In the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, I couldn't bear to read about our collective early missteps. Not only because the implicit rebuke felt futile -- what was the point in knowing that the grim reality we were living could have been avoided? -- but because, in my case, it also felt deeply personal. Each article I read about missing the warning signs of a devastating new virus reminded me that decades ago, scientists had been worrying about that very thing, and a few science journalists were writing about their alarm. I was one of them.

在新型冠状病毒刚开始大流行的前几个星期，我不忍阅读人类在疫病初期犯了哪些错误的报道。不仅因为其中隐含的谴责意味于事无补，知道我们本来可以避免现在的残酷现实有何意义？也因为这件事对我而言还牵涉到深刻的个人感受。每看到一篇报道谈论我们如何疏忽了一个威力强大的新病毒的警讯，都让我想起这正是科学家几十年前就在担心的事，少数科学记者也报道了他们的担忧，而我就是其中之一。

When I started researching this in 1990, the term "emerging viruses" had just been coined by a young virologist, Stephen Morse. He would become the main character in my book A Dancing Matrix, published three years later. I described him then as an assistant professor straight out of central casting: earnest, bespectacled, a man who lived life largely in the mind.

我在1990年开始研究这个主题时，“新兴病毒”一词刚由一位年轻的病毒学家斯蒂芬·莫尔斯提出，他成为我出版的《跳舞的基质》书中主角。当时我笔下的他完全符合一名助理教授该有的样子：认真、戴着眼镜，大部分时间活在思考中。

Morse and other scientists were identifying conditions -- climate change, massive urbanization, the proximity of humans to farm or forest animals that were viral reservoirs -- that could unleash microbes never before seen in humans and therefore unusually lethal. They were warning that, thanks to an increasingly global economy, the ease of international air travel, and the movement of refugees due to famines and wars, these killer pathogens could easily spread around the world. Sound familiar?

当时，莫尔斯和其他科学家正试着找出哪些条件会让从未出现在人类身上、因而异常致命的微生物传染给人类，例如：气候变迁、大规模都市化、人类和牧养动物或森林动物这些病毒宿主的亲近程度。他们警告称，由于经济日益全球化、国际航空旅行便利，以及饥荒和战争造成的难民流动，这些致命的病原体可能轻易传播到世界各地。是不是听起来很耳熟？

"The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus." I used that searing quote from Joshua Lederberg, a molecular biologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on bacteria, in my book's introduction. Back then I thought Lederberg might have been a bit melodramatic. Now his quote strikes me as terrifyingly prescient.

“人类统治地球的最大单一威胁是病毒。”这句直指核心的话是分子生物学家乔舒亚·莱德伯格说的，为我在书中前言引用。他因对细菌的研究而获颁诺贝尔奖。他的话在我看来是可怕的未卜先知。