The COVID-19 outbreak is not the first nor last series of recent real or potential catastrophes - be they natural disasters, terrorist attacks or pandemics - that have taken by surprise governments, globalised firms and the citizenry. 1Yet, due to its near-unprecedented impact on the highly interconnected but vulnerable systems that define the modern world, this pandemic has been testing our ability to govern risk more than any other crisis before. The last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of the scale of the current novel coronavirus without having access to vaccines was the 1918-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic. 2Ironically, the measures mobilised today to counter COVID-19 - the so-called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” 3- are essentially the same as those deployed a century ago, and that despite significant social, technological as well as governance differences between 1918 and today. 4

中文翻译：

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通过法规驯服COVID-19：自我反省的机会

COVID-19疫情并不是令人震惊的政府，全球化企业和公民所遭受的自然灾害，恐怖袭击或大流行的最新自然灾害或潜在灾难的第一个也不是最后一系列。1然而，由于这种流行病对定义现代世界的高度关联但脆弱的系统产生了前所未有的影响，因此这种流行病比以往任何一次危机都在测试我们的风险管理能力。上一次在没有疫苗的情况下，全球对目前正在流行的新型冠状病毒的全球新兴疾病流行病做出反应的最后一次是1918-1919年H1N1流感大流行。2具有讽刺意味的是，今天为对抗COVID-19而动员的措施-所谓的“非药物干预” 3-与一个世纪前部署的措施基本相同，尽管存在重大的社会影响，1918年至今的技术和治理差异。4