俄罗斯对一名实验室工作人员死亡的沉默凸显，如果威胁信息被隐瞒，那么大流行防备工作就毫无意义。科学家们喜欢关注防备工作中的技术挑战：识别病原体、诊断感染、了解其影响以及开发疫苗和治疗方法。每一步都承诺通过人类创新、投资和规划取得进步。
Russia’s silence over the death of a lab worker underlines that pandemic preparedness amounts to nothing if information on threats is withheld pandemic preparedness work scientists like to focus on the technical challenges: identifying pathogens, diagnosing infections, understanding their effects and developing vaccines and treatments. Each step promises progress through human innovation, investment and planning.
例如，世界卫生组织（WHO）会将专家聚集在一起，以识别和优先处理新兴疾病威胁，并收集为应对这些威胁所需的证据。但防备工作不仅仅依赖于科学创新。
The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, brings experts together to identify and prioritise emerging disease threats and collect the evidence needed to prepare for them. But preparedness depends on more than scientific innovation.
正如过去一周所显示的，政治是这一切中的大象。没有人能预测我们会讨论肺鼠疫，以及俄罗斯一名实验室工作人员的死亡会引发全球头条新闻。这可能感觉像是反应过度：WHO 每月都要处理全球数千种潜在疾病信号。但鉴于俄罗斯当局对事件缺乏透明度——以及对生物武器研究的持续担忧——此案的情况是不寻常的。
As the past week has shown, politics is the elephant in the room in all of this. No one could have predicted we would be talking about pneumonic plague, and that the death of a single lab worker in Russia would cause global headlines. It might feel like an overreaction: the WHO deals with thousands of potential disease signals worldwide every month But the circumstances of this case are unusual given the lack of transparency from Russian authorities on what happened – and ongoing concern about biological weapons research.