2021年经济学人 结束新冠的代价是什么?(2)（在线收听）

Mr Agarwal and Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, have now turned this insight into a broader $50bn "proposal to end the covid-19 pandemic". Only $4bn of the headline total is necessary to buy the 350m extra vaccination courses. The rest is earmarked for other tasks, such as helping countries get vaccines into people's arms, keeping a lookout for new variants, expanding testing and treatment, and adding another 1bn doses of vaccine-making capacity next year as insurance, in case anything goes wrong. Not everything on their wishlist is costly. The two economists reckon the developing world could vaccinate almost 40% of its population by the end of 2021 if rich countries donated even half of the surplus vaccines they are likely to amass this year.

阿加瓦尔和IMF的首席经济学家吉塔·戈皮纳斯现已将这一见解转化为一项呼声更高的500亿美元“结束新冠肺炎大流行的提议”。只要40亿美元就能购买额外3.5亿剂疫苗。剩下的钱用来完成其他任务，比如帮助各国人民接种疫苗，密切关注新变种，扩大检测和治疗，并在明年增加10亿剂疫苗生产能力，以防出现任何问题。愿望清单并非完成每一项都很昂贵。这两位经济学家认为，到2021年底发展中国家有近40%的人口能够接种疫苗——前提是发达国家能够把他们今年囤积的过剩的疫苗的一半捐献出来。

The proposal is ambitious. But circumspection will only make the problems posed by the pandemic harder to fix. Without firm commitments to buy vaccines, manufacturers will have less reason to resolve any bottlenecks in their supply chains. A scarcity of shots will encourage counterproductive bans on exports of vaccines and materials. If poor countries do not know when vaccines will arrive, they will find it harder to prepare a successful roll-out. And slow vaccination will make new variants more likely.

这项提议雄心勃勃，但谨慎行事只会让大流行带来的问题更难解决。没有购买疫苗的坚定承诺，制造商就不会有太多理由去解决供应链中的任何瓶颈。疫苗的缺乏将导致对疫苗和疫苗材料出口的禁令产生适得其反的效果。如果贫穷国家不知道疫苗何时能够到来，它们会发现准备一次成功的推出会更难。而缓慢的疫苗接种速度将更有可能允许新的变异病毒的产生。

Conversely, anearly end to the pandemic could add as much as $8trn (at market exchange rates) to global GDP spread over the next few years, according to the IMF, and raise tax revenues in the rich world by $1trn. "Funding this proposal", the authors argue,"may possibly be the highest-return public investment ever." Glory, indeed.

相反，根据国际货币基金组织(IMF)的数据，疫情的提前结束可能会在未来几年内为全球GDP增加多达8万亿美元(以市场汇率计算)，并使发达国家的税收增加1万亿美元。“资助这项提案”，作者认为，“可能是有史以来回报最高的公共投资。”是一项成就，真的。