COMMON COLD
普通感冒
Q. If everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks, wouldn 8217;t the common cold be wiped out?
Q．如果把地球上所有人都各自隔离开来并维持几个星期，这样能彻底消灭感冒吗？
A. WOULD IT BE WORTH IT?
A．这么做值吗？
The common cold is caused by a variety of viruses, but rhinoviruses are the most common culprit. These viruses take over the cells in your nose and throat and use them to produce more viruses. After a few days, your immune system notices and destroys it,but not before you infect, on average, one other person. After you fight off the infection, you are immune to that particular rhinovirus strain-an immunity that lasts for years.
感冒可以由多种感冒病毒引起，鼻病毒是最常见的致病元凶。这些病毒会攻击鼻子和喉咙中的细胞，并利用这些细胞生产更多的病原体。几天后你的免疫系统会注意到有不速之客入侵并把它们都清除掉，但根据一般情况，这时你已经感染了另一个人。4在你战胜感冒之后，你的身体会在接下来的几年里对这一种具体的鼻病毒菌株免疫。
If Sarah put us all in quarantine, the cold viruses we carry would have no fresh hosts to run to. Could our immune systems then wipe out every copy of the virus?
如果像萨拉说的那样，每个人都被隔离开来，那么我们携带的感冒病毒将无法感染新的宿主。那么我们的免疫系统有能力清除所有的病毒吗？
Before we answer that question, let 8217;s consider the practical consequences of this kind of quarantine. The world 8217;s total annual economic output is in the neighborhood of $80 trillion, which suggests that interrupting all economic activity for a few weeks would cost many trillions of dollars. The shock to the system from the worldwide “pause” could easily cause a global economic collapse.
在回答这个问题之前，我们不妨先考虑一下这种形式隔离的后果。全世界每年总体经济产出在80万亿美元左右，这意味着全世界经济停摆几个星期会造成数万亿美元的损失，由此产生的冲击很容易就让全球经济崩溃。
The world 8217;s total food reserves are probably large enough to cover us for four or five weeks of quarantine, but the food would have to be evenly parceled out beforehand. Frankly, I 8217;m not sure what I 8217;d do with a 20-day grain reserve while standing alone in a field somewhere.
全世界的粮食储备足够支撑4～5个星期的隔离，但前提是在此之前粮食要能平均分配。坦白来说，我甚至都不确定一个人孤零零地站在某个地方守着足够吃20天的粮食该干什么。
A global quarantine brings us to another question: How far apart can we actually get from one another? The world is big,[citation needed ] but there are a lot of people.[citation needed ]
全球大隔离还会产生另一个问题：人与人之间的距离是多少？世界很大，但人也很多。
If we divide up the world 8217;s land area evenly, there 8217;s enough room for each of us to have a little over 2 hectares each, with the nearest person 77 meters away.
如果我们把全世界所有的陆地面积平均分配，那么平均每个人能够分到2公顷多一点的土地面积，最近的人在77米外。
While 77 meters is probably enough separation to block the transmission of rhinoviruses, that separation would come at a cost. Much of the world 8217;s land is not pleasant to stand around on for five weeks. A lot of us would be stuck standing in the Sahara Desert,5 or central Antarctica.
虽然77米的间隔距离很有可能足以阻断鼻病毒的传播，但这是有代价的。全球大部分陆地并不适宜人类在那里站上5个星期。许多人将会站在撒哈拉沙漠5里或者南极洲中部。