As Numbers Sink In, New Reality Confronts A More Somber Trump

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WASHINGTON — Five weeks ago, when there were 60 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States, President Trump expressed little alarm. "This is a flu," he said. "This is like a flu." He was still likening it to an ordinary flu as late as Friday.

華盛頓——五周前，當美國出現60例確診的冠狀病毒病例時，特朗普總統表示絲毫沒有驚慌。“這是流感，”他說。“這就像流感一樣。直到星期五，他還把其比作普通的流感。

By Tuesday, however, with more than 187,000 recorded cases in the United States and more Americans having been killed by the virus than by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the president's assessment had rather drastically changed. "It's not the flu," he said.

然而，截至周二，美國有超過18.7萬的病例記錄，死于該病毒的美國人比死于2001年9月11日襲擊的美國人還多，總統的評估結果發生了相當大的變化。他說：“不是流感。”

 

The grim-faced president who appeared in the White House briefing room for more than two hours on Tuesday evening beside charts showing death projections ofhellacious proportions was coming to grips with a reality he had long refused to accept. At a minimum, the charts predicted that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans would die.

周二晚間，表情嚴肅的奧巴馬在白宮新聞發布廳(White House briefing room)出現了兩個多小時，旁邊的圖表顯示，死亡預測的比例之高令人震驚。他正在面對一個長期以來拒絕接受的現實。這些圖表至少預測了10萬到24萬美國人將會死亡。

 

 

hellacious  /he?le???s/

adj. 可怕的；不能容忍的；極其困難的（等于hellaceous）

eg. More such lenient interpretations will ease a hellacious process for employers and workers.如果做出更多類似的解釋，這項無比艱巨的工作對用人單位和工薪族來說就能變得容易一些。

 

A crisis that Mr. Trump had repeatedly asserted was "under control" and hoped would "miraculously" disappear has come to consume his presidency, presenting him with a challenge that he seems only now to be seeing more clearly.

特朗普曾多次聲稱，一場危機“在控制之中”，并希望“奇跡般地”消失，這已經消磨了他的總統職位，這給他帶來了一個挑戰，他似乎直到現在才更清楚地看到這個挑戰。

 

The staggering numbers publicly outlined on Tuesday had forced him over the weekend to reverse his plan to reopen the country by Easter, but they were hardly new or surprising. Experts have been warning of such a possibility for weeks. But more than ever before, Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge them.

周二公布的驚人數字迫使他在上周末改變了在復活節前重新開放該國的計劃，但是這些數字并不新鮮也不令人意外。數周以來，專家一直在警告這種可能性。但特朗普似乎比以往任何時候都更多地承認了這一點。

 

"I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead, we're going to go through a very tough two weeks."

總統說：“我希望每個美國人都為即將到來的艱難日子做好準備，我們將經歷非常艱難的兩個星期。”

Afterward, he added: "We're going to start seeing some real light at the end of the tunnel. But this is going to be a very painful — very, very painful — two weeks."

之后，他補充道:“我們將開始看到一些真正的曙光。但這將是非常痛苦的——非常、非常痛苦的——兩個星期。”

 

Under the best-case scenario presented on Tuesday, Mr. Trump will see more Americans die from the coronavirus in the weeks and months to come than Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon saw die in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.

在周二提出的最佳情況下，特朗普將會看到更多的美國人死于冠狀病毒在未來幾周和幾個月比總統哈利·s·杜魯門、艾森豪威爾、肯尼迪、約翰遜和尼克松看到死在朝鮮戰爭和越南戰爭的總和。

 

 

scenario 英 /s??nɑ?ri??/ 美 /s??nærio?/ 

n. 方案；情節；劇本；設想

a nightmare scenario 最壞的可能

eg.  The conflict degenerating into civil war is everybody's nightmarescenario. 
 這場沖突惡化成內戰成為每個人的惡夢。

 

That is a daunting realization for any president, one that left Mr. Trump now anticipating "the worst thing that the country has probably ever seen."

對于任何一位總統來說，這都是一個令人生畏的現實，讓特朗普現在面臨著“這個國家可能見過的最糟糕的事情”。

 

Mr. Trump said he played down the seriousness of the threat because he chose to be reassuring. "I want to give people hope," he said. "You know, I'm a cheerleader for the country."

特朗普表示，他之所以淡化威脅的嚴重性，是因為他選擇讓人安心。“我想給人們希望，”他說。“你知道，我是國家的啦啦隊長。”

 

He said longtime business associates were advising him not to react aggressively to the virus, presumably out of concern for what it could mean for the economy, which now faces certain recession.

他說，長期的商業伙伴建議他不要對這種病毒做出過激反應，可能是出于對它可能對經濟造成的影響的擔心，目前美國經濟面臨一定的衰退。

 

"I've had many friends, business people, people with great actually common sense — they said, "Why don't we ride it out?'" Mr. Trump said without identifying them. "A lot of people have said, a lot of people have thought about it, ride it out, don't do anything, just ride it out and think of it as the flu. But it's not the flu. It's vicious."

他說:“我有很多朋友，有商人，也有很有常識的人。他們說，‘我們為什么不能挺過去呢?’”特朗普沒有透露他們的身份。“很多人都說過，很多人都想過，挺過去，什么都不做，只是挺過去，把它當成流感。但不是流感。這是邪惡的。”

The president did not explain on Tuesday why testing was so slow, nor did he explain why he waited to recommend canceling large events, closing businesses and schools and limiting group gatherings until after governors began ordering it themselves. Nor did he explain why he publicly declared that the country could reopen as early as Easter, only to reverse himself days later, if he understood all along how bad the situation could get.

總統沒有解釋周二的測試為什么這么慢，也沒有解釋為什么他一直等到州長們自己下令后才建議取消大型活動、關閉企業和學校、限制團體聚會。他也沒有解釋為什么他公開宣布國家可以在復活節前重新開放，但幾天后他就改變了主意，如果他一直都明白情況會變得多么糟糕。

 

 

publicly 英 /?p?bl?kli/ 美 /?p?bl?kli/ 

adv. 公然地；以公眾名義

eg.He later apologized publicly for his remarks. 

后來他為他的說法公開道歉。

 

At the White House briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Fauci was asked whether the death toll could have been kept below the minimum 100,000 now forecast if social distancing guidelines had been put in place earlier. He said it depended on whether the virus had already arrived in the United States and spread further than was known early on.

在周二的白宮新聞發布會上，有人問福西博士，如果早一點制定社會疏遠的指導方針，死亡人數是否可以保持在目前預測的最低10萬人以下。他說，這取決于病毒是否已經抵達美國，并傳播到比早期所知的更遠的地方。

 

All of which is why public health experts have said that early widespread testing would have been so critical. “In a perfect world, it would've been nice to know what was going on there," Dr. Fauci told Jim Acosta of CNN, referring to the earliest outbreaks in Asia. “We didn’t, but I believe, Jim, that we acted very, very early in that.”

這就是為什么公共衛生專家說，早期廣泛的檢測是如此重要。“在一個完美的世界里，如果知道那里發生了什么，那就太好了，”福奇博士對CNN的吉姆·阿科斯塔(Jim Acosta)說。阿科斯塔指的是亞洲最早的禽流感爆發。“我們沒有，但我相信，吉姆，我們很早就采取了行動。”

 

Mr. Trump asserted that had he not blocked most travelers from China, the United States would have reached closer to the maximum projected death toll of up to 2.2 million. "When you look at it could have been 2.2 million people died and more if we did nothing, if we just did nothing," he said, then he and the country "have done a great job." In effect, he seemed to be setting up the argument that any death toll below that will be a validation of his handling of the crisis.

特朗普“堅稱”，如果他沒有阻止大多數來自中國的游客，美國的死亡人數可能會更接近預計的最高死亡人數220萬。“如果我們什么都不做，可能會有220萬人死亡甚至更多，如果我們什么都不做，”他說，然后他和這個國家“做得很好”。實際上，他似乎是在表明，任何低于這一數字的死亡人數，都將證明他對危機的處理是有效的。

Whatever the eventual number will be, the pandemic of 2020 seems likely to rank with the deadliest of the past century. The worst came in 1918-20 and killed about 675,000 Americans, accounting for many of the military deaths attributed to World War I. Another pandemic in 1957-58 killed about 116,000 in the United States, and one in 1968 killed about 100,000. The H1N1 virus in 2009, for which Mr. Trump has assailed Mr. Obama's response, killed only 12,000. The ordinary flu has resulted in 12,000 to 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

無論最終的數字是多少，2020年的流感大流行似乎是過去一個世紀中最致命的。最嚴重的一次發生在1918年至1920年，造成約67.5萬美國人死亡，其中許多是一戰造成的軍人死亡。1957年至1958年的另一次大流行導致美國約11.6萬人死亡，1968年的一次大流行導致約10萬人死亡。2009年，特朗普曾抨擊奧巴馬應對甲型H1N1流感的方式，但只造成1.2萬人死亡。自2010年以來，普通流感每年導致1.2萬至6.1萬人死亡。

 

Mr. Trump and his administration have stepped up efforts in recent weeks, expanding testing and seeking to work with governors to address shortages of ventilators, masks and other medical equipment. The president has dispatched medical ships and Army engineers to help, moved to force General Motors to manufacture more ventilators and, after flirting with an early reopening, extended social distancing guidelines until the end of April. Governors have both welcomed the help and complained that it is inadequate.

最近幾周，特朗普和他的政府加大了努力，擴大了檢測范圍，并尋求與州長合作，解決呼吸機、口罩和其他醫療設備的短缺問題?？偨y已經派出醫療船和陸軍工程師提供幫助，開始迫使通用汽車制造更多的通風機，并在考慮提前重新開放之后，將社會疏遠準則延長到4月底。州長們既對援助表示歡迎，又抱怨援助不足。

 

Still, Mr. Trump, rarely a reflective person in public, mused about the human toll of the pandemic more than he did in the early weeks of the crisis apparently because it has hit his own circle. As he has in the past couple of days, he referred to an overwhelmed hospital in his childhood home of Queens and an unidentified friend he said had been hospitalized with the virus.

盡管如此，特朗普很少在公共場合反思，他對這場流行病造成的人員傷亡的思考，比危機爆發的最初幾周要多，顯然是因為它打擊了他自己的圈子。和過去幾天一樣，他提到了自己兒時在皇后區的家，那里有一家人滿為患的醫院，他還提到了一位不愿透露姓名的朋友，他說他因為感染了病毒而住進了醫院。

 

muse 英 /mju?z/ 美 /mju?z/ 

n. 沉思；冥想

vt. 沉思；沉思地說

vi. 沉思；凝望

eg. "As a whole," she muses, "the 'organized church' turns me off." 
 “總的來說，”她若有所思地說，“‘組織嚴密的教會’讓我厭煩。”