外刊精读 | 疫情期间世界经济的良药

编者按：

不论是身处校园还是职场，英语都扮演着不可或缺的角色，而外刊是最好的学习资源。阅读外刊，可以积累地道的搭配，知晓我们熟悉的单词的不同用法，学习英语思维，同时了解世界。苗苗会选取《经济学人》《纽约时报》《时代周刊》等知名刊物上文章，定期推送，与大家共同学习，探索英语学习方法，关注国际事件。关于精读，苗苗有几个小建议：

1. 及时复习生词和词组搭配，反复记忆才能深入脑海；

2. 思考句与句、段与段之间的逻辑结构，观察作者是如何衔接句子和段落的；

3. 总结文章观点，日后可以用在写作中；

4. 看完一篇文章，可以凭记忆写一个文章概述或段落结构，尽量使用你从文章中学到的生词和搭配，可以巩固知识

……

剩下的，苗苗和大家一起探索。

大家想从外刊精读栏目学习到什么，欢迎留言～

Covid-19

The right medicine for the world economy

Coping with the pandemic involves all of government, not just the health system

Mar 5th 2020 |

段落结构：

IT IS NOT a fair fight, but it is a fight that many countries will face all the same. Left to itself, the covid-19 pandemic doubles every five to six days. When you get your next issue of The Economist the outbreak could in theory have infected twice as many people as today. Governments can slow that ferocious pace, but bureaucratic time is not the same as virus time. And at the moment governments across the world are being left flat-footed.

这不是一场公平的斗争，但是是一场许多国家仍将面临的斗争。放任它自己发展，新冠疫情每五到六天就会扩散一倍。当你拿到下一期《经济学人时》，从理论上说，这次疫情可能感染的人数是今天的两倍了。政府可以放慢疫情来势汹汹的扩散速度，但官僚主义的拖延赶不上病毒的扩散。目前，全世界的政府都已经束手无措。

·All the same：仍然；依旧；照样

【例句】It rained every day of our holiday - but we had a good time all the same.

·Left to itself： 任由其发展

【例句】But the mix of capital types, left to itself, is likely to drift gradually in the right direction.

·Ferocious：凶猛的

·flat-footed：束手无措的

【例句】Campaign leaders were caught flat-footed when the opinion polls suddenly started to swing the other way.

The disease is in 85 countries and territories, up from 50 a week earlier. Over 95,000 cases and 3,200 deaths have been recorded. Yet our analysis, based on patterns of travel to and from China, suggests that many countries which have spotted tens of cases have hundreds more circulating undetected. Iran, South Korea and Italy are exporting the virus. America has registered 159 cases in 14 states but as of March 1st it had, indefensibly, tested just 472 people when South Korea was testing 10,000 a day. Now that America is looking, it is sure to find scores of infections—and possibly unearth a runaway epidemic.

该病在85个国家和地区都有出现，一周之前还只有50个国家。超过95000个感染案例和3200个死亡案例已被记录。然而根据出行来往中国的样本，我们的分析表明很多目前只有几十例病例例的国家还有几百例未被发现。伊朗、韩国和意大利正向外输出病毒。美国14个州也发现了159个病例，但是截止3月1日，不可辩驳的是，当韩国每日检测10000人时，美国每天仅检测472人。现在美国正在寻找病例，可以肯定的是美国将会发现大量感染病例，并且可能发现失控的疫情。

·As of：自……起，也可作as from。

例句：The border, effectively closed since 1981, will be opened as of January the 1st...

·Scores of：许多；大量，后面一般跟可数名词复数，可用来替换a number of等。

·Unearth：发现；揭露

例句：Researchers have unearthed documents indicating her responsibility for the forced adoption of children...

·Runaway：迅速的;无法控制的;失控的 

Wherever the virus takes hold, containing it and mitigating its effects will involve more than doctors and paramedics. The World Health Organisation has distilled lessons from China for how health-care systems should cope. The same thinking is needed across the government, especially over how to protect people and companies as supply chains fracture and the worried and the ill shut themselves away.

不论病毒在哪里发生，控制并消除它的影响不仅仅涉及医生和护理人员。世界卫生组织从中国吸取经验，以了解医疗体系如何应对此次疫情。全球政府都应当有同样的想法，尤其是当供应链破裂、焦虑的人和患者把自己关起来进行自我合理，如何保护人和公司呢？

·Take hold：完全控制；彻底影响

例句：She was determined not to let the illness take hold again.

她决心不让疾病再次击垮自己。

·Contain: contain广为人知的意思是“包括；容纳”，但这里是“控制；防止……蔓延”的意思。比如说，contain the fire 控制火势

·Distil: distil有“蒸馏；提取（植物）精华”的意思，也有“精炼、浓缩（想法）；吸收……为一部分”的意思。

例句：Reviews are distilled from articles previously published in the main column… 述评是从先前刊登在主要专栏文章中提炼出来的。

The first task is to get manpower and money to hospitals. China drafted in 40,000 health workers to Hubei province. Britain may bring medics out of retirement. This week the World Bank made $12bn and the IMF $50bn available for covid-19. The Global Fund, which fights diseases like malaria and TB, said countries can switch grants. In America Congress is allocating $8.3bn of funding. The country has some of the world’s most advanced hospitals, but its fragmented health system has little spare capacity. Much more money will be needed.

第一个任务是为医院筹集人力和财力。中国调遣了40000个医疗工作者去湖北省。英国可能会让退休的医护人员重返工作岗位。本周世纪银行为抗击疫情提供了120亿美元，国际货币组织提供了500亿美元。与疟疾和结核病等疾病作斗争的全球基金表示，各国可转换捐款。在美国，国会拨款83亿美元。美国拥有几家世界上最先进的医院，但是它们分散的医疗体系几乎没有多余的容量。未来需要更多的钱。

·Draft: 选派；抽调；派遣。

例句：The manager will make a special plea to draft the player into his squad as a replacement.

·out of retirement: 重返工作岗位

·The Global Fund:

抗艾滋病、结核和疟疾全球基金（The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria,简称全球基金）是全球医药卫生领域的国际性援助机构。2002年在联合国和世界卫生组织的倡议和推动下，由几十个国家政府和国际组织以PPP模式（Public-Private-Partnership）共同建立，秘书处位于瑞士日内瓦，工作人员750多人，由包括有医学、药学、公共卫生、经济金融等背景的专业人士组成。该机构是世界卫生组织、联合国机构和发展中国家医药卫生项目重要的资助方之一，其理事会成员包括受援和援助国政府、世界卫生组织、世界银行、联合国艾滋病规划署和相关机构、组织等。

Just as important is to slow the spread of the disease by getting patients to come forward for testing when outbreaks are small and possible to contain. They may be deterred in many countries, including much of America, where 28m people are without health coverage and many more have to pay for a large slug of their own treatment. People also need to isolate themselves if they have mild symptoms, as about 80% of them will. Here sick pay matters, because many people cannot afford to miss work. In America a quarter of employees have no access to paid sick leave and only scattered states and cities offer sickness benefits. Often the self-employed, a fifth of Italy’s workforce, do not qualify. One study found that, in epidemics, guaranteed sick pay cuts the spread of flu in America by 40%.

当疫情爆发范围还小并且可控时，让患者主动接受测试以降低疫情扩散速度同样重要。很多国家包括美国的大部分地区，病人都会被吓到。在美国有2800万人口没有医疗保险，还有更多的人不得不为治疗支付一大笔钱。如果有人有轻微症状时也需要自我隔离，大概80%的人都会这么做。此时病假工资很重要，因为很多人无法承担错过工作的负担。在美国，1／4的雇员无法享受带薪病假，只有个别州和城市提供疾病津贴。通常，自雇人士（占意大利劳动力的1/5）没有资格。有研究表明，在流行病传染期间，保证病假工资可使流感在美国传播减少40%。

·Just as important is to… ：同样重要的是,可以用来表示“…很重要，…也同样重要”，例如：Just as it is important to distil other cultures from Western countries, it is even more important to maintain cultural confidence.

·Come forward: 自告奋勇；主动提供（信息）。

例句：A vital witness came forward to say that she saw Tanner wearing the boots.

·Health coverage: 医疗保险

·A large slug of: slug本身是“一大口（酒）”的意思，a large slug of 指“大量的”，后面接不可数名词。

·Mild: 温和的；不严重的

·Sick pay：病假工资

·cannot afford to: 无法承受

Sick pay also helps soften the blow to demand which, along with a supply shock and a general panic, is hitting economies. These three factors, as China shows, can have a dramatic effect on output. Manufacturing activity there sank in February to its lowest level since managers were first surveyed in 2004. In the quarter to March the economy as a whole could shrink for the first time since the death of Mao Zedong. The OECD expects global growth this year to be its slowest since 2009. Modelling by academics at the Australian National University suggests that GDP in America and Europe would be 2% lower than it would have been in the absence of a pandemic and perhaps as much as 8% lower if the rate of deaths is many times higher than expected. Financial markets are pricing in fear. The S&P 500 has fallen by 8% from its peak on February 19th. Issuance of corporate debt on Wall Street has more or less stopped. The yield on ten-year Treasuries dipped below 1% for the first time ever.

病假工资还可以帮助减轻对需求的打击，加上供给冲击和普遍恐慌，打击了经济。正如中国显示出的，这三个因素可能对产出有显著影响。中国二月的生产活动降到了2004年管理人员被首次调查以来的最低水平。自毛泽东去世以来，到三月的季度经济首次出现萎缩。经合组织预计，今天全球经济增长自2009年以来最为缓慢。澳洲国立大学学者模型表明，美国和欧洲的GDP将比不受疫情影响时的GDP低2%，如果死亡率比预计高出很多倍，这个数字可能是8%。金融市场在恐惧中定价。标普500指数从2月19号的顶峰已跌了8%。华尔街公司债券的发行或多或少已经停止。十年期美国国债收益率也首次跌破1%。

·soften the blow：缓和，缓解（打击等），也可以用“cushion the blow”。

例句：Programs designed to soften the blow of unemployment are not working well.

·hitting economies：打击经济

·sink:下降；减少；下跌

·the economy shrinks:：经济萎缩；经济下行

·in the absence of：缺席；没有

·Issuance: 发行，security issuance 证券发行

·Yield: 可数名词，投资收益、利润。

例句：The high yields available on the dividend shares made them attractive to private investors.

·Dip: (通常指迅速地)下降，下落，下沉

In rich countries, most of the economic effort has been directed towards calming financial markets. On March 3rd America’s Federal Reserve cut rates a fortnight before its monetary-policy meeting, and by an unusually large half-a-percentage point. The central banks of Australia, Canada and Indonesia have also acted. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank are both expected to loosen policy, too.

在富裕国家中，绝大多数经济政策都旨在稳定金融市场。3月3日，美国联邦储备委员会在货币政策会议召开两周前降息，降幅异常之大，达到0.5%。澳大利亚、加拿大和印度尼西亚的中央银行也采取了措施。预计英格兰银行和欧洲中央银行也将放宽政策。

·direct efforts towards：努力是为了……

·America’s Federal Reserve：美国联邦储备委员会，简称“美联储”，是一个美国联邦政府机构，主要负责制定并负责实施有关的货币政策、对银行机构实行监管，并保护消费者合法的信贷权利、维持金融系统的稳定和向美国政府，公众，金融机构，外国机构等提供可靠的金融服务。

·monetary-policy：货币政策

·half-a-percentage：半个百分点，即0.5%

·loosen policy：放宽政策，与之相对：tighten policy，紧缩政策。

Yet this slowdown is not a textbook downturn. Lower rates will ease borrowing costs and shore up sentiment, but no amount of cheap credit can stop people falling ill. Monetary policy cannot repair broken supply chains or tempt anxious people into venturing out. These obvious limitations help explain why stockmarkets failed to revive after the Fed’s cut.

然而，这种放缓并不是教科书式的经济低迷。较低的利率将减轻借贷成本和稳定民心，但是低成本信贷无法阻止人们生病。货币政策无法修复断裂的供应链或使焦虑的人去自主创业。这些明显的局限性有助于解释：为什么美联储降息后股市未能复苏。

·downturn: 衰退（经济方面）；低迷时期。

例句：There are two main reasons for the muted response of unemployment to so severe a downturn.

·Shore up: 支撑；支持；加强。可替换“strengthen”或者“support”。

例句：The democracies of the West may find it hard to shore up their defences.

·Sentiment: 态度、情绪。

·Venture out:冒险、投机

Better to support the economy directly, by helping affected people and firms pay bills and borrow money if they need it. For individuals, the priority should be paying for health care and providing paid sick leave. The Trump administration is considering paying some hospital bills for those with the virus. Japan’s government will cover the wages of parents who stay at home to care for children or sick relatives; Singapore’s will help cab drivers and bosses whose employees are struck down. More such ideas will be needed.

而支持经济直接更好的办法是：帮助受影响的人和公司在需要时支付费用和提供借款。对于个人而言，应优先考虑支付医疗费用并提供带薪病假。特朗普政府正在考虑为患有Covid-19的人支付部分医疗费用；日本政府将支付留在家里照顾孩子或患病亲戚的父母的工资；新加坡将帮助出租车司机和员工患病的雇主。当下需要更多这些举措。

·struck down：打倒，击倒。

例句：The man struck down by lightning during the storm was taken to the hospital.

For companies the big challenge will be liquidity. And although this shock is unlike the financial crisis, when the poison spread from within, that period did show how to cope with a liquidity crunch. Firms that lose revenues will still face tax, wage and interest bills. Easing that burden, for as long as the epidemic lasts, can avoid needless bankruptcies and lay-offs. Temporary relief on tax and wage costs can help. Employers can be encouraged to choose shorter hours for all their staff over lay-offs for some of them. Authorities could fund banks to lend to firms that are suffering, as they did during the financial crisis and as China is doing today. China is also ordering banks to go easy ondelinquent borrowers. Western governments cannot do that, but it is in the interest of lenders everywhere to show forbearance towards borrowers facing a cash squeeze, much as banks did to public-sector employees during America’s government shutdown in 2018-19.

对于公司而言，最大的挑战将是流动资金。尽管这种冲击与金融危机不同，但当疫情从内部扩散时，该时期的确出现了如何应对流动资金短缺的问题。失去收入的公司仍将面临税收、工资和利息支出。只要疫情持续，减轻这种负担就可以避免不必要的破产和裁员。暂时减轻税收和工资成本可以有所帮助。可以鼓励雇主为所有员工选择较短的工作时间，而不是部分裁员。当局可以支持银行向遭受危机的公司提供贷款，正如在金融危机期间和中国今天做的那样。中国要求各大银行对逾期贷款实施放宽政策。西方政府无法做到这一点，但对于面临现金周转困难的借款人而言，实施放宽政策符合世界各地信贷方的利益，这与2018-2019财年美国政府停摆期间，银行对公共部门工作人员的举措一样。

Crunch：

       ①压碎声；碎裂声（拟声词）。

       例句：The crunch of feet on snow.

       ②紧要关头；困境；症结；令人不快的重要消息。

       例句：He crunch came when she returned from America.

       ③（突发的）不足，短缺；（尤指）缺钱。

       例如：a budget/energy/housing crunch

go easy on：

        ①温和对待……（on sth）。

       例句：Go easy on the slang, especially      among those who are already judging you based on race and age.

       ②对某人温和、宽容（on sb）。

       例句：I promise I'll go easy on you.

       ③有节制地使用

        例句：Go easy on the alcohol.

·Delinquent: 拖欠债务的。

·Forbearance: 耐心；宽容；克制。

·Squeeze: （countable usually singular）

       ①减少；削减。the squeeze on profits:利润的减少。

       ②通货紧缩；货币紧缩。A credit squeeze：信贷紧缩

·America’s government shutdown in 2018-19:

美国政府关门，又称美国政府停摆，美东时间2018年12月21日晚8点，围绕特朗普总统所要求的50亿美元美墨边境“修墙”拨款问题，美国国会参议院在没有就联邦政府下一步拨款问题达成任何方案的情况下宣布休会。22日凌晨起，美国联邦政府部分部门再次出现停摆。2019年1月25日，美国史上最长政府停摆结束。美国总统特朗普当天晚上签署了一项为期3周的临时支出法案，美国政府将重新开门。

There is a tension. Health policy aims to spare hospitals by lowering the epidemic’s peak so that it is less intense, if longer-lasting. Economic policy, by contrast, aims to minimise how long factories are shut and staff absent. Eventually governments will have to strike a balance. Today, however, they are so far behind the epidemic that the priority must be to slow its spread. ■

卫生政策和经济政策之间存在矛盾。卫生政策旨在通过降低该流行病的高峰期来减轻医院的负担，从而使流行程度降低甚至持续时间更长。相比之下，经济政策旨在最大程度地缩短工厂关闭和员工误工的时间。最终，政府将不得不选取一个平衡。然而如今，它们已经远远滞后于疫情，以至于必须优先考虑减缓其疫情的蔓延。■

·Tension：

    n.紧张局势(或关系、状况);矛盾;对立;(情绪上的)紧张，烦躁；

    v.(使金属线、帆等)拉紧，绷紧。

·strike a balance：取得平衡

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