美國號稱具有世界上最豐富的醫療資源和醫療護理能力,應對新冠肺炎疫情卻一片混亂,成為世界上確診人數和死亡人數最多的國家。
The United States claimed to be most abundant in medical resources and healthcare capacity, yet its response to the COVID-19 pandemic was chaotic, causing it to lead the world in the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and related deaths.
應對疫情不力造成慘重后果。根據美國約翰斯·霍普金斯大學統計的數據,截至2021年2月底,美國新冠肺炎確診病例總數已超過2800萬例,死亡病例總數超過50萬例。美國人口不足世界總人口的5%,其新冠肺炎確診病例數卻超過全球總數的25%,死亡病例數占全球總數的近20%。美國有線電視新聞網2020年12月20日報道,僅加利福尼亞州就已經報告了184.5萬例新冠肺炎確診病例和22599例死亡病例,相當于每10萬人中就有4669人確診、57人死亡,這還不包括許多未得到診斷的輕癥或無癥狀感染病例。如果美國能夠科學應對,事情本不必如此。美國流行病學家、疾病控制與預防中心原負責人威廉·福格認為,“這是一場屠殺”。
Incompetent pandemic response led to dire consequences. A tally by Johns Hopkins University showed that as of the end of February 2021, the United States has registered more than 28 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with related deaths exceeding 500,000. With a population of less than 5 percent of the world’s total, the United States accounted for more than 25 percent of all the confirmed cases and nearly 20 percent of the deaths. On Dec. 20, 2020, CNN reported that the state of California alone had reported 1.845 million COVID-19 cases and 22,599 deaths, which translates to roughly 4,669 known cases and 57 deaths for every 100,000 residents. Even these numbers don’t give the whole picture of the state, because many cases, including mild or asymptomatic infections, had not been diagnosed. Had the American authorities taken science-based measures to contain the pandemic, this could have been avoided. But since they had not, the pandemic, as epidemiologist and former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) William Foege had put it, is “a slaughter” to the United States.
領導人無視科學警告刻意淡化疫情風險。根據《紐約時報》《華盛頓郵報》等媒體復盤的美國疫情時間線,美國特朗普政府一再忽視疫情警告。白宮國家安全委員會在2020年1月初就收到情報,預測病毒將在美國蔓延。時任白宮貿易與制造業政策辦公室主任彼得·納瓦羅在1月29日撰寫的一份備忘錄中,詳細列舉了疫情暴發的潛在風險:可能會有多達50萬人死亡,并造成數萬億美元的經濟損失。時任美國衛生與公眾服務部部長亞歷克斯·阿扎等衛生官員和醫學專家也多次警告疫情在美國暴發的危險。但美國特朗普政府不僅對各種警告置之不理,反而專注于控制信息傳播,甚至發布虛假信息誤導民眾,稱新冠肺炎病毒是“大號流感”,感染病毒的風險和死亡率“非常低”,疫情會很快“奇跡般地消失”,導致防控疫情的“黃金窗口期”被白白浪費。《紐約時報》網站2020年4月13日報道指出,時任美國政府領導人寧肯相信自己的直覺也不相信科學,錯失時機,斷送了大量無辜的生命。
National leaders ignored warnings from experts and downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic. According to the timeline of COVID-19 pandemic in the United States released by media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Trump administration had repeatedly ignored alarms regarding the risks of the pandemic. In early January 2020, a National Security Council office had already received intelligence reports predicting the spread of the virus to the United States. In a Jan. 29, 2020 memo, then White House trade adviser Peter Navarro projected that a coronavirus pandemic might lead to as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. A number of health officials, including then Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and medical experts also warned of the possibility of a pandemic in the United States. None of the aforementioned warnings brought the imminent pandemic to the Trump administration’s attention. Instead, the administration focused on controlling the message, and released misleading signals to the public by claiming “the risk of the virus to most Americans was very low,” suggesting that the coronavirus is no worse than the common flu, and stating the virus will “miraculously go away” when the weather gets warmer. Thus, the country lost crucial weeks for pandemic prevention and control. An article published on the website of The New York Times on April 13, 2020 commented that, then American leader’s “preference for following his gut rather than the data cost time, and perhaps lives.”
政府選擇不作為導致疫情失控。在美國新冠肺炎死亡病例超過30萬人后,加利福尼亞大學洛杉磯分校醫學教授戴維·哈耶斯-鮑提斯塔指出,美國其實不應死那么多人,是政府選擇了不作為導致悲劇的發生。(注2)哥倫比亞大學疾病研究人員通過模型分析顯示,如果美國政府2020年3月13日發布的疫情防控措施能夠提前兩星期,那么約83%的死亡是可以避免的。(注3)英國醫學期刊《柳葉刀》2020年5月17日罕有地發表社論指出,美國政府總是“著迷于”找到快速結束疫情的方式——疫苗、新藥,甚至指望病毒會就這么消失了,但事實是只有依賴病毒檢測、感染追蹤及隔離等基本的公共衛生準則,才可能終結疫情。即便疫情已經在美國大范圍蔓延,確診病例和死亡病例已升至全球第一的情況下,特朗普政府出于政治私利,依然急于重啟經濟。沃克斯新聞網2020年8月11日評論稱,一些州在4、5月份就忙于重啟,使得病毒傳播的重災區從最初的紐約地區向南部、西部擴散,并最終擴散到全國其他地區。盡管許多醫學研究已經證實佩戴口罩可以有效防止感染病毒,但時任美國政府領導人和一些州政府官員卻長期拒絕實施強制口罩令。
Government inaction led to uncontrolled pandemic spread. “There’s no need for that many to have died. We chose, as a country, to take our foot off the gas pedal. We chose to, and that's the tragedy.” So commented David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, after the pandemic death toll hit 300,000 in the United States. Disease modelers with the Columbia University also estimated that, if the United States had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, 2020, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, about 83 percent of the nation’s pandemic-related deaths would have been avoided. An editorial from the website of medical journal The Lancet, published on May 17, 2020, commented that the U.S. government was obsessed with magic bullets -- vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. At the same time, it noted that only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like testing, tracing, and isolation, would see the emergency brought to an end. Even when the pandemic is spreading in a vast area in the United States, the administration was hasty to restart the economy due to political concerns. According to news website Vox on Aug. 11, 2020, in April and May last year, several states rushed to reopen and caused the virus to shift to the South, West and eventually the rest of the United States. In addition, despite that experts had recommended people wear masks in public, the then American leader and some state officials had been extremely reluctant to issue any decree to make wearing masks mandatory.
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