来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2022年5月2日
Not content with writing a handbook on tackling climate change, Bill Gates has turned his attention to another of the world’s biggest problems: stopping the next pandemic. While covid-19 is still with us, many people are acting as if it isn’t. In this rush to “normality”, the entrepreneur and philanthropist worries that we may not learn the lessons we need to avoid a repeat. “We’re all eager to return to the way things were before, but there is one thing we cannot afford to go back to – our complacency about pandemics,” he writes in his new book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.
比尔•盖茨不满足于写一本应对气候变化的手册，他把注意力转向了另一个世界上最大的问题：阻止下一场大流行病的爆发。虽然新冠病毒仍在我们身边，但许多人表现得好像它已经消失了。这位企业家兼慈善家担心，在这种急于回归“常态”的过程中，我们可能无法吸取避免重蹈覆辙所需的教训。他在新书《如何预防下一次大流行病》中写道：“我们都渴望回到过去的方式，但有一件事我们不能回到过去，那就是我们对大流行病的自满。”
Much of his prescription for pandemic prevention is hard to argue with. Who doesn’t want more investment in public health systems globally, better surveillance, quicker treatments and vaccines? Other ideas are sensible, too, such as smarter and more frequent pandemic simulation exercises.
他为预防大流行提出的建议中，有很多是难以辩驳的。谁不想在全球公共卫生系统中投入更多资金、更好的监测、更快的治疗和疫苗？其他想法也很明智，比如更智能、更频繁的大流行模拟演习。
More debatable is his proposal for a global pandemic agency, the Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization (GERM) team, with $1 billion annual funding. Gates says it would be managed by the World Health Organization, but never explains why a new layer of bureaucracy is better than just beefing up the WHO.
更有争议的是，他提议设立一个全球流行病机构——全球流行病应对和动员(GERM)团队，每年提供10亿美元的资金。盖茨说，它将由世界卫生组织管理，但从来没有解释为什么新增一层官僚机构比直接改进世界卫生组织更好。
Nor does he spell out how GERM would escape the same nationally self-interested headwinds the WHO faces, such as the US cutting funding in 2020.
他也没有说明GERM将如何摆脱世卫组织面临的同样的国家利己主义阻力，比如美国在2020年削减会费。
Gates admits he was too pessimistic about how quickly a covid-19 vaccine could be available globally, and explains why he now thinks vaccines could be ready in six months next time.
盖茨承认，他之前对新冠肺炎疫苗在全球的普及速度过于悲观，并解释了为什么他现在认为如果再发生疫情，疫苗可以在六个月内准备好。
He comes out against future school closures, assuming children aren’t more vulnerable to the next disease. And while he is for contact tracing, he is sceptical about apps for it because of low take-up. Ventilation gets an enthusiastic thumbs up, as do cheap and effective masks. As one public health expert told him, the book would be very short “if everyone would just wear masks”.
他反对未来关闭学校，认为如果发生下一次疫情，孩子们并不会更易感染。虽然他支持追踪密切接触者，但他对这方面的应用程序持怀疑态度，因为它们的使用率很低。本书中，通风设备得到了热情的赞许，廉价而有效的口罩也得到了赞许。正如一位公共卫生专家告诉他的那样，“如果每个人都戴口罩”，这本书就没必要长篇大论了。
There are other things to grumble about. The details of regulation and policy that Gates explores are important, but often make for dull reading. While many of his ideas and principles are good, they are often so obvious that you question the need for a whole book.
还有其他方面可以抱怨。盖茨所探讨的监管和政策的细节很重要，但往往读起来很枯燥。虽然他的许多想法和原则都很好，但它们往往非常明显，以至于你怀疑是否需要写这样一整本书。
Perhaps the biggest flaw is one of omission. The issue of minimising the risk of disease spillover in the first place, by addressing wildlife markets or extractive industries in wild places, is missing. Yet an off-topic chapter about covid-19 accelerating the process of digitisation is tacked on at the end.
也许最大的缺陷是遗漏。通过解决野生动物市场或野生地区采掘业的问题，从一开始就最大限度地减少疾病外溢风险，这一主题是缺失的。然而，书的最后增加了一个偏离主题的章节，即新冠疫情加速了数字化进程。
How to Prevent the Next Pandemic isn’t as successful as Gates’s climate guide, but it is welcome. And it couldn’t be more timely, with thousands still dying daily. As he writes, “once covid is no longer an acute threat, don’t forget about what it has done”.
《如何预防下一次大流行病》不像盖茨的气候指南那样成功，但仍是受欢迎的。这本书来得很及时，因为每天仍有数千人因新冠病毒死亡。正如他所写的，“一旦新冠肺炎不再是一个严重的威胁，不要忘记它已经造成的后果”。