了迎来了大流行病，还将迎
来一片混乱。
The upside of exponentials
指数的优势
There is, though, another exponential that may end up saving us: Moore’s
Law, which was coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and posited
that the speed and processing power of computers would double every two
years, as more transistors could be steadily packed on a microchip.
不过，还有另一个最终可能拯救我们的指数定律：摩尔定律。该定律由英特尔联合创始人
戈登‧摩尔在1965年提出，他假设：随着集成电路上可容纳的晶体管数量稳步增多，电脑
的速度和性能每两年就会提升一倍。
Intel, to explain the power of Moore’s Law to make all kinds of things
better, smarter, faster, had its engineers take a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle and
try to calculate what that car would be like today if it had improved at the
same exponential rate that microchips had improved since 1971. Intel’s
engineers’ best guess was that that Volkswagen Beetle today would go about
300,000 miles per hour, it would get two million miles per gallon and it
would cost 4 cents.
为了解释摩尔定律的力量是如何能让方方面面的事物更好、更快、更智能地发展，英特尔
让工程师对1971年的大众汽车甲壳虫进行测算，如果从1971年开始就以微型芯片同样的指
数级速度增长，到今天将发展到什么程度。据英特尔工程师估计，最乐观的情况是，今天
的大众金龟车每小时能跑30万英里，每加仑能跑200万英里，且只要花4美分。
That is the power of an exponential in engineering on the upside — and it
may be just the kind of exponential that can also help bring us a coronavirus
treatment and vaccine quickly.
这是指数定律能在工程领域发挥的积极作用，或许这种指数的力量也能很快为我们带来新
冠肺炎治疗方法和疫苗。
As Nitin Pai, director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent
research center in Bangalore, India, wrote on livemint.com on Sunday: “
Advances in computer technology and synthetic biology have revolutionized
both detection and diagnosis of pathogens, as well as the processes of design
and development of vaccines, subjecting them to Moore’s Law-type cycles.
Recent epidemics, starting with SARS, and including H1N1, Ebola, Zika and now
Covid-19, will drive more talent and brainpower to the biological and
epidemiological sciences.”
正如位于印度班加罗尔的独立研究中心塔克希拉研究所长尼廷‧派3月15日在
livemint.com网站上所写：“计算机技术和合成生物学的进步彻底改变了病原体的检测和
诊断以及疫苗的研发流程，使它们按摩尔定律式的周期发展。从非典到H1N1流感，从埃博
拉到寨卡（Zika），直到今天的新冠肺炎，近几十年的流行病将为生物学和流行病学领域
带来更多人才、创造更多智慧。”
But will it be fast enough? Even in the age of supercomputers, noted Gautam
Mukunda, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public
Leadership, “we still have no vaccine for H.I.V. or malaria — two
widespread critical diseases that we have been fighting for years. It is
definitely true that the science will reach the point where we can develop
new vaccines on the fly; the problem is, it’s still really, really hard.”
但这会足够快吗？哈佛大学肯尼迪学院公共领导力中心研究员高塔姆‧穆昆达指出，即使
在超级计算机时代，“我们仍然没有疫苗可以预防艾滋病或疟疾——这是人们多年来与之
抗争的两种广泛传播的重大疾病。毫无疑问，科学将会达到能够快速开发新疫苗的发展阶
段；但问题是，目前来说这仍然非常、非常难。”
Will American culture or politics be fundamentally changed by this pandemic?
这场大流行会彻底改变美国的文化或政治吗?
I know for sure one joke Republican politicians will not be telling on the
campaign trail this year. It’s the one where they impugn the deep state,
government bureaucrats and get the audience to laugh by saying, “Hi, I’m
from the government and I’m here to help.”
我很肯定在今年的竞选活动中，共和党政客肯定不会讲一个梗。他们为了让观众发笑，会
说： “嗨，我来自政府，我是来帮忙的” ，以此来抨击深层政府的官僚。
We’ll get through this crisis because of the depth of talent, and selfless
commitment, in our deep state, our Big Government: the scientists, the
medical professionals, the disaster professionals, the environmental experts
— all the people whom Trump tried to prune. Right now I am rooting for both
Big Government and Big Pharma to rescue us.
但是，将帮助我们度过这场危机的是我们深层政府、大政府里专业的人才，以及他们无私
的奉献。这些人是科学家、医疗专业人员、救灾专家、环境专家——都是川普想试图“剔
除”的人。现在，我支持大政府和大医药来拯救我们。
Our political culture may also change before this is over. My friend Prof.
Michele Gelfand from the University of Maryland is the author of “Rule
Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World.”
在这场危机结束之前，我们的政治文化可能就会改变。马里兰大学教授、我的好朋友米歇
尔‧盖尔芬德著有《规则制定者，打破规则：严厉和松散的文化如何连接世界》一书。
In an essay in The Boston Globe last week, Gelfand recalled that in a paper
she and her colleagues published in Science several years ago, they
classified countries in terms of how much they prioritized rules over freedom
as either “tight” or “loose,” writing: “Tight societies, like China,
Singapore and Austria have many rules and punishments governing social
behavior. Citizens in those places are used to a high degree of monitoring
aimed at reinforcing good behavior. Loose cultures, in countries such as the
United States, Italy and Brazil, have weaker rules and are much more
permissive.”
在上周《波士顿环球报》的一篇文章中，盖尔芬德回忆说，几年前自己和同事发表在《科
学》杂志的一篇论文中，他们根据“规则”高出“自由”的程度对不同国家进行分类：“
严厉”或“松散”，其中写道：“像中国、新加坡和奥地利这些“严厉社会”有很多规定
和惩罚措施来约束社会行为。这些国家的公民习惯了政府旨在规范良好行为的高度管控。
像美国、意大利和巴西这些松散文化比较宽容，规则也更宽松。”
These differences in tightness and looseness, she argued, were not random: “
Countries with the strongest laws and strictest punishments are those with
histories of famine, warfare, natural disasters, and, yes, pathogen
outbreaks. These disaster-prone nations have learned the hard way over
centuries: Tight rules and order save lives. Meanwhile, cultures that have
faced few threats — such as the United States — have the luxury of
remaining loose.”
盖尔芬德认为，这些严厉性和松散性的差异并不是随机产生的：那些法律最为严格、惩罚
最为严厉的国家往往经历过饥荒、战乱、自然灾害，还爆发过流行病。”几个世纪以来，
这些灾难频发的国家吸取了惨痛的教训：只有严格的规则和秩序才能拯救生命。与此同时
，那些几乎没受到过威胁的文化——比如美国——有幸能保持社会宽松。”
It’s been pretty obvious, said Gelfand, that “famously ‘tight’ societies
like Singapore and Hong Kong … have demonstrated the most effective response
to Covid-19.”
盖尔芬德说，在这次新冠疫情中显而易见，“应对最有效的就是那些众所周知的‘严厉社
会'，比如新加坡和香港。”
At the same time, our deficiencies in White House coordination and reckless
public figures — like Larry Kudlow, Sean Hannity, Laura In- graham, Rush
Limbaugh, Kellyanne Conway, Devin Nunes and Trump himself —– who initially
minimized the virus’s potential impact or imputed political motives to those
pounding the table for action, helped compound the risks to us all.
与此同时，我们白宫在协调方面的缺陷和行事鲁莽的公众人物——比如拉里‧库德洛（白
宫经济顾问）、肖恩‧汉尼提（福克斯新闻主播）、劳拉‧英格拉姆(保守派广播脱口秀
主播）、拉什‧林堡（保守派广播脱口秀主播）、凯莉安‧康威（川普发言人）、德文‧
努内斯（美国众议院情报委员会主席）和川普本人——他们有的把新冠病毒的潜在影响说
得很低，有的还质疑那些拍桌子叫板要采取抗疫行动的人政治动机不纯——结果反而让我
们所有人面临的疫情风险增倍。
So, Gelfand concluded: “In all of the uncertainty, we need to remember that
the trajectory of the virus has as much to do with the nature of the
coronavirus as it does with culture. Our loose cultural programming needs to
do a big switch in the days to come.”
所以盖尔芬德总结说：“尽管有许多不确定性，但我们要记住新冠疫情发展至今的路线既
受到病毒本身性质的影响，也受到所处文化环境的影响。接下来，我们的‘宽松’文化的
程序设定需要做出巨大修改。”
The Greatest Generation did it in World War II. But can we now?
这一点，美国“最伟大的一代”在二战中做到了。我们现在也可以吗?
Only generosity will save us
只有慷慨才能拯救我们
There are millions of business owners and employers out there who are
invested in long-term assets that they were assuming would go up in value —
a stock, a company, a home, a restaurant, a store — with borrowed money.
That’s money that they can’t now repay.
有数以百万计的公司老板和雇主用贷款投资了他们认为会增值的长期资产——股票、公司
、住宅、餐厅、商场。他们现在无力偿还这些贷款。
Therefore, we not only need the Fed to backstop their banks to prevent a
total meltdown, we not only need the banks to restructure their debts, we
need to get fresh cash into the pockets of all their workers so they can eat
after their last paycheck is spent. It is encouraging to see the
administration and Congress moving rapidly to do just that.
因此，我们不仅需要美联储为银行提供支持，防止全面崩溃；不仅需要银行重组债务；还
需要给所有工人的口袋注入现金，让他们在用完最后一笔工资时还有钱吃饭。令人鼓舞的
是我们看到政府和国会正在迅速采取行动。
The more we simultaneously tighten our culture and loosen our purses, the
stronger and kinder society we’ll be A.C. — After Corona.
越是让我们的文化变严厉，越是让人们的钱袋子变宽松，我们的社会在“新元后”才会变
得越强大、越友好。

奥地利被作者归为”严厉社会”，解释了它虽和意大利相邻，但目前为止死亡率非常低。3/30新闻：奥地利成首个强制民众戴口罩的西方国家，也是最早实施宵禁的欧洲国家之一。