张教授在上海

Pandemics, like world wars and global financial crises, are history’s great interruptions. Whether man made or naturally occurring, whether anticipated or bolt from the blue. They are also moments of revelation. It isn’t just that a catastrophe divides us all up into three groups: the prematurely dead, the lucky survivors, and the permanently wounded or traumatized. The catastrophe also separates the fragile from the resilient and the anti fragile. Nassim N. Taleba’s wonderful word to describe something that actually become stronger under stress. Remember in nature what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Some cities, corporations, states, and empires collapse under the force of a shock, others survive. But a third category emerges stronger from the crisis. Much about this pandemic still remains uncertain. Three things however can be said now with some confidence.

大型瘟疫，跟世界大战和全球金融危机一样，是历史的中断，无论人为触发还是自然造成，意料之中还是意料之外。他们同时也是暴露问题的时刻。灾难不仅把我们分成这么三类，过早死去的，幸运活下来的和受到永久伤害的；灾难同时把脆弱的和能适应的和反脆弱的分开。反脆弱是Nassim N. Talebe创造的词用来描述有些东西在压力下愈发坚强。别忘了在自然界，凡未能至我于死地者，于我有磨砺之功。有些城市，有些公司，有些国家，有些帝国，会在强烈冲击下崩溃，另外一些则能够存活下来。还有第三类在经历之后变得更为强大。关于此次瘟疫，还有很多事情不能确定，但是下列三点比较确定。

First Covid19 is to social life what AIDS was to sexual life. It will change our behaviour though by no means enough to avert a significant number of premature deaths. There’ll be unsafe socializing, just as the still unsafe sex.

首先，COVID-19之于社交生活诚如艾滋病之于性生活。足以改变我们的行为，虽然这种改变不足以实质性地减少死亡。仍然会有不安全的社交活动，正如仍然有不安全的性活动。

Second, and for that reason, most big cities aren’t over. It takes a lot to kill a city. True, just over a century after Thomas Mann wrote Death in Venice, Venice is pretty much dead. But it wasn’t the Cholera that killed it, try the shifting pattern of international trade. Just as COVID-19 won’t kill London and New York. It’ll just make them cheaper and grandeur.

第二，因为上述原因，多数大城市不会就此完结。毁掉一个城市需要很久。没错，在Thomas Mann写下《威尼斯之死》仅仅一个世纪之后，威尼斯基本上完了，但威尼斯并非毁于霍乱，国际贸易模式的变化可以更好地解释其衰落。正如COVID-19不会毁掉伦敦和纽约，只是会它们更便宜，更宏伟。

Finally let’s reflect on the pandemic’s impact on generational imbalances that had grown intolerable in many societies in recent years. Has COVID-19 been sent by friar, the goddess of youth, to emancipate millennials and generations Z from carrying the fiscal burden of an excessive number of elderly people? It’s tempting to marvel at this age just virus, no previous pandemic was so discriminating against the elderly and unfavourable young. But in truth the impact of COVID-19 in terms of excess mortality will probably not be great enough to make much difference.

最后，我们可以回顾一下这次瘟疫对代际失衡的影响。近年来代际失衡在很多社会已经越来越让人无法忍受。是青春女神Freyja把COVID-19派到人间，把千禧一代和Z世代年轻人从过多老人带来的财政负担中解放出来吗？这个年龄正义病毒让人忍不住这么想——从未有病毒如此对老年人如此不利而放过年轻人。但是实际上，看超额死亡率的话，COVID-19的影响很可能不足以影响年龄结构。

Plagues don’t hold progressive if progress is happening. The same London that suffered the last great bubonic plague outbreak of 1665 was about to become the central harbor of extraordinary commercial empire, humming hive of scientific and financial innovation. No pathogen could stop that. Our plague is likely to have the biggest impacts on places where progress had stopped and stagnation had set in.

如果发展正在进行，则不会被瘟疫阻止。在1665年，经历过鼠疫大爆发的伦敦即将成为商业帝国的中心港口，科学和金融创新的蜂拥而至。没有任何病原体能够阻挡。当前的瘟疫更可能在那些没有发展，陷入停滞的地方造成最大的影响。

First in line, I hope, will be the bureaucracies that in some countries, including Britain and America, so badly failed to deal with this crisis.

首先受到冲击的，我希望，是一些国家（包括英国和美国）那些严重无法应付这场危机的官僚体系。

Next I hope will be those universities that were more interested in propagating work ideology than teaching all that can profitably be learnt from the human past.

接下来应该受到冲击的，我希望，是那些对传播工作意识而不是教授人类积累的一切有益知识的大学。

Finally may the pandemic clear out those media institutions that insisted on covering it, as if it were all a function of the fables of a few presidents, prime ministers, and advisers.

最后，但愿瘟疫能清除那些【这一段的意思不太通顺】。

If stagnating institutions are shaken up by this disaster that just a chance that we’ll see a return to progress, in places where up until 2020, the most striking trend had been degeneration. By killing those parts of our system that failed the test, COVID-19 might just make us stronger.

如果一些陷入停滞的机制能被这次灾难清除，我们就会在那些直到2020年只有退化的地方看到进步的机会。通过淘汰系统中那些不能通过测试的部分，COVID-19完全可能使我们更为强大。

Oh I think it is absolutely correct. I mean, that’s kind of stress test and if you have weak institutions, you are gonna fail the test and you’ll get weaker. And I do think it will actually open up the possibilities for things getting better.

我认为肯定是这样的。这是个压力测试，如果你的机制薄弱，就无法通过测试，因此会变得更弱。我也确实认为，这将为事情变得更好开辟可能性。

It is kind of musing. I actually had an argument with Niall Ferguson a few days ago on precisely this topic. His view of what it means to get better is quite different from mine. In my view the kinds of weaknesses that are going to be revealed have to do with the inequalities and health systems. The fact that in the united states for example it’s primarily racial and ethnic minorities that have suffered. His weak institutions are the media universities other kind of liberal icons. One of us is going to be right about, you know, which are the main targets. But I do think the general principle that there’s gonna be a weeding out is correct.

有意思的是，几天前我刚刚跟Niall Ferguson争论了这个话题。他所说的改善跟我说的完全不同。我认为，被揭露出来的薄弱环节在于不平等和卫生系统。比如在美国，遭受苦难的主要是少数族群。他说的薄弱环节是媒体，大学等自由象征。到底哪些是薄弱环节，我们两人只有一个人是对的。但是关于筛选淘汰的一般原则，是没有问题的。

Well I hope so. I’m always happy to join Niall and anyone else in taking a swipe at sclerotic bureaucracies, but I have to say I think I agree more with Francis on this, which is that the way in which the impact of this disease has exposed underlying structural problems I think could be the reason why we see positive outcome. And I think that the really big impact could be not so much from a pandemic itself, but from our response to it.

我希望是这样的。我很乐意跟Niall Ferguson或者其他人一起批评僵化的管理机构。但我必须说在这个问题上我跟福山的观点更接近。也就是说，疾病因为暴露了深层的结构化问题，才有可能有正面作用。而我认为重大的影响可能来自我们对于瘟疫的响应方式，而不是来自瘟疫本身。

The shut down and the accompanying action by government which was so dramatic, I think it will actually show us that the limits of what is politically possible in addressing issues like long standing inequality and so on are far greater than we’ve previously imagined.

政府的关闭和伴随措施是非常激烈的，我认为这显示了在解决一些长期问题上，政治可能性的边界远超我们以前的想象。

For example if you look at [hope] inequalities on things that kill far more people than this disease has or will in the future. Things like heart diseases and obesity also connected to poverty and inequality, because/by our industrialized food system factory farming sugar the prevalence all of that subsidized in many cases by the government action to tackle those long standing problems. I think now ministers and officials in governments around world might say well look while we shut down the economy to deal with corona virus, we can start dismantling some of these things that cause ill help and death in a far bigger scale in the future. So in that sense I think we could see a positive outcoming the long term.

比如不平等问题，和其它导致死亡人数远多于当前瘟疫的那些问题。心脏疾病，超重都跟贫穷和不平等有关联。。。。。。。。。。我想，部长和政府工作人员可能会说，既然我们可以关闭政府来对待冠状病毒，那么其它重大问题可以有更加激烈的措施。在这个意义上，我认为这次瘟疫从长远上看有正面作用。

Well the great depression I think have massive long term impacts of nobody anticipated. Some of them were extremely negative. I think the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy was one of the consequences, but it also did lead to the kinds of results that Steve Hilton was talking about it created the basis for the welfare state in the united states and the rise of a new kind of progressive politics which after 1945 went on to dominate the world.

大萧条带来很多没有想到的长期影响。其中一些极端负面。我认为法西斯在德国和意大利的兴起是其后果之一，但是它也导致Steve Hilton所说的正面结果，它为美国变成福利国家和一类进步政治的兴起打下了基础，这种进步政治在1945年之后成为主流。

I think he’s got it completely wrong. I mean the center for disease control in the United States did screw up the early testing, but if you want to place blame for the bad American response to this epidemic, it falls squarely on the shoulders of Donald Trump. He ignored the crisis for most of January February into half of March. And we got a very very late start because he wouldn’t even admit that there was a problem going.

我认为他完全搞错了。美国疾病控制中心的确搞砸了早期测试，但是要说美国政府对大流行应对不力，责任可以说全然在川普一个人身上。他在一月份二月份一直到三月中，对问题视而不见。我们启动的非常非常晚，因为他根本不承认有问题。

This COVID epidemic may actually lands the boil of populism. I don’t think there’s any correlation between being a democracy and doing well or poorly, but there is definitely a correlation between being a populous leader and doing badly. And the two prime examples of that are really Brazil under Bolsonaro and the United States under Trump, because populous want to be popular they don’t want to associate themselves with anything bad. they are not willing to take responsibility for a national emergency.

这次危机可能会造成民粹主义触礁。我认为民主程度与应对是否得当没有关联，但是显然民粹领袖和应对糟糕之间有很大的关联。两个首要的例子，博索纳罗治下的巴西和川普治下的美国。因为民粹领袖不希望自己与任何不好的事情联系起来，这样才受欢迎。它们不愿意为国家紧急状态承担责任。

Well I think that’s only been true in historical term. That word that term is applied in many different contexts. People talk about Donald Trump as Francis has, and  possibilities but also Bernie Sanders on the left and what I mean by it something that I think will be a positive outcome from this if politicians make the right decisions which is putting more power in people’s hands.

只有在历史上是这样的。民粹这个词，这个概念被用在各种不同语境中。比如人们会说川普是民粹领袖，福山刚才是这么用的。人们也说巴西的博索纳罗是民粹领袖，同时还说左翼的伯尼桑德斯是民粹领袖。我所说的正面结果是，如果政治人物做出正确选择，将权力更多交回给民众，这才是正面结果。

And again going back to my point earlier I think that we can start to reimagine many of the services that we accepted in the past as provided from unrightly government wether that’s policing or their centralized education system the health care system and so on and actually start to see it broken up decentralizing the power of rule about, but moderately in people’s hands people are asking for power they want the power back that’s why they’re on the streets. So that kind of popular I think would be a positive outcome for all of this.

回到我早先说到的，我觉得我们可以重新想象那些被认为天然是政府提供的服务，比如警察，医疗，保健等等，其实它们已经开始逐渐崩溃，权力正在去中心化。民众在呼唤权力绘到自己手中，这是为什么它们走上街头。这种民粹是我所认为的正面结果。