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Bloomberg recently listed the U.S. at the top of its COVID Resilience Ranking. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian later called the report a "childish stunt." He criticized it for leaving out several key indicators, including confirmed cases, the death toll and branding quarantine and travel restrictions as "negative factors."彭博社近日发布了最新的“抗疫韧性排行榜”，美国位列第一。中国外交部发言人赵立坚批驳彭博社的做法是“小儿科”。他批评这一排名不仅没有考虑确诊病例和死亡人数等关键指标，而且还将隔离和限制措施视为“负面因素”。The United States may be on the path to recovery now, but what makes this study flawed is that it has ultimately come at a horrific cost. This owes more to the complacency and negligence of American authorities and the country's political culture, as opposed to success.或许美国目前正从疫情中走出，但是美国为此付出了沉痛的代价。这一代价无疑归咎于美国官员的傲慢和其政治体系的无能。First of all, the U.S. has the highest death toll from COVID-19, with over 600,000 lives lost. This amounts to a loss of 0.2 percent or two out of every 1,000 people in the U.S., making the COVID-19 the deadliest event in the country since the Civil War. Almost 10 percent of the entire population has tested positive for the virus.美国的疫情死亡人数居全球之首，总数超过60万，相当于其人口的0.2%。换句话说，也就是每1000名美国人中就有2人死亡。这使得新冠肺炎疫情成为了美国自内战以来最致命的事件。此外，美国的确诊病例也达到了其总人口的近10%。Such a high quantity of cases is directly the product of a policy Bloomberg associates with "resilience," which involves ignoring lockdowns, opposing the wearing of face masks, and social distancing. Even at the time of writing, the United States had not yet eradicated the virus completely. The Delta variant is starting to run riot in the country, and cases have rebounded to more than 30,000 a day.如此庞大规模的确诊病例与美国轻视封城举措以及反对佩戴口罩和社交距离的政策直接相关。然而，在彭博社的排名中，这样的做法却成了创造“韧性”的功绩。即便是当下，美国也尚未完全消灭病毒。随着德尔塔变异株的蔓延，美国的单日新增病例数又反弹至3万以上。This is not a sign of resilience. The U.S. vaccination rate was initially swift but buckled thereafter. It is also a reminder that there are "two Americas" at play here, deeply divided by income, class, and geography. These gaping internal inequalities have made the vaccine rollout uneven, with states in the Deep South making limited progress.即使在疫苗接种方面，美国的表现也不能算是有韧性。美国的疫苗接种速度虽然起初较快，但之后便止步不前。究其原因，美国人口因收入、阶级和地域而大相径庭。这些巨大的内部不平等导致疫苗推广不均衡，深南部各州取得的进展有限。这也再次提醒人们，美国是一个割裂的国家。As a report from CNN notes, "Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas are the only states to have fully vaccinated fewer than 35 percent of their residents. Average daily case rates in each state were among the 10 worst in the country last week."美国有线电视新闻网CNN的一篇报道指出，“阿拉巴马州、密西西比州和阿肯色州的完全接种率不足35%的州。从上周的单日病例增速来看，这几个周形势严峻程度位列全美前十。”Again, is this a sign of a resilient country or the best place to be in a pandemic?难道这是一个具有“韧性”的国家或者抗疫表现最优异的国家该有的样子吗？A patient is wheeled out of Elmhurst Hospital Center to a waiting ambulance in New York, U.S., April 7, 2020. /AP
In this case, what Bloomberg, by placing the Chinese mainland at the No.8 slot, tries to write off as weaknesses in China are, in fact, strengths. China's policy of strict and localized lockdowns has been optimum in containing COVID-19 above any other country. China has frequently taken the harshest measures to beat off the smallest scale outbreaks, including beating back the highly contagious Delta variant in Guangdong Province.彭博社的这份最新排名将中国大陆排在第8位，同时指出了中国抗疫的若干“缺点”。但实际上，这些非但不是“缺点”，而且都是优点。中国严格的抗疫措施，其效果优于世界上其他任何国家。只要出现疫情，哪怕规模较小，中国也会采取最严格的措施予以扑灭。近期由传染性极强的德尔塔变异株引发的广州疫情就是一个例子。The country's vaccine rollout has also, much to Bloomberg's dismissal, fast outpaced that of the United States. Despite having a much larger population, China had by mid-July distributed 1.4 billion doses of vaccines, while the figure in the U.S. is 335 million doses so far. With more than 3.44 billion doses administered worldwide, China has contributed over 30 percent to global vaccination. The country's superior model of organization and social obligation has meant that the rollout, unlike in the U.S., has not been unevenly distributed either.中国的疫苗接种速度也远超美国，虽然彭博社对此不屑一顾。中国虽是人口大国，但截至七月中，中国的疫苗接种数量已达14亿剂次，而美国仅有3.35亿剂次。在全球目前总共接种的34.4亿剂次疫苗中，超过30%来自中国。优越的组织制度和强烈的社会责任意味着，中国的疫苗接种不会出现美国式的参差不齐现象。In this case, what the report further misses out is that the United States is simply normal because of complacency, not because of objective success in beating the virus. A relaxed, anti-government and liberty-centric approach to handling COVID-19 aptly underscores the roots of America's yet unfinished disaster concerning the pandemic, to which the government responded by exporting the blame and proliferating conspiracy theories.如此看来，彭博社的排名还暴露了一点：那就是美国所谓“抗疫成功”完全得益于傲慢，而非打败病毒的真正实力。疫情给美国带来的灾难至今尚未结束，根源在于其松垮的、过度强调自由的抗疫政策，以及迷恋甩锅和兜售阴谋论的政府。China has continued to take precautions because defeating COVID-19 cannot be done with short-term impulses. In the long run, this means China's resilience has been deeply underrated. Beijing has sustained a scope of normalcy and stability without a massive loss of human lives, spending trillions on government stimulus, allowing nasty variants to take hold and catering to populist instincts.抗疫不能靠一时冲动，中国始终保持高度警惕。中国政府保证了社会正常稳定运转，没有大量人员死亡，没有斥资万亿刺激经济，没有让病毒变种肆虐，也没有迎合民粹情绪。难道这不能足以说明中国抗疫的成功吗？中国的抗疫韧性被严重低估！On the contrary, the United States has demonstrated itself to be one of the most dangerous locations to live in during the pandemic, not least in a society that continues to be rampant with inequality, uneven access to healthcare, and inadequate public health information from authorities that cater to commercial interests and conspiracy theories. 相反，美国却拿自己的行动向世界证明自己是疫情大流行中最危险的国家之一。尤其让人担忧的是，在这样一个不平等现象泛滥的国家中，人们无法公平获得医疗资源，无法从政府得到足够的公共卫生信息，而政府却一味迎合商业利益和阴谋论。