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Omicron Is Pushing America Into Soft Lockdown
奥密克戎正在将美国推向软封锁
“I do not see a scenario for any kind of shutdown,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared this week, as parts of New York were in fact shutting down all around him. Broadway canceled show after show. Restaurants closed their kitchens. De Blasio’s successor, Eric Adams, who will take office January 1, nixed his inauguration gala. There has been no March 2020–style universal shutdown, but New York is not back anymore, baby.
纽约市市长比尔·白思豪本周宣布，“我看不到任何形式停摆的情况。”事实上，纽约市周围的部分地区都在关闭。百老汇一场接一场地取消演出。餐馆关闭厨房。将于1月1日就职的白思豪的继任者埃里克·亚当斯取消他的就职典礼。没有出现2020年3月那样的全面关闭，但纽约已经回不到疫情前的状态了，宝贝。
For Brent Young, who runs a butcher shop and two restaurants in Brooklyn, it began last week when, one by one, staff members tested positive. “It’s more or less decimated our workforce,” he says. One of his restaurants had been booked solid with parties for a week—the holidays are one of the busiest times of the year for restaurants—but people started canceling those parties too. At this point it’s not worth trying to stay open, Young says, “because the anxiety’s so high no one’s wanting to eat.” For most vaccinated people, Omicron will be mild. But even a mild cold, sufficiently widespread, can disrupt a city.
对于在布鲁克林经营着一家肉店和两家餐厅的布伦特·杨来说，这一切始于上周，当时工作人员一个接一个地检测呈阳性。“这或多或少减少了我们的劳动力，”他说。假期是餐厅一年中最繁忙的时间之一，他的一家餐厅本已预订满了一周的派对，但人们也开始取消这些派对。杨说，此时此刻，不值得尝试保持开放，“因为焦虑值太高了，没有人想来吃。”对于大多数接种疫苗的人来说，奥密克戎是轻微的。但是，即使是一场足够广泛的轻度感冒，也能扰乱一座城市。
A voluntary suspension of activity—a soft lockdown, essentially—will help dampen transmission of the coronavirus. This happened all over the country in spring 2020, when people began staying at home before official stay-at-home orders came down, says Saad Omer, an epidemiologist at Yale and a co-author of a paper that studied the phenomenon using anonymized cellphone data. It’s intuitive, really.
本质上属于“软封锁”的自愿暂停活动，将有助于抑制冠状病毒的传播。耶鲁大学流行病学家萨阿德·奥梅尔说，2020年春天，全国各地都出现了这种情况，当时人们在官方居家令下达之前就开始待在家里。奥梅尔是一篇使用匿名手机数据研究这一现象的论文的合著者之一。这是很直观的，真的。
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