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发表于 2020-4-23 12:17
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EDITORIAL 07 APRIL 2020 Stop the coronavirus stigma now
The pandemic is fuelling deplorable racism and discrimination, especially against Asian people. Education and research will also pay the price.
Pedestrian crosses the street behind the Dragon Gate, an entrance to Chinatown in San Francisco
Chinatown in San Francisco, California, during coronavirus: China sends some 400,000 students to the United States. How many will return once lockdowns are lifted?
When the World Health Organization (WHO) announced in February that the disease caused by the new coronavirus would be called COVID‑19, the name was quickly adopted by organizations involved in communicating public-health information. As well as naming the illness, the WHO was implicitly sending a reminder to those who had erroneously been associating the virus with Wuhan and with China in their news coverage— including Nature. That we did so was an error on our part, for which we take responsibility and apologize.
For years, it was common for viral diseases to be associated with the landscapes, places or regions where the first outbreaks occurred — as in Middle East respiratory syndrome, or Zika virus, named after a forest in Uganda. But in 2015, the WHO introduced guidelines to stop this practice and thereby reduce stigma and negative impacts such as fear or anger directed towards those regions or their people. The guidelines underlined the point that viruses infect all humans: when an outbreak happens, everyone is at risk, regardless of who they are or where they are from.
Researchers: show world leaders how to behave in a crisis
And yet, as countries struggle to control the spread of the new coronavirus, a minority of politicians are sticking with the outdated script. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly associated the virus with China. Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro — the son of President Jair Bolsonaro — has called it “China’s fault”. Politicians elsewhere, including in the United Kingdom, are also saying that China bears responsibility.
Continuing to associate a virus and the disease it causes with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop. As infectious-disease epidemiologist Adam Kucharski reminds us in his timely book The Rules of Contagion, published in February, history tells us that pandemics lead to communities being stigmatized, which is why we all need to exercise more care. If in doubt, seek advice, and always fall back on the consensus of the evidence.
Racist attacks
Failing to do so has consequences. It’s clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs — for example, on their health and livelihoods. Law-enforcement agencies say they are making investigation of hate crimes a high priority, but such inquiries might come too late for some, including many of the more than 700,000 Chinese undergraduate, master’s and PhD students studying at universities outside China. The majority are in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Many have returned home while their institutions are closed owing to lockdowns, and many might not return. Students are hesitating to come back, in part because of fears of continuing racism, along with uncertainty over the future of their courses and not knowing when international travel will resume.
These young people will experience disruption and the loss of new connections and opportunities. But the loss of students from China and other countries in Asia has wide-ranging -and worrying implications for the scholarly enterprise, too. It means that universities in the affected countries will become less diverse — something that has not happened for generations.
A loss for all
For decades, campuses have striven to boost diversity, and countries have enacted policies to encourage international academic mobility. Diversity is valuable for its own sake. It encourages understanding and dialogue between cultures, and sharing of points of view and ways of being. And it has always been a fuel for research and innovation.
Calling all coronavirus researchers: keep sharing, stay open
Moreover, a diverse campus body is needed to improve policies and structures so that universities — and research publishing — can become more welcoming. Many barriers to diversity remain: in the April issue of Nature Reviews Physics, for example, researchers and science communicators from China, India, Japan and South Korea report examples of discrimination and other factors that prevent them being heard in international journals (S. Hanasoge et al. Nature Rev. Phys. 2, 178–180; 2020).
Many leaders want to listen to and act on expert scientific advice to deal with this pandemic and save lives. On terminology, the advice is clear: we must all do everything we can to avoid and reduce stigma; not associate COVID-19 with particular groups of people or places; and emphasize that viruses do not discriminate — we are all at risk.
It would be tragic if stigma, fuelled by the coronavirus, led Asia’s young people to retreat from international campuses, curtailing their own education, reducing their own and others’ opportunities and leaving research worse off — just when the world is relying on it to find a way out.
Coronavirus stigma must stop — now.
Nature 580, 165 (2020)
下面是机器翻译:
社论
立即停止冠状病毒的污名
这种流行病加剧了令人遗憾的种族主义和歧视,尤其是对亚洲人民的歧视。教育和研究也将为此付出代价。
行人横穿龙门后的街道,龙门是旧金山唐人街的入口
冠状病毒感染期间在加利福尼亚州旧金山的唐人街:中国派出约40万名学生前往美国。解除锁定后将返回多少?
当世界卫生组织(WHO)在2月宣布由新的冠状病毒引起的疾病称为COVID-19时,该名称很快就被参与公共卫生信息交流的组织所采用。在命名疾病的同时,WHO也在向那些错误地将病毒与武汉和中国的新闻报道(包括《自然》)相关联的人们发出提醒。我们这样做是我们的错误,对此我们承担责任并表示歉意。
多年来,病毒性疾病通常与首次爆发的地区,地方或地区有关,例如以乌干达的森林命名的中东呼吸综合症或寨卡病毒。但是在2015年,世卫组织引入了指南,以制止这种做法,从而减少对这些地区或其人民的污名和负面影响,例如恐惧或愤怒。该准则强调了病毒感染所有人的观点:爆发时,无论是谁,来自何处,每个人都处于危险之中。
研究人员:向世界领导人展示如何在危机中表现
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00926-4
然而,由于各国都在努力控制新的冠状病毒的传播,少数政客仍坚持使用过时的脚本。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普曾多次将该病毒与中国联系起来。杰尔·博尔索纳罗总统的儿子巴西议员爱德华多·博尔索纳罗称其为“中国的错”。包括英国在内的其他地方的政客也说中国承担责任。
继续将病毒及其引起的疾病与特定位置相关联是不负责任的,需要停止。正如传染病流行病学家亚当·库查尔斯基(Adam Kucharski)在他2月出版的及时出版的《传染规则》中提醒我们的那样,历史告诉我们,大流行导致社区受到污名化,这就是为什么我们所有人都需要多加注意。如有疑问,请寻求建议,并始终依赖于证据的共识。
种族主义袭击
否则,将产生后果。很明显,自从第一次爆发疫情以来,世界各地亚裔血统的人就遭受了种族主义袭击,并付出了无数人为代价,例如在健康和生计上。执法机构表示,他们将调查仇恨犯罪列为高度优先事项,但对于某些人来说,这种询问可能为时已晚,其中包括在中国以外的大学学习的逾70万中国大学生,硕士和博士学位学生中的许多人。大多数在澳大利亚,英国和美国。许多人由于封锁而在机构关闭时返回家园,许多人可能不会返回。学生们犹豫要回来,部分原因是因为担心种族主义继续存在,加上对课程未来的不确定性,以及不知道何时恢复国际旅行。
这些年轻人将遭受破坏,失去新的联系和机会。但是,来自中国和亚洲其他国家的学生流失也对学术事业造成了广泛而令人担忧的影响。这意味着受灾国家的大学将变得越来越多样化-几代人都没有发生过。
所有人的损失
几十年来,校园一直在努力提高多样性,各国制定了鼓励国际学术流动的政策。多样性本身就很有价值。它鼓励文化之间的理解和对话,以及观点和生活方式的分享。它一直是研究和创新的动力。
致电所有冠状病毒研究人员:保持共享,保持开放
此外,需要多元化的校园机构来改善政策和结构,以便大学和研究出版机构变得更加受欢迎。多样性方面仍然存在许多障碍:例如,在四月份的《自然评论物理学》杂志上,来自中国,印度,日本和韩国的研究人员和科学传播者报道了歧视和其他因素的实例,这些因素和因素阻碍了它们在国际期刊上的发表(S. Hanasoge等人,Nature Rev. Phys。2,178–180; 2020)。
许多领导人希望听取专家的科学意见并采取行动,以应对这种流行病并挽救生命。 在术语上,建议很明确:我们都必须尽一切可能避免和减少污名; 不得将COVID-19与特定人群或场所相关联; 并强调病毒不会歧视-我们都处于危险之中。
如果冠状病毒引起的污名导致亚洲年轻人从国际校园撤退,减少自己的教育,减少自己和其他人的机会并使研究变得更糟,那将是悲剧性的-正当世界依靠它寻找时 出去的路。
现在必须停止冠状病毒的污名。
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