截至2021年5月，西方国家每百万人口中新冠病毒肺炎（简称新冠肺炎）死亡人数往往超过东方国家的100倍。本文中提及的西方国家是以美国和西欧地区5个人口最多的国家（法国、德国、意大利、西班牙和英国）为代表，东方国家是以作为《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》（RCEP）成员的东亚和大洋洲的15个国家（澳大利亚、文莱达鲁萨兰国、柬埔寨王国、中国、印度尼西亚、日本、韩国、老挝、马来西亚、缅甸、新西兰、菲律宾、新加坡、泰国和越南）为代表。本文认为，现有信息指明了造成东西方差异的最主要因素。到2020年1月初，中国武汉市发生非典型病毒性肺炎的预警促使东亚诸多司法管辖区迅速做出反应。2020年1月10日，病毒基因组的发布为进行诊断测试和开展疫苗研发提供了重要信息。2020年1月23日，中国武汉市封城，明确表明了这种新疾病的危险性。截至2020年3月下旬，中国新冠肺炎疫情已经得到全面控制，而其他的RCEP成员国也已提早采取了果断措施（包括限制出行），从而避免了严重的结局。在2020年2月这一关键时期，美国和其他一些西方国家的不作为导致新冠肺炎的肆虐和传播。东西方国家都广泛实施了严格的全民非药物干预措施，社会、经济和教育系统都付出了巨大的代价。如果没有采取这些措施，结局可能会更糟。大多数东方国家还实施了严格的集中政策，对感染者进行集中隔离。然而，即使在今天，大多数西方国家仍然允许感染者与其家人、同事和社区居民交往。东西方之间的差异在很大程度上是由于西方国家未能及早实施基本公共卫生政策。一些RCEP成员国及高收入国家进行广泛的免疫接种，疫情很快减轻。然而，低收入国家的疫苗推出缓慢，导致在结局上全球南北方差异正逐渐取代东西方差异。因此，南方国家正在取代西方国家，成为更危险病毒变种的滋生地。例如，具有高度传染性的德尔塔（Delta）变种，可能会削弱迄今为止在很多国家中取得成功的控制策略的效果。

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths per million population in the countries of the West had often exceeded those in the countries of the East by factor of 100 by May 2021. In this paper, we refer to the West as represented by the United States plus the five most populous countries of Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), and the East as the 15 countries in East Asia and Oceania that are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, RCEP (Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). This paper argues that currently available information points to the factors most responsible for the East–West divide. Warnings by early January
2020 about an atypical viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China, prompted rapid responses in many jurisdictions in East Asia. Publication of the virus's genome on 10 January 2020 provided essential information for making diagnostic tests and launching vaccine development. China's lockdown of Wuhan on 23 January 2020 provided a final, decisive signal of the danger of the new disease. By late March 2020, China had fully controlled its epidemic, and many other RCEP countries had taken early and decisive measures, including restrictions on travel, that aborted serious outcomes. Inaction during the critical month of February 2020 in the United States and most other Western countries allowed the disease to take hold and spread. In both the East and the West, stringent population-wide non-pharmaceutical interventions were widely implemented at great cost to societies, economies, and school systems. Without these measures, the outcomes could have been even worse. Most countries in the East also implemented tightly focused policies to isolate infectious individuals. Even today, most countries in the West allow infectious individuals to mingle with their families, coworkers, and communities. Much of the East–West divide plausibly results from failure in the West to implement the basic public health policies of early action and the isolation of infectious individuals. Widespread immunization in some RCEP and high-income countries will soon attenuate their outbreaks, while the slow rollout of vaccines in lower income countries is replacing the East–West divide in outcomes with a North–South one. The South is thus replacing the West as the breeding ground for more dangerous variants as exemplified by the highly contagious Delta variant, which may undermine hitherto successful control strategies in many countries.