It's an easy cop-out to say that America can't mirror China...
美国疫情正在发展成为发达国家之“最”,扎卡里亚心痛地将这种现象讽刺为美国“优越论”新面孔。
The United States is on track to have the worst outbreak of coronavirus among wealthy countries. This is the new face of American exceptionalism.
The president has been inapt from the start, but there is a much largerstory behind this fiasco.
美国曾提倡有限但有效的政府管理。富兰克林·罗斯福为美国创立了极其精简高效的现代联邦官僚机构。 America historically prized limited but effective government.Franklin Donald Roosevelt created the modern federal bureaucracy, which was strikingly lean and efficient.
But in recent decades, as the scope of government increased, the bureaucracy was starved and made increasingly dysfunctional.
America is paying the price today for decades of defunding government, politicizing independent agencies, fantasizing local control and demeaning and disparaging government workers and bureaucrats.
20世纪50年代,联邦雇员人数在总就业人数中的比例超过5%。但如今,这一比例却降到2%以下。事实上,美国人口已经扩大到当时的两倍,GDP(扣除价格因素)比当时高出了7倍。 In the 1950s, the percentage of federal civilian employees compared to total employment was above 5 percent. It has dropped to under 2 percent today, despite a US population that is twice as large and a GDP that is seven times higher (adjusting for inflation) than the 1950s. 联邦机构人手不足,但负担过重,规章制度、政治授权以及规则繁多,官员们几乎没有权力和自由裁量权。 Federal agencies are understaffed but overburdened with mountains of regulations and politicized mandates and rules, giving officials little power and discretion.
The FDA's cumbersome rules and bureaucracy, which have proved a huge problem in this case, is just one example among hundreds.
长期研究这一课题的学者保罗·莱特指出,约翰·肯尼迪总统内阁有17个层级;到特朗普上台时,已经达到惊人的71层。 The scholar who has long studied this topic, Paul Light, notes that under John F. Kennedy, the Cabinet departments had 17 layers of hierarchy. By the time Donald Trump took office, there were a staggering 71 layers.
Both parties have contributed to the problem, making the federal government a caricature of bureaucratic inefficiency.
美国各州、各地方数千公共卫生部门,拼凑起来的权威,在应对无国界的流行病面前,就是一场噩梦。任何地方部门一旦应对不力,都会导致疫情持续蔓延。你看吧,在佛罗里达的海滩上发生的事情绝不可能只限于佛罗里达的海滩。 And then we have America's crazy quilt patchwork authority with thousands of state, local and tribal public health departments. They are proving a nightmare when tackling an epidemic that knows no borders, and where any locality with a weak response will allow the infection to keep spreading elsewhere. You see what happens on Florida's beaches doesn't stay on Florida's beaches.
抗疫的第一道防线是病毒检测。在这关键的一步上,美国的经历是一场惨败。我们很晚才开始检测,使用的检测盒有缺陷,并且尚未恢复。 The first line of defense against the diseases is testing. On this key metric, the US experience has been a fiasco. We started late using a faulty test and never quite recovered.
特朗普总统所说的“任何人想检测就可以检测”,根本就是一个残忍的骗局。结果证明,与多数发达国相比,美国的检测普及程度要糟糕得多。 President Trump's claim that anybody that wants a test can get a test has turned out to be a cruel hoax. Access to tests remains much worse than in most advanced countries. 截至上周六,韩国人均检测次数是美国的三倍。意大利的人均检测次数都是美国的三倍。 Per capita South Korea has done three times more testing than the United States as of Saturday.Italy has also tested three times as much per capita as the US.
美国各地的基本医疗用品正在逐渐消耗。一份对美国200多位市长进行的调查显示,90%的市长说他们没有足够的防护设备供医护人员使用,比如口罩;85%的市长说他们没有足够的呼吸机。这意味着,许多人可能仅仅因为缺乏(医疗)设备而死亡。 Basic medical supplies are running low throughout the United States. In a survey of more than 200 mayors, 90 percent said they don't have enough protective equipment for healthcare workers like face masks, 85 percent don't have enough ventilators. That means many people could die simply because of a lack of supplies.
通过对美国现状的深入分析,扎卡里亚得出了一个结论:在当今世界,面临跨越国界的危机时,只有具备良好执行力的政府,才能使一个国家真正地脱颖而出。
In today's world, with problems that spill across borders at lightning speed, "well-executed government" is what makes a country truly exceptional.
China saved Wuhan by sending in huge amounts of resources from the rest of the country. We need the rest of the US to do the same now for New York.
A lack of coordinated federal action was causing chaos for states and municipalities, and even putting them in competition with each other for medical resources, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Illinois said.
据美国约翰斯·霍普金斯大学发布的全球新冠肺炎疫情实时统计系统,截至美国东部时间3月31日晚6点,全美共报告新冠肺炎确诊病例184183例,死亡3810例,治愈6910例。在过去24小时,全美新增确诊病例22816例,新增死亡病例854例。
其中,纽约州的确诊患者75976例,纽约市43139例。纽约州这一数字已经超过中国的湖北省(湖北省截止目前累计确诊病例67801例,现有确诊病例1461例,累计治愈出院病例63153例)。