Why Staying Home Now Can Save Lives为什么现在呆在家里可以拯救生命As the coronavirus continues to spread in the U.

S.

, more and more businesses are sending employees off to work from home.

Public schools are closing, universities are holding classes online, major events are getting canceled and cultural institutions are shutting their doors.

Even Disney World and Disneyland areset to close.

The disruption of daily life for many Americans is real and significant — but so are the potential life-saving benefits.

随着冠状病毒继续在美国传播在美国，越来越多的公司开始让员工在家工作。

公立学校停课，大学在线上课，重大活动被取消，文化机构关门。

甚至迪斯尼世界和迪斯尼乐园也将关闭。

对许多美国人来说，日常生活的干扰是真实而重大的，但也有潜在的拯救生命的好处。

The idea is to increase social distancing in order to slow the spread of the virus, so that you don't get a huge spike in the number of people getting sick all at once.

If that were to happen, there wouldn't be enough hospital beds or mechanical ventilators for everyone who needs them, and the U.

S.

hospital system would be overwhelmed.

That'salready happeningin Italy.

这样做的目的是增加社会距离，以减缓病毒的传播，这样你就不会一下子使生病的人数激增。

如果真是这样的话，就不会有足够的病床或机械通风机供所有需要它们的人使用，美国的医院系统将不堪重负。

这已经在意大利发生了。

"If you think of our health care system as a subway car and it's rush hour, and everybody wants to get on the car once, they start piling up at the door," says Drew Harris, a population health researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

"They pile up on the platform.

There's just not enough room in the car to take care of everybody, to accommodate everybody.

That's the system that is overwhelmed.

IPeople wind up not getting services that they need.

"费城托马斯杰佛逊大学的人口健康研究员德鲁·哈里斯说:如果你把我们的医疗保健系统想成是一辆地铁，而现在是上下班高峰期，每个人都想上车一次，那么他们就开始在门口挤成一团。

”他们在站台上簇拥起来。

车里没有足够的空间来照顾和容纳每一个人。

这是一个不堪重负的系统。

人们最终得不到他们需要的服务。

”These two curves have already played out in the U.

S.

in an earlier age — during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Research has shownthat the faster authorities moved to implement the kinds of social distancing measures designed to slow the transmission of disease, the more lives were saved.

And the history of two U.

S.

cities — Philadelphia and St.

Louis — illustrates just how big a difference those measures can make.

这两条曲线早在1918年流感大流行期间就已经在美国上演了。

研究表明，当局越快采取旨在减缓疾病传播的社会疏远措施，挽救的生命就越多。

而美国费城和圣路易斯两个城市的历史，恰恰说明了这些措施能带来多大的不同。

In Philadelphia, Harris notes, city officials ignored warnings from infectious disease experts that the flu was already circulating in their community.

哈里斯指出，在费城，市政官员无视传染病专家关于流感已经在他们社区传播的警告。

Instead, they moved forward with a massive parade that brought hundreds of thousands of people together.

"Within 48.

72 hours, thousands of people around the Philadelphia region started to die," Harris notes.

Within 6 months, about16.

000 people had died.

相反，他们举行了一场大规模游行，成千上万的人聚集在一起。

在48、72小时内，费城地区成千上万的人开始死亡，”哈里斯说。

在6个月内，大约16.

000人死亡。

Meanwhile, officials in St.

Louis, Mo.

, had a vastly different public health response.

Within two days of the first reported cases, the city quickly moved to social isolation strategies,according to a 2007 analysis.

与此同时，密苏里州圣路易斯的官员们对公共卫生的反应大相径庭。

根据2007年的一份分析报告，在第一批报告病例出现的两天内，这座城市迅速转向了社会隔离策略。

"They really tried to limit the travel of people and implement public health 101 — isolating and treating the sick, quarantining the people who have been exposed to disease, closing the schools, encouraging social distancing of people," Harris says.

他们真的试图限制人们的出行，实施公共卫生101.

隔离和治疗病人，隔离接触过疾病的人，关闭学校，鼓励人们远离社交场所，”哈里斯说。

As a result, St.

Louis suffered just one-eighth of the flu fatalities that Philadelphia saw, according to that 2007 research.

But if St.

Louis had waited another week or two to act, it might have suffered a similar fate as Philadelphia, the researchers concluded.

结果，根据2007年的研究，圣路易斯的流感死亡率仅为费城的八分之一。

但研究人员得出结论，如果圣路易斯再等一两个星期才采取行动，它可能会遭遇与费城类似的命运。

At the time the 2007 research was released, Dr.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading adviser in the U.

S.

response to COVID-19.

said the evidence was clear that early intervention was critical in the midst of the 1918 pandemic.

美国国家过敏和传染病研究所所长、美国应对Covid-19的主要顾问安东尼·福奇博士在2007年发表这项研究时表示，有明显的证据表明，在1918年大流行期间，早期干预至关重要。

As for just how big the current coronavirus pandemic will be in America?

"It is going to be totally dependent upon how we respond to it," Faucitold Congressearlier this week.

至于目前在美国流行的冠状病毒有多大?

这将完全取决于我们如何应对，”福奇本周早些时候告诉国会。

"I can't give you a number," he said.

"I can't give you a realistic number until we put into [it] the factor of how we respond.

If we're complacent and don't do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions.

"我不能给你一个数字，”他说。

在我们把如何应对的因素考虑进去之前，我无法给你一个现实的数字。

如果我们沾沾自喜，不采取真正积极的遏制和缓解措施，这个数字可能会大幅上升，涉及数百万人。

”【为什么现在呆在家里可以拯救生命查看网站：[db:时间]】