Brexit-voting areas of UK have highest COVID-19 death rate, study finds

研究发现,英国投脱欧票地区的新冠死亡率最高


(A banner against giving children coronavirus vaccines is displayed during a protest on Parliament Square opposite the Houses of Parliament, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021.)

(2021年9月8日星期三,在伦敦议会大厦对面的议会广场上,人们展示着反对给儿童注射新冠病毒疫苗的横幅。)
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COVID-19 is killing a high proportion of people in regions of the UK that voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum, a new report has claimed.

一份新的报告称,在2016年公投中投票支持英国脱欧的地区,新冠肺炎正在导致很大一部分人死亡。
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Research by Ludovic Phalippou of the University of Oxford and Betty H.T. Wu of the University of Glasgow has claimed to have found a direct correlation between Brexit-voting districts of the UK and those that have the highest rate of fatalities from COVID-19.

牛津大学的鲁多维克·法利普和格拉斯哥大学的贝蒂·H·T·吴的研究称,他们发现英国脱欧投票地区与新冠死亡率最高的地区之间存在直接关联。

It reveals that the boroughs of Boston, Great Yarmouth, South Holland, and Hartlepool, for example, have the fourth highest fatalities from the virus in the UK and the biggest share of the vote for Brexit, with all four districts voting more than 75% for leave in 2016. By contrast, the 20 boroughs with the lowest death rates all voted heavily for Remain.

报告显示,波士顿、大雅茅斯、南荷兰和哈特尔普尔等区是英国因新冠病毒死亡人数第四高的地区,也是英国脱欧投票人数最多的地区,2016年所有四个区投票支持脱欧的比例均超过75%。而相比之下,新冠死亡率最低的20个行政区都大力支持留欧。

For the authors, the results suggest that the same people who were swayed by the arguments in favour of Brexit -- which was defined by a distrust of political and financial elites and populist rhetoric shared via social media -- are also those that resist getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and have been hostile to lockdown measures including curfews and mask-wearing.

在报告作者看来,结果表明,那些被英国脱欧的观点所动摇(定义为:对政治和金融精英的不信任,以及通过社交媒体分享的民粹主义言论)的人,正是那些抵制接种新冠疫苗、反对宵禁和戴口罩等封锁措施的人。

"There is a group of people in the population who just rejects any official advice, any mainstream advice, any expert advice,” Phalippou told Euronews.

“有一群人拒绝任何官方建议,任何主流建议,任何专家建议,” 法利普告诉《欧洲新闻》。

"The question then becomes for researchers, how do you capture these people? How do you have a proxy for these people? Which areas have more of these people?"

“然后,研究人员的问题就变成了,如何捕捉这些人?你怎么找到这些人的代理人?哪些地区有更多这样的人?”
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Phalippou and Wu said that the result should have "very important consequences for policy” and called into question initiatives such as mandatory vaccination, which was recently imposed in Austria.

法利普和吴说,这一结果应该对“政策产生非常重要的影响”,并引用了对奥地利最近实施的强制性疫苗接种等举措的质疑。

Many of those that do not want to get vaccinated distrust both pharmaceutical companies and politicians already - and not entirely without reason, Phalippou said.

法利普说,许多不想接种疫苗的人已经不信任制药公司和政客——这并非完全没有原因。

"There is actually a big academic literature showing how corrupt the process of approving medication is. So there is some underlying truth [to some of these beliefs],” he said.

“实际上有大量学术文献表明批准药物的过程是多么腐败。所以,有些观点是有道理的。”

"We need to take them seriously, we need to understand what they say, how they feel, and how we can counter them and their mindset.”

“我们需要认真对待他们,我们需要理解他们说了什么,他们的感受,以及我们如何反驳他们和他们的心态。”

Jonathan Berman, author of Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement, told Euronews the correlation “made some sense” and found echoes in other areas of the world where populist movements, such as Brexit, had success in recent years.

《反疫苗接种者:如何挑战一场误导运动》的作者乔纳森·伯曼对《欧洲新闻》表示,这种关联“有一定道理”,并在英国脱欧等民粹主义运动近年取得成功的世界其他地区找到了共鸣。

Recent work in the US, for example, had found a similar crossover between Donald Trump voters and COVID-19 deaths.

比如,最近在美国的研究发现,唐纳德·特朗普的选民和新冠死亡之间也存在类似的交叉。

“Brexit was a very different vote from [Trump, but] the thread I would draw between the two is that both campaigns were populist causes, which by definition are frxd as regular people opposed to the elite,” Berman said.

伯曼说:“英国脱欧(和特朗普的投票)非常不同,但我想在两者之间画出的线是,两场竞选都是民粹主义事业,从定义上来说,都被框定为反对精英的普通人。”

The anti-vax movement, he said, appealed to those who were susceptible to populist ideas and who distrusted elites, and the politicians like Trump that have sought to capitalise on that.

他说,反疫苗运动吸引了那些易受民粹主义思想影响、不信任精英的人,以及像特朗普这样试图利用这一点的政客。

“Epidemiologists, health boards, and virologists are cast as the elite,” he said.

他说:“流行病学家、卫生委员会和病毒学家被视为精英。”

'Eastern Europe'
Others suggest that while there may be a correlation between Brexit voters and regions that are suffering hardest from COVID-19, it is too simple to draw a direct line between leave supporters and vaccine scepticism - not least because even in the areas with the highest COVID-19 death rates, vaccination rates are above 60%, far higher than elsewhere in Europe.

“东欧”
另一些人认为,尽管英国脱欧选民和受新冠影响最严重的地区之间可能存在关联,要在支持休假的人和对疫苗持怀疑态度的人之间划出一条直接的界线也太草率了——尤其是因为即使在新冠死亡率最高的地区,疫苗接种率也高于60%,远高于欧洲其他地区。

In Boston and Skegness, for example, where only 18.9% of residents voted to remain in 2016 and where the death rate per thousand people is 3.1, double that of the remain-voting boroughs at the other end of the scale, more than 66% of people are now double-vaccinated.

比如,在波士顿和斯格内斯,2016年只有18.9%的居民投票支持留欧,每千人的死亡率是3.1,是另一个留欧选区的两倍,但超过66%的人现在已经接种了两次疫苗。

Matt Warman, the Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness, told Euronews that the high death toll in his district was likely due to a range of factors, including its relatively large elderly population - who are more susceptible to the virus, generally.

波士顿和斯格内斯的保守党议员马特·沃尔曼告诉《欧洲新闻》,他所在选区的高死亡人数可能是由一系列因素造成的,包括其相对较大的老年人口——一般来说,他们更容易受到病毒的影响。

As for the correlation between areas that voted Brexit and fatalities, he suggested it could be for a different reason.

至于投票脱欧的地区与死亡人数之间的相关性,他认为可能是出于不同的原因。

“Areas that voted Brexit in 2016 tend to have large numbers of people who were born in Eastern Europe, and we know that there are problems with vaccination rates within the Eastern European community in the UK,” Warman, who has been MP since 2015, told Euronews.

沃曼自2015年以来一直担任国会议员,他告诉《欧洲新闻》:“2016年投票脱欧的地区往往有大量出生在东欧的人,我们知道英国的东欧社区在疫苗接种率方面存在问题。”
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This problem, he said, is exacerbated by misinformation being circulated online on social media, often originating in these individuals’ home countries, where vaccination rates are far lower than in the UK and anti-vax sentiment far more mainstream.

他说,在社交媒体上传播的错误信息加剧了这一问题,这些错误信息往往源自这些人的祖国,那里的疫苗接种率远低于英国,反疫苗情绪也远比英国主流。

“There has not been enough focus by social media companies on misinformation in other languages within the UK,” he said.

他说:“社交媒体公司对英国其他语言的错误信息没有予以足够的关注。”

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