The ugly history of blaming ethnic groups fo routbreaks
醜惡的瘟疫史:瘟疫大暴發，民族來背鍋
As the coronavirus outbreak grows in scale and scope, a nasty side effect spreads: discrimination. We're seeing numerous reports of verbal andphysical abuse aimed at ethnic Chinese.
隨著新型冠狀病毒肺炎疫情嚴重程度的加深、輻射範圍的擴大，一個性質惡劣的“副作用”蔓延開來:歧視問題。我們目睹著大量有關華裔遭受言語羞辱和人身攻擊的報道。
Sadly, this is nothing new: Past outbreaks have often gone hand in hand with ugly prejudice, with various ethnic or racial groups blamed for the disease.
不幸的是，這並不是什麼新鮮事:歷史，上每逢疫情暴發，醜惡的偏見就會隨之而來，人們往往將疾病歸咎於不同的民族或種族。
Consider the gold standard of pandemics: the bubonic plague, better known as the Black Death. It came roaring into Europe in 1348 and managed to kill off a quarter of the population within a few short years. As the death toll soared, many self-professed Christians looked for an explanation -and a way to put an end to the epidemic.
想想看大流行性疾病的典型代表一流行性淋 巴腺鼠疫就知道了，它更為人所知的名字叫“黑死病”。1348年，這場瘟疫迅速席捲歐洲，在短短几年內奪走了歐洲四分之一的人的生命。 隨著死亡人數不斷攀升，許多自稱基督教徒者開始尋求一種解釋， 以及結束這場瘟疫的方法。
They fell back on anti- Semitism. Because some Jewish communities initially escaped the epidemic, Christians accused them of masterminding the outbreak. L acking a germ theory of disease, they claimed that Jews had poisoned the wells, or as one deranged medieval conspiracy theorist claimed, the Jews "wished to extinguish all of Christendom, through their poisons of frogs and spiders mixed into oil and cheese."
他們轉而訴諸反猶太主義。因為一些猶太群體在一開始躲過了這場劫難，所以這些基督徒控訴是猶太人一手策劃了這場瘟疫。由於缺少細菌致病論的理論支撐，他們聲稱猶太人往井裡投毒;中世紀時期，一位精神失常的陰謀論者聲稱，猶太人“想要通過在食用油和奶酪裡混入蛙毒和蜘蛛毒，來消滅整個基督教世界”。
These zealots proceeded with a bloodletting as horrifying as the plague itself. In town squares,mobs gathered together Jewish communities and burned them alive en masse. And yet the plague continued to rage, killing off these same communities.
接著，這些宗教狂熱分子挑起了血腥殺戮，這場殺戮和瘟疫本身同樣可怕。就在鎮子的廣場上，暴徒們把猶太人趕到一起，將他們統統活活燒死。然而，瘟疫仍然繼續肆虐，奪去了這同一群人的生命。
The practical problem with identifying a particular group as the exclusive carriers of disease (or the culprits behind the spread of it) is that it blinds people to the reality viruses and bacteria don't care if you're from Wuhan or Washington. If you've got a pulse, you'll make an excellent host.
將某一特定群體視為疾病的唯一帶菌者(或疫情擴散之根源)，所帶來的一個實際問題是，這種想法會使人們無視一個事實，那就是病毒和細菌並不會管你是來自武漢還是華盛頓。只要你有脈搏，你就將成為一個絕佳的潛在宿主。
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