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According to the UK's risk register, the number one threat to life isn't terrorism, it's pandemic flu. Unlike seasonal flu that strikes in the winter months, pandemic flu is a worldwide outbreak. It can emerge at any moment and as history has proven, it can be catastrophic.
英国风险表表明：生命的头号威胁并不是恐怖主义袭击，而是大规模流感。与冬季爆发的季节流感不同，大规模流感在全世界范围内爆发。大规模流感会随时出现，而且历史证明，其危害是灾难性的。
In new TV show Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic, mathematician Dr Hannah Fry and emergency medic Dr Javid Abdelmoneim use app technology to 'infect' people and see how fast their virtual disease can spread in 24 hours.
在新的电视节目Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic中，数学家汉娜·弗莱伊博士和急诊医生Javid Abdelmoneim博士使用应用技术'感染'人们，并观察虚拟病毒在24小时内的传播速度。
Despite advances in medicine, experts admit there's still a lot they don't understand about flu infection and contagiousness, which means if a potent strain materialises, it still has the potential to devastate populations. So what do we know?
尽管医学发展很快，但科学家承认，关于流感感染和传染，他们仍有很多东西尚不能理解，这就意味着如果出现了一种强效的毒株，那它仍有可能给人类带来破坏。那我们又知道什么呢？
Origins of pandemic flu
大规模流感的来源
Every so often a completely new type of flu emerges because humans aren't the only creatures that get the bug. "Flu exists in animals such as birds or pigs, and from time to time you'll get these other animal flus that cross over into humans," explains Dr Chris Chiu, a clinical senior lecturer and consultant in infectious diseases at Imperial College London.
每隔一段时间就会出现一种全新的流感，这是因为人类并不是唯一得流感的生物。"鸟、猪等动物也会得流感，时不时的，这些动物流感也会传染给人类，你也有可能受到感染，"Chris Chiu博士说道，他是伦敦帝国理工学院的临床高级讲师、传染病咨询师。
"The vast majority of people won't have any immunity against that new strain of flu, so it spreads very quickly across the world."
"大多数人无法免疫这种新型流感病毒，所以流感会在世界各地迅速传播。"
Super-spreaders
超级传播者
The show explores the notion of super-spreaders - where one person is responsible for infecting a lot of others - and what makes some people more contagious than others. "The concept of super spreaders has been around for over 100 years but mainly in the context of other infections," explains Dr Chiu. An example is cook Mary Mallon, born in 1869 and nicknamed Typhoid Mary.
这个节目探讨了超级传播者的概念--也就是一个人会传染很多其他人--以及为什么有些人比其他人更容易受感染。"超级传播者的概念已经存在100多年了，但主要是在其它感染的情况下出现，"Chiu博士解释道。其中一个例子就是玛丽·马隆厨师，她生于1869年，绰号伤寒玛丽。
She was thought to have infected so many people she was quarantined on an island near New York where she died 23 years later. "In flu infections it's not been easy to uncover who super-spreaders are because when flu appears it's very common, so it's almost impossible to track down whether a single person has infected two or 100 people," says Dr Chiu.
人们认为她感染了很多人，以至于被带到一个靠近纽约的岛上隔离了，23年后，她在岛上去世。"在流感感染的过程中，很难发现谁是超级传播者，因为当时流感已经十分普遍，所以几乎无法追踪到是否是一个人感染了2个或100个人，"Chiu博士说道。
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