en-us	Prime minister Narendra Modi warned that if India did not get the next 21 days right it would risk wiping out the gains of 21 years.
zh-cn	印度总理纳伦德拉•莫迪(Narendra Modi)曾警告称，如果印度未来21天没做好，整个国家可能将倒退21年。

en-us	In South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa ordered one of the world’s strictest lockdowns before the country had registered even a single coronavirus death.
zh-cn	南非在还没有出现新冠肺炎死亡病例之前，总统西里尔•拉马福萨(Cyril Ramaphosa)就下令实施严格程度排在世界前列的封锁措施。

en-us	The three-week shutdown was necessary, the president said, to save hundreds of thousands of lives.
zh-cn	拉马福萨表示，为挽救几十万人的生命，为期3周的封锁很有必要。

en-us	All across the developing world — with some exceptions, including Brazil — leaders are closing their economies to stop the pandemic.
zh-cn	整个发展中世界（巴西等少数国家除外）的领导人都在关停本国经济，以阻止疫情蔓延。

en-us	But in countries with high death rates from other illnesses and with brutal levels of poverty, could the cure actually be worse than the disease?
zh-cn	但在那些其他疾病致死率高且严重贫困的国家，抗疫措施实际上是否会带来比新冠肺炎更严重的后果？

en-us	In an era of groupthink, in which not to impose a lockdown risks accusations of mass killing, it is at least worth posing the question.
zh-cn	在一个集体思维的时代——不实施封锁有可能惹来“大规模屠杀”的骂名——至少值得提出这一问题。

en-us	Even if leaders such as Mr Modi or Mr Ramaphosa hold private doubts, their instincts for political survival might force them onward.
zh-cn	莫迪、拉马福萨等领导人即便私下心存疑虑，维持政治生涯的本能也可能迫使他们采取措施。

en-us	No one is likely to lose support for being too tough on coronavirus.
zh-cn	没有谁会因为对新冠病毒采取过于强硬的措施而失去支持。

en-us	To state the obvious, it is harder to impose a lockdown in a poor country than in a rich one.
zh-cn	显而易见，在贫穷国家实施封锁要比在富裕国家困难得多。

en-us	In huge cities such as Lagos, Mumbai or Manilla, instructing people to stay at home is to confine millions to cramped housing.
zh-cn	在拉各斯、孟买或马尼拉等大型城市，要求人们待在家里就是把数百万民众禁闭在狭窄的住所中。

en-us	In the slums where up to half the population may live, people could be crammed six or eight to a room, with no easy access to water, or even soap.
zh-cn	这些城市可能有多达半数人口住在贫民窟，在这种地方，一间屋子可能挤着6到8个人，用水不便，甚至没有肥皂。

en-us	Arundhati Roy, the Indian author and political activist, has called the lockdown not an act of social distancing but rather one of “social compression”.
zh-cn	印度作家、政治活动家阿伦达蒂•罗伊(Arundhati Roy)把封锁称作一种“社会压缩”做法，而不是一种让人们保持社交距离的做法。

en-us	It is hard enough to keep wealthy economies ticking over in a lockdown.
zh-cn	富裕经济体在封锁状态下保持运转已经相当艰难。

en-us	In poor countries, huge informal economies are a double-edged sword.
zh-cn	在贫穷国家，庞大的非正规经济是一把双刃剑。

en-us	They may act as shock absorbers.
zh-cn	它们或许可以起到缓冲器的作用。

en-us	Some people might be able to leave the city and scrape a living on family plots of land.
zh-cn	一部分人或许能够离开城市，靠老家几亩薄田勉强维持生计。

en-us	In other ways, informal economies make things more difficult.
zh-cn	但在其他方面，非正规经济让情况变得更加艰难。

en-us	People who eke out an income by hawking roadside goods, fixing pots and pans, shining shoes or braiding tourists’ hair have little way of surviving if they are forced indoors.
zh-cn	那些靠沿街叫卖商品、修理锅盆、擦鞋或者给游客编辫子来讨生活的人，如果被迫待在屋里，便无法生存下去。

en-us	Within hours of India’s lockdown order, there were pitiable scenes of migrant workers trudging home by foot, in some cases hundreds of miles.
zh-cn	印度下达封锁令几个小时后，便出现了令人心酸的一幕：在城里务工的人们徒步返乡，有些甚至跋涉数百英里。

en-us	In South Africa, too, signs of social stress are everywhere.
zh-cn	在南非，社会紧张迹象同样随处可见。

en-us	Police have used rubber bullets and tear gas to enforce social distancing in the crowded townships, where the black majority still lives a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid.
zh-cn	在拥挤的黑人居住区（废除种族隔离制度25年后，在人口中占多数的黑人依然聚居在这种地方），警察使用橡皮子弹和催泪瓦斯来强制实施保持社交距离的规定。

en-us	Then there are the silent bombs, the invisible consequences of fighting one disease to the possible neglect of others.
zh-cn	然后，人们还要面对无声炸弹——由于抗击一种疾病而可能忽视其他疾病所将造成的隐形后果。

en-us	While we obsessively count the coronavirus death toll, only a dedicated few worry about possible knock-on effects in a country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo where measles killed 6,200 and malaria 17,000 last year.
zh-cn	当我们每天小心地计算着新冠肺炎死亡人数时，只有少数心怀关爱的人士担心在刚果民主共和国这样的国家可能发生的连锁反应。去年，该国有6200人死于麻疹，1.7万人死于疟疾。

en-us	If economies crash, silent killers such as diarrhoea, malnutrition and infant mortality may sweep through populations.
zh-cn	如果经济崩溃，痢疾、营养不良和婴儿夭折等无声杀手可能殃及整个人群。

en-us	Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, says lockdowns are only effective if countries can bolster health systems and testing capacity.
zh-cn	世界和平基金会(World Peace Foundation)执行董事亚历克斯•德瓦尔(Alex de Waal)表示，只有在国家能够加强卫生系统和检测能力的情况下，封锁措施才会有效。

en-us	They cannot work without people’s consent, which means income support and functioning supply chains.
zh-cn	没有民众的赞成——这意味着收入方面的支持和正常运转的供应链——封锁措施无法奏效。

en-us	None of this is to say that leaders such as Mr Modi or Mr Ramaphosa are wrong to impose lockdowns.
zh-cn	这并不是说莫迪、拉马福萨等领导人实施封锁是错误的。

en-us	These are truly agonising decisions made at times of radical uncertainty.
zh-cn	这些都是在面对极端不确定性时做出的极为痛苦的决定。

en-us	There is little way of knowing whether populations are less at risk because they are young or more at risk because they may be malnourished or have compromised immunity.
zh-cn	我们几乎无从得知，人群究竟会因为年轻而面临更少的感染风险，还是可能因为营养不良或免疫力低下而面临更大的风险。

en-us	Last year, according to the UN’s cheerfully named World Mortality Data Booklet, 9.9m people died in India and 10.4m in Africa.
zh-cn	联合国一份标题大咧咧的报告《世界死亡数据手册》(World Mortality Data Booklet)显示，去年印度死亡990万人，非洲死亡1040万人。

en-us	We will only know next year whether this number goes up in 2020.
zh-cn	我们只有到明年才会知道这一数字在2020年是否上升。

en-us	Even then, when it is too late, it might still be hard to draw sensible conclusions.
zh-cn	即便那时——已经太晚——可能仍难以得出明智的结论。