大使疫情手记 (双语11) —— 惊人的差别消除机

作者：Geoff Raby

中文：罗曼

转自朱雀艺术

前澳大利亚驻华大使、艺术收藏家、经济学家、专栏作家 Dr Geoff Raby AO 原计划于二月底返回北京，后因新冠疫情爆发滞留悉尼。朱雀艺术特别开设【号外】专栏，连载大使的疫情手记。今日连载至第11篇。 

大使疫情手记（十一）

惊人的差别消除机 

秋意渐浓，好像每天晚上都会下雨，并且秋雨很凉。我家街旁的老树纷纷落叶，仿佛争先恐后地在寒冬来临前准备进入冬眠。当然，悉尼基本上没有真正的冬季。相较于一些国家的高纬度地区而言，悉尼冬日的气候堪比那里的夏天。我的女儿和外孙女就住在鹿特丹，我怎么会不知道呢！

鹿特丹的冬天

我们被告知，我们的经济也已进入“冬眠”期。这是一个全新的策略，澳大利亚的经济至少将停摆六个月。政府即将花费大量资金，这意味着债务问题将会持续20年或更长时间。试想一下，一个当下做出的决定，其后果却会持续影响未来的20年，甚至更久？

这正是我们所说的“大动作”。政府的大部分资金将用于补贴公司支付员工薪水，以便在六个月内（希望如此）情况好转后人们可以重返工作岗位，就像什么也没有发生一样。这便是“冬眠”的概念，类似熊在秋冬交替时进入的生理状态。

这一策略或许可以奏效。政府必须有所作为。这有可能是一个非常好的想法，而我们也希望历史能够作出和我们的期待相一致的判断。不过，当我今日逃离禁闭出门锻炼时，我留意到附近一条仅有五百米距离的街上就有六家餐厅门前挂起了“转让出租”标志。毫无疑问，此次疫情已经造成了巨大的经济损失，而且影响还会越来越大。从“冬眠”中苏醒之时，我们并不会像熊一样感到饥饿，不过我们将会看起来和病毒造访前有些不同。

我的父母都成长于20世纪30年代“大萧条”时期。他们出生于1919年第一次世界大战后，而他们的父母都是从诸多限制的战时生活和物资匮乏中存活下来的幸运儿。我的祖父辈是刚刚从土耳其和法国的残酷战场中返回的老兵。我的父母也曾拥有过一段无忧无虑的孩提时代，但是当他们步入成长初期时，世界经济陷入停滞，每一分钱都变得无比重要。

“大萧条”时期排队领取救济食物的儿童

我的祖父在十几岁时独自移民到阿德莱德，以摆脱绝望贫困的伦敦工人阶级生活。几年后，他加入澳大利亚第三轻骑兵部队，在加利波利海滩与土耳其人交手，这是时任英国海军部长的温斯顿·丘吉尔所构思的一场极其愚蠢的战役。我的祖父患上了创伤后应激障碍，余生只能住在一个黑暗的房间里，一直到他60岁出头去世。在那时这不算什么新鲜事，从战场返回的士兵所表现出的症状被称为“炮弹休克”（注1）。

（注1：“炮弹休克”概念在第一次世界大战后被提出，临床工作者认为是士兵在被炮弹袭击之后，生理上的损失造成了情绪崩溃和各种身心反应。）

一战中的澳新军团轻骑兵部队

他每天都在吸烟中度过，枯瘦的手指被香烟染成了浅褐色。 他对孙辈没有丝毫感情，更糟糕的是，对儿子也是如此。向加里波利派兵是时任政府作出的一个错误决定，它所造成的后果影响了好几代人。澳大利亚和新西兰将于4月25日（译者注：即澳新军团日）纪念这项入侵他国的行动。而今年的澳新军团日，街上将第一次无人游行。

以丘吉尔为榜样的鲍里斯·约翰逊带领英国迈出了正式脱欧的第一步。而今晚，他将在重症监护室中与可怕的病毒作斗争。或许这会是一场史诗般的抗争，我们祝他一切顺利。这个病毒是什么奇怪的东西？英国又是什么奇怪的地方？ 先是查尔斯王子，然后是首相。民主的表现方式是如此出其不意。

Geoff Raby’s Pandemic Journal 11

The Great Leveller

Autumn is rapidly advancing. It seems to rain every evening now, and the rain is cold. The old trees in my street are shedding their leaves as if racing to prepare to hibernate before the winter arrives. Winter in Sydney is a misnomer, of course. In some countries, at high northern latitudes, a wintery Sydney day would seem like a summer’s day. My daughter and granddaughter live in Rotterdam. I should know!

Hibernation is what we’re told our economy has entered into. This is an entirely new idea. The Australian economy is being shut down for at least six months. The government is about to spend vast amounts of money, which means that the debt will still be a problem in twenty years or more. Imagine taking a decision today, the consequences of which will still be felt in twenty or more years?

As we would say, it is a big call. Most of the money will be spent paying companies to keep paying people’s wages so that when things re-start again – it is hoped in six months – people will be able to go back to their jobs as if nothing had happened. This is the notion of “hibernation”, the state of existence that bears enter when autumn turns to winter.

It may work. The government must do something. It is probably a really good idea and one would hope for all of our sakes that history will be able to judge it as such. But walking around the streets on my daily “exercise escape” today, at least, six restaurants in a five hundred metre strip in my hood had “for lease” signs out in front. No doubt, the economic damage from this thing is huge already, and will get bigger still. And when we come out of “hibernation” it won’t be like bears waking up a little hungry, we will look different than we were before the virus paid us a visit.

My parents were both children of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Born at the end of the First World War in 1919 to parents recently freed of the restraints on normal life and of wartime deprivations, and happy to be alive. Grandfathers returned from unimaginably horrific battlefields of Turkey and France. It was a carefree life for a while, but by the time my parents entered their formative early years, the world economy shut down and every penny mattered. 

My father’s father was a teenage immigrant who came to Adelaide alone to escape the despair and poverty of working-class London. A few years later, he was in the Australian Third Light Horse Brigade on the beaches of Gallipoli fighting the Turks in a deadly stupidly conceived campaign by Winston Churchill, then the UK’s Minister of the Navy. My grandfather spent the rest of his life until he passed away in his early 60s in a darkened room with post-traumatic stress syndrome. No new what it was in those days. Returned soldiers were referred to as being “shell shocked”.   

He passed his days smoking cigarettes in held in bony yellow-stained fingers. He had no affection for his grandchildren. Worse. None for his son. A bad government decision, to commit troop to Gallipoli, has reverberated through the generations. Australia and New Zealand will be commemorating that invasion of a foreign land on 25 April. For the first time, no one will be marching of the streets.

Boris Johnson, who styles himself on Churchill, having led little England’s charge out of the EU is tonight in intensive care fighting off the dreaded virus. It may well be an epic struggle this evening and we wish him well. What a strange thing the virus is and what a strange place the UK is? Prince Charles and then the Prime Minister. It is oddly democratic in the way that it strikes.