他表示，2021年是他人生中重大转折的一年，但并没有改变他热爱这份工作的初衷。盖茨写道，今年发生了很多具有全球影响的大事件，包括极端天气和新冠大流行的持续影响等等，世界比以往任何时候都更加紧密的联系在一起，合作是贯穿全年工作的主题。

盖茨称，在迈入2022年之际，他认为的最重要的四件事是：终结新冠大流行的最新进展；为什么对机构的信任度下降可能是我们前进道路上的最大阻力；气候变化相关的讨论教给我们如何取得进步；新冠大流行带来的快速数字化将如何塑造我们的未来。

以下为中英双语全文↓

Reasons for Optimism After a Difficult Year

历经艰难的一年，我依然满怀乐观

By Bill Gates

比尔·盖茨

December 07, 2021

2021年12月7日

When Paul and I were starting Microsoft, we had a vision that personal computers would one day play a significant role in people’s lives. But I don’t think either of us ever foresaw a future where they would be your only connection to the world. Like many people, there were entire days this year when the only human interaction I had was through a screen.

我和保罗创办微软时，有一个共同的愿景：个人电脑有一天会在人们的生活中扮演重要角色。但我们当年都没有预料到，未来某一天电脑会成为你与世界唯一的联系。像很多人一样，今年我时常一整天下来都只能通过屏幕与人交流。

The result has been the most unusual and difficult year of my life. (I suspect a lot of the people reading this might say the same.) 2020 had a brief period of relative normalcy before COVID-19 upended everything. In 2021, the pandemic has dominated our lives since day one. We’ve all had to adapt to a “new normal,” although what that looks like is different for every person. For me, the result has been a year spent mostly online.

2021年因此成为了我一生中最不寻常也最为艰难的一年（我猜很多人可能会有同样的感受）。2020年，在经历了一段相对正常的短暂时间后，新冠疫情颠覆了一切。而进入2021年，疫情从第一天起就主宰了我们的生活。尽管每个人的情况都有所不同，但我们都在适应这一“新常态”。对我来说，这一年的大部分时间都是在网上度过的。

I had stretches of time without any face-to-face social interaction. If I had a break between meetings, I’d walk around my yard just to see something different. After work, I’d play bridge with friends online or hang out with them over video chat. Once I got vaccinated, I started having some small in-person get-togethers, but my social life is still a lot more digital than it used to be.

我经常连续很长时间都没有面对面的社交活动。在会议间隙，我会在院子里走一走，看看不一样的东西。工作之余，我会和朋友们在网上打桥牌，或者跟他们视频聊聊天。接种疫苗后，我开始参加一些小型的聚会，但我的社交生活仍比以前更加“数字化”。

It’s been a strange and disorienting experience. My personal world has never felt smaller than it did over the last twelve months.

这是一段奇特又令人困惑的经历，我的世界从来没像过去12个月这样狭小过。

At the same time, this year was a reminder that our world is more connected than ever. 2021 was full of monumental events with global repercussions, including extreme weather events, the ongoing effects of the pandemic, and America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Every time you looked at the news, you were reminded of just how significantly something happening on the other side of the world could affect you at home. (Just look at how one container ship stuck in the Suez Canal for a week caused shipping delays around the world.) It’s never been clearer that tackling big problems requires people working together across borders and sectors.

与此同时，2021年也在提醒我们，世界比以往任何时候都更加紧密的联系在一起。2021年发生了很多具有全球影响的大事件，包括极端天气和新冠大流行的持续影响等等。每次看新闻，你都会感受到地球另一端发生的事正在对你的家庭产生多么重大的影响（比如一艘集装箱货轮在苏伊士运河滞留一周导致了全球航运延误）。解决重大问题需要跨国界和跨部门的努力，这一点毋庸置疑。

Collaboration has been a constant theme with my work this year. The foundation continues to take up the bulk of my time, and I’m blown away by the amazing progress made by our team and our partners in 2021. Most weeks, we have a virtual get-together with everyone who’s working on our COVID response. Each meeting focuses on a different topic, like disease modelling or vaccine distribution. It’s inspiring to hear how groups are working together to find solutions.

合作一直是我今年工作的主题。基金会的工作依然占据了我大量的时间，我惊叹于我们的团队和合作伙伴在2021年取得的了不起的进展。在大部分时候，我们会与所有致力于抗击新冠疫情的人举行在线会议。每次会议都聚焦于一个不同的主题，比如疾病建模或疫苗分配。听到不同的团队共同努力寻找解决方案非常鼓舞人心。

Although COVID-19 has been a huge focus, the foundation continues to make progress in other areas. Our U.S. Program is working with partners to help students and teachers navigate the strange new world of pandemic-era education, and my colleagues working on gender equality are fighting for a more equitable global recovery. The global health and development teams have found creative ways to protect advancements on diseases like polio, TB, and HIV and continue progress in reducing childhood mortality. (This year’s Goalkeepers Report outlines how the pandemic hasn’t set us back as badly as feared.)

虽然新冠疫情是绝对的焦点，但基金会仍然在其他领域持续取得进展。我们的美国项目正与合作伙伴一道，帮助教师和学生们探索疫情时代的教育新世界；致力于性别平等领域工作的同事们正为更平等的全球复苏而努力；全球健康和发展团队找到了创新的方法来保护在脊髓灰质炎、结核病和艾滋病等领域取得的进展，并继续在降低儿童死亡率方面取得进步（今年的目标守卫者报告指出了疫情并没有像我们之前担忧的那样让世界倒退太多）。

One of the most exciting things that happened was WHO approval of the first malaria vaccine. Malaria kills nearly 650,000 people every year – more than half of them children under five – and remains one of the leading causes of death in low-income countries. We funded late-stage clinical development of the vaccine between 2001 and 2015 and continue to support research into how to optimize its effectiveness. This new vaccine is giving us insights into how to develop second-generation vaccines and preventative tools that can be used on all ages, are even more effective, and can help us reach the goal of eradication.

最激动人心的事情之一就是世界卫生组织批准了第一款疟疾疫苗。疟疾每年造成近65万人死亡，其中一半以上是五岁以下的儿童，它仍然是低收入国家的主要死亡原因之一。2001年至2015年期间，我们资助了该疫苗的后期临床研发，并持续支持优化其有效性的研究。这款新疫苗让我们深入了解如何开发可用于所有年龄段的第二代疫苗和预防工具，并使之更有效，从而帮助我们实现根除疟疾的目标。

This year also saw the start of a new chapter in my climate work. I released my book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster and launched the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst and Fellows programs to support financing, producing, and buying new clean-energy technologies. The reason I felt confident enough to expand our efforts so significantly was the incredible progress I’ve seen from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, where we are now supporting over 70 amazing companies.

这一年，我在气候领域的工作也开启了新篇章。我出版了《如何避免一场气候灾难》一书，并启动了“突破能源催化剂”（Breakthrough Energy Catalyst）和“创新伙伴”（Fellows）项目，以支持对新清洁能源技术的融资、生产和购买。我之所以对拓展这个领域的工作有足够的信心，是因为我看到了“突破能源基金”（Breakthrough Energy Ventures）所取得的非凡进展，他们正在支持70多家优秀的公司。

I’ve been working on climate and energy issues for a long time, but the area has become a bigger part of my focus over the last twelve months. I also found time to work on some non-foundation and non-climate related areas, like Alzheimer’s research and expanding free educational resources for teachers.

我研究气候和能源问题已有很长一段时间，但在过去的12个月里，我对这一领域的关注有所增加。我还抽出时间做了一些基金会和气候问题之外的事，比如对于阿尔茨海默症的研究，以及为教师扩大免费的教育资源。

Even though I think the things I’ve been working on are by far the most interesting part of my year, I know a lot of people are curious about a subject closer to home: my divorce. Melinda and I continue to run our foundation together and have found a good new working rhythm, but I can’t deny that it’s been a year of great personal sadness for me. Adapting to change is never easy, no matter what it is. I’ve been impressed by how resilient my loved ones – especially my kids – have been in this challenging time.

尽管我认为我正在做的这些工作是这一年中发生的最有趣的事，但我知道很多人都关注那个与家庭更相关的话题：我的离婚。虽然梅琳达和我仍在共同管理我们的基金会，并且找到了一个新的、良好的工作节奏。但我无法否认，这一年对我个人来说是悲伤的一年。适应变化从来都不是件容易的事，无论这种变化是什么。我深爱的那些人，尤其是我的孩子们，在这段充满挑战的日子里表现得非常坚强，这让我深受触动。

My family also experienced a lot of changes beyond what you probably saw in the news. My oldest daughter, Jenn, got married this fall, and her wedding was the highlight of my year. Our youngest, Phoebe, graduated from high school and went off to college. Since my son Rory is also away at school, that means I’m officially an empty nester. The house is a lot quieter without a bunch of teenagers hanging around all the time. I miss having them at home, even if it is easier to focus on reading a book or getting work done these days.

除了你可能在新闻里看到的，我的家庭还经历了很多其他变化。我的大女儿珍今年秋天结婚了，她的婚礼是我今年生活中的高光时刻。我们最小的女儿菲比也从高中毕业上了大学，儿子罗里也远在学校，这意味着我正式成为了一个空巢族。少了这些孩子们，家里安静了许多。尽管现在我更容易专注于读书或完成工作，但我更想念他们都在家的日子。

2021 has been a year of big transitions for me, but it hasn’t changed why I love the work I do. As it comes to a close, I wanted to sit down and write about four things that are top of mind heading into 2022: the latest progress toward ending the COVID-19 pandemic, why decreased trust in institutions might be the biggest obstacle standing in our way, what the climate conversation can teach us about making progress, and how the rapid digitization brought on by the pandemic will shape our future.

对我而言，2021年是重大转折的一年，但这并没有改变我对我所从事的工作的热爱。年终之际，我想坐下来写写2022年最重要的四件事：终结新冠大流行的最新进展；为什么对机构的信任度下降可能是我们前进道路上的最大阻力；气候变化相关的讨论教给我们如何取得进步；新冠大流行带来的快速数字化将如何塑造我们的未来。

Why I’m hopeful the end of the COVID-19 pandemic is finally in sight

为什么我对新冠大流行即将终结充满希望

In my previous end-of-year post, I wrote that I thought we’d be able to look back and say that 2021 was an improvement on 2020. While I do think that’s true in some ways—billions of people have been vaccinated against COVID-19, and the world is somewhat closer to normal—the improvement hasn’t been as dramatic as I hoped. More people died from COVID in 2021 than in 2020. If you’re one of the millions of people who lost a loved one to the virus over the last twelve months, you certainly don’t think this year was any better than last.

我在去年的年终回顾中写道，当我们回首过去，会发现2021年比2020年有所进步。虽然我确实认为这个预测在很多方面都得到了印证：数十亿人已接种了新冠疫苗，世界在某种程度上恢复了正常 —— 但进步并不像我所希望的那样显著，2021年死于新冠的人数超过了2020年。如果你是过去12个月里因新冠失去亲人的数百万人中的一个，你肯定不会认为今年比去年有任何好转。

Because of the Delta variant and challenges with vaccine uptake, we’re not as close to the end of the pandemic as I hoped by now. I didn’t foresee that such a highly transmissible variant would come along, and I underestimated how tough it would be to convince people to take the vaccine and continue to use masks.

到目前为止，由于德尔塔变异病毒和疫苗接种方面的挑战，我们还没有像我所希望的那样接近疫情的终点。我没有预见到如此高传染性的变异毒株会出现，而且我低估了说服人们接种疫苗并继续使用口罩的难度。

I am hopeful, though, that the end is finally in sight. It might be foolish to make another prediction, but I think the acute phase of the pandemic will come to a close some time in 2022.

尽管如此，我还是满怀希望地认为，终点在望。再做一个预测可能有些愚蠢，但我认为疫情的急性暴发期将在2022年的某个时间点结束。

There’s no question that the Omicron variant is concerning. Researchers—including a network called GIISER that is supported by our foundation—are working urgently to learn more about it, and we’ll have a lot more information (like how well vaccines or previous infection protect you against it) soon. But here’s what we do know: The world is better prepared to tackle potentially bad variants than at any other point in the pandemic so far. We caught this variant earlier than we discovered Delta because South Africa has invested heavily in genomic sequencing capabilities, and we’re in a much better position to create updated vaccines if they’re needed.

毫无疑问，新毒株奥密克戎值得关注。包括我们基金会支持的一个名为GIISER的网络在内的研究人员们都在抓紧研究以深入了解奥密克戎，我们很快就会拿到更多信息（比如疫苗或之前的感染能多大程度保护你免受它的侵害)。但我们可以确定的是：与新冠疫情暴发以来的任一时期相比，世界在应对危险的变异毒株方面都更有所准备。比起德尔塔，我们更快发现了奥密克戎，因为南非在基因组测序能力上投入了大量资金；如果有必要，我们也更有能力制造升级的疫苗。

It’s troubling any time a new variant of concern emerges, but I’m still hopeful that, at some point next year, COVID-19 will become an endemic disease in most places. Although it is currently about 10 times more lethal than flu, vaccines and antivirals could cut that number by half or more. Communities will still see occasional outbreaks, but new drugs will be available that could take care of most cases and hospitals will be able to handle the rest. Your individual risk level will be low enough that you won’t need to factor it into your decision-making as much. It won’t be primary when deciding whether to work from the office or let your kids go to their soccer game or watch a movie in a theater. In a couple years, my hope is that the only time you will really have to think about the virus is when you get your joint COVID and flu vaccine every fall.

任何时候出现新的变异毒株都令人不安，但我仍然抱有希望，在明年的某个时候，新冠将在大多数地方成为像流感一样的地方流行病。虽然目前它的致死率比流感大概高10倍，但疫苗和抗病毒药物可能将这一数字降低一半或更多。社区仍将偶见暴发，但新的药物能够治疗大多数病例，而医院将有能力照顾重症病例。个人的感染风险将足够低，因此你在决策中不用再顾虑太多。当你决定是否去办公室上班、是否让孩子参加足球赛或去影院看电影的时候，新冠都不再是首要的考虑因素。几年后，我希望每年秋天接种新冠和流感联合疫苗是你们唯一需要想到新冠病毒的时候。

Now that we’re starting to move towards the end of this pandemic, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what went right and what went wrong over the last two years. We can learn important lessons from the world’s COVID-19 response that will make us better prepared next time.

现在我们正开始接近这场大流行病的尾声，我花了很多时间思考过去两年里什么是对的，什么是错的。我们能够从全球应对新冠的经历中吸取重要教训，为应对下一次大流行病做好更充分的准备。

Even though the pandemic has dragged on longer than anticipated, a lot has gone well. To start, the progress we’ve made on vaccines is remarkable. The world has never made and distributed a vaccine for a disease faster than it did for COVID-19. The fact that we had one—let alone multiple!—vaccines during the first year of the pandemic is miraculous. That success is a tribute to how many candidates the world had in the pipeline. Vaccine development relies on a little bit of luck, and we hedged our bets by trying so many different approaches.

尽管疫情的持续时间超过预期，但很多方面进展顺利。首先，我们在疫苗方面取得了了不起的进步。世界从未像应对新冠这样，以史无前例的速度研发和交付了疫苗。事实上，在疫情大流行的第一年就能接种上疫苗（而且是多款疫苗），这堪称奇迹。这一成就归功于全球贡献的多款候选疫苗。疫苗的研发有运气的成分，我们通过尝试多种研发路径来对冲风险。

I think mRNA vaccines will ultimately be seen as the most consequential breakthrough of the pandemic. Proving that mRNA works as a vaccine platform has been a massive gamechanger—not just for this pandemic, but for the next one too. Now that mRNA is well-established, we’ll be able to develop safe and effective vaccines super-fast in the future.

我认为mRNA疫苗最终将被视为应对新冠大流行带来的最重要的技术突破。mRNA作为疫苗开发平台被证实有效是一个巨大的变革 —— 不仅对于此次疫情，对于应对下一次大流行病也同样意义重大。现在mRNA平台已足够完善，我们将能在未来快速开发出安全有效的疫苗。

We also learned a lot about non-pharmaceutical interventions (or NPIs) that will inform disease response moving forward. NPIs include things like mask mandates, quarantine procedures, and travel restrictions. The last two years have given us the opportunity to see how effective different strategies are against a respiratory disease like COVID. Next time, the world will be ready to deploy cheap and easy tools like masks much quicker, and governments will have a greater understanding of when and how to deploy more burdensome strategies like lockdowns.

我们还了解到许多非药物干预措施的效力，这些信息将为今后的疾病应对工作提供借鉴。非药物干预措施包括口罩、隔离措施和旅行限制等等。过去两年让我们有机会看到对防御新冠等呼吸道疾病采取不同措施的有效性。下一次，世界将能更快地部署像口罩等价格低廉且简单实用的工具，各国政府也将对在什么时间以及如何部署封锁等重大防疫策略有更深的理解。

Although stopping a pandemic is something that ultimately falls on systems and governments, the last two years have shown us that individuals can make a real impact. We’ve seen incredible people from around the world step up to do heroic work protecting their communities—from teachers who took time to drop off class materials on their students’ doorsteps to health workers who went house to house making sure everyone had the opportunity to get vaccinated. I wrote a separate post profiling several of those heroes from the African continent. You can read about them here.

尽管阻止疫情最终还是要靠系统和政府的力量，但过去两年的经验告诉我们，个人的影响力也不容小觑。我们已经看到来自世界各地的人挺身而出为保护他们的社区做出英勇的努力 —— 从花时间在学生家门口发放教材的老师，到挨家挨户确保每个人都有机会接种疫苗的卫生工作者。我写过一篇文章，讲述了非洲大陆几位英雄的故事。

One area that’s been a mixed bag is therapeutics. Up until the last couple of months, I was disappointed by the lack of progress we’d made on the treatment front. Remdesivir is expensive, and it just didn’t have that big an effect. Dexamethasone is cheaper and helped a bit, but not enough to make a huge dent in stopping disease early. Monoclonal antibodies—which I was quite optimistic about at one point—were too complicated logistically to get out and save that many people earlier in the pandemic, and they weren’t very effective against variants.

治疗的问题一直很棘手。直到最近几个月，我还对在治疗方面缺乏进展感到失望。瑞德西韦很贵，而且并没有那么有效。地塞米松更便宜，也有一定效力，但还不足以对早期阻止疾病进程产生重大影响。我曾一度对单克隆抗体持乐观态度，但受限于复杂的物流要求，单克隆抗体在疫情初期无法挽救那么多生命，而且它们对变异毒株也不是很有效。

The reason I’m now feeling much better about therapeutics is the recent news about two new antiviral drugs. These are the therapeutics we needed in 2020. One of them—a drug called molnupiravir from Merck—just got the seal of approval from the FDA for people at high-risk last week. It significantly reduces your chances of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19 (although not as much as we’d initially hoped), it’s relatively cheap to make, and it’s an oral medication that’s easy to distribute.

最近传来了两种新型抗病毒药物的消息，让我看到了一些希望。这些是我们在2020年就希望得到的治疗方案。其中一种药物，默克公司的莫努匹韦，上周刚获得了美国食品药品监督管理局对高危人群使用的批准。它能显著降低因新冠住院或死亡的几率（尽管没达到我们最初的预期），它的制造成本相对较低，而且是一种容易分发的口服药物。

Earlier this year, before we knew the drug worked, the foundation supported an effort to streamline the process of producing molnupiravir in order to bring costs down. Merck is letting generic manufacturers make this simplified formulation, which will make the drug accessible to a lot more people. We also recently committed $120 million to making sure the drug is available in lower-income countries where it will save a lot of lives. I just wish it had come along sooner.

今年在我们知道这种药物有效之前，基金会就支持了一项通过简化莫努匹韦生产流程来降低成本的工作。默克公司允许仿制药生产商生产这种简化配方，以便让更多人获得这款药物。我们最近还承诺提供1.2亿美元来确保较低收入国家也能获益，从而挽救更多生命。我只是希望，这个药如能更早出现就更好了。

The area I see as the biggest disappointment is the inequity of vaccine allocation. This is something I’ve written about at length and something I’m going to keep talking about any chance I get, because it didn’t have to be this way. The world has done an outstanding job manufacturing and distributing billions of doses of vaccine, but the fact that so few people at high risk in low-income countries have received them is unacceptable. It just doesn’t make sense that so many low-risk people got vaccinated before we reached everyone who’s older or had an underlying medical condition. Moving forward, we need to change how the world allocates doses and find ways to ramp up manufacturing even faster, including by expanding global vaccine-making capacity and helping more countries develop, manufacture, and approve vaccines themselves.

而最令人失望的就是疫苗分配的不公平。就这个话题我已经写了很多，而且只要有机会，我就会继续谈论这个话题，因为事情本不该如此。全世界在制造和分发数十亿剂疫苗方面做了如此出色的工作，但低收入国家的高风险人群获得疫苗的数量却如此之少，这让人无法接受。那么多低风险人群先于年长或有潜在疾病的人接种了疫苗，这不合理。未来，我们需要改变世界分配疫苗的方式，并找到加快生产的方法，包括扩大全球疫苗生产能力，并帮助更多国家自行研发、生产和批准疫苗。

The other area where there is huge room for improvement is in finding ways to combat disinformation. As I mentioned, I thought demand for vaccines would be way higher than it has been in places like the United States. It’s clear that disinformation (including conspiracy theories that unfortunately involve me) is having a substantial impact on people’s willingness to get vaccinated. This is part of a larger trend toward distrust in institutions, and it’s one of the issues I’m most worried about heading into 2022.

另一个有巨大进步空间的领域是寻找对抗虚假信息的方法。正如前面提到的，我认为在包括美国的很多地方对疫苗的需求原本应该高得多，而虚假信息（包括涉及我本人的阴谋论）正在对人们接种疫苗的意愿产生重大影响。这是对机构不信任的表现，而这一趋势是我对2022年最担心的问题之一。

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来源：比尔盖茨公众号