In countries like mine, we might have become inured to the threat of a global pandemic because we saw so many "This Is the Big One" threats flaming out, confined to regions that felt comfortably remote. Except for AIDS, raging epidemics have tended not to go global: SARS in 2003 pretty much stayed in Asia, MERS in 2012 didn't really leave the Middle East, Ebola in 2014 was mostly a West African scourge. As we kept watching ourselves dodge a bullet, it was easy to attribute susceptibility in other countries to behaviors that didn't exist in ours. Most of us didn't ride camels, didn't eat monkeys, didn't handle live bats or civet cats in the marketplace.

身处在美国这样的国家，我们可能对全球大流行病的威胁已经有点无感，因为看过太多“最大疫病来袭”这类雷声大雨点小的威胁，最后局限在离我们很遥远的地方，让我们感觉不到危险。除了艾滋病，肆虐的流行病往往没有蔓延到全球：2003年的SARS几乎完全限于亚洲，2012年的MERS一直留在中东，2014年的埃博拉主要是西非的灾难。眼看我们每次都逃过一劫，很容易把其他国家的易感染性归因于一些只存在于那些国家的行为。我们大多数人不骑骆驼、不吃猴子、不会在市场里接触活体蝙蝠或果子狸。

This "othering" of the threat has, in many ways, been our undoing all along. In rereading my book recently, I found a sentence that highlights the persistence of this shameful attitude. "Ask a field virologist what constitutes an epidemic worth looking into," I wrote, "and he'll answer with characteristic cynicism, 'The death of one white person.'"

这种把威胁“他者化”的作法，从很多方面来说正是我们如此脆弱的原因。我最近重新阅读自己的书籍时，发现有一句话凸显了这种可耻的心态的持续存在?！八姹阄室桓隽俅膊《狙д?，什么事情会让一场流行病值得研究？”我写道：“他会以他们这一行特有的嘲讽态度告诉你：‘当一个白人死去?！?/p>

I've turned my file drawers inside out looking for an old notebook that might contain the name of one such "field virologist," to no avail. But even without that crucial confirmation, I believe in the essential point of that haunting sentence. We've been "othering" away the safety of our species for decades. We're doing it still, fostering an official and personal complacency that ultimately brought humanity to its knees.

我翻遍文件柜，想找一本旧笔记本，里面可能记下了这位“临床病毒学者”的名字，却一无所获。但即使缺少这个关键证据，我仍相信这句令人难忘的话所传达的核心重点。我们的“他者化”心态在过去数十年来持续危害我们物种的安全，至今我们还在这么做，这助长了政府和个人轻忽大意的态度，最终让全人类屈服。