好英语网在纽约，几乎每个人身边都有人感染病毒
A New York City Housing Authority retiree ticked off his running tally: an ex-wife sick, a daughter sick, and three old friends dead. In Queens, a young poet learned a friend’s parents are in the hospital, one on a ventilator.
纽约市住房管理局的一名退休人员一条条记录下来：前妻病了、女儿病了、三个老朋友死了。在皇后区，一名年轻诗人得知朋友的父母住院了，其中一人还上了呼吸机。
And Qtina Parson of Parkchester, the Bronx, gave a grim reversal of the cheerful family updates one expects from the proud mother, sister and aunt that she used to sound like just a couple of weeks — a lifetime — ago.
来自布朗克斯区帕克切斯特的屈蒂娜·帕森(Qtina Parson) 带来了她那个原本欢乐的家庭的最新坏消息，就在几周之前，这位自豪的母亲、姊妹和阿姨的口吻还截然不同——那仿佛是上辈子的事情了。
布朗克斯的蒂娜·帕尔森有三个亲戚似乎感染了冠状病毒。她和丈夫马克一起做起了处方药递送服务。
“My nephew — sick, he’s 28,” she said. “Him and his girlfriend. My sister-in-law, she’s 46, she had it.” Her son, Marcus, 18, is with relatives in South Carolina, where he has developed a fever and a cough. “But he’s out there cutting grass,” she added, as if saying this aloud would make it true: “I’m telling him it’s his allergies.”
“我侄子病了，他28岁，”她说。“他和他的女朋友。我嫂子46岁，她也病了。”她的儿子马库斯18岁，住在南卡罗来纳州的亲戚家里，出现了发烧和咳嗽的症状。“但他在外面割草，”她补充，仿佛大声说出来就能证明这是真的。“我告诉他那是过敏。”
New Yorkers have watched in helpless fear as the coronavirus, with dizzying speed and ferocity, truly took hold of the city in recent days. With more than 1,500 dead, many have already lost someone in their circle — a co-worker, an old friend from high school, the parent of a child’s classmate. The parish priest, the elderly neighbor upstairs. A mother, a father.
最近几天，在无助的恐惧中，纽约市民看到新型冠状病毒以令人眩晕的速度和烈度攻克这座城市。死亡人数超过了1500人，许多人失去了身边的某个人，可能是同事、高中时的老朋友、孩子同学的家长，也可能是教区牧师、楼上年长的邻居，或者一个母亲、父亲。
Almost everyone now knows someone who is sick.
现在几乎每个人都认识某个生病的人。
The story is told in the numbers: There were nearly 52,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections in New York City as of Thursday. And the apex is believed to still be weeks away.
数字说明了一切：截至周四，纽约市有近5.2万例确诊病例。据信，要达到拐点还需要数周时间。
The rising numbers have conversely shrunk the private worlds of some eight million individual people. It is as if the microscopic enemy, once an abstract nuisance to many, something happening someplace else, seemed to be closing in, its arrival announced with the now-constant peal of the ambulance siren.
反过来，不断增长的数字又令约800万人口拥有的私人世界缩小了。它就像是一个微观的敌人，对许多人来说曾经只是个抽象的麻烦，是其他地方发生的事情，如今却在逼近，救护车持续不断的鸣笛声宣告着它的到来。
If the pandemic can be thought of as playing out in weeks — the week the restaurants closed, the week schools closed, stores closed — this has been the week its true grip was felt throughout the city.
如果疫情可以按周来计算进展——一周餐馆关闭，一周学校停课、商店关门，那么在本周，整个城市都感受到了它真正的威力。
“It is the great equalizer,” said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday at a briefing. “I don’t care how smart, how rich, how powerful you think you are. I don’t care how young, how old.”
“这是极大的众生平等，”纽约州州长安德鲁·M·科莫(Andrew M. Cuomo)周二在新闻发布会上说。“它不在乎你自认为有多么聪明、富有、强大。它不在乎你年轻还是年老。”
To many, the rules of engagement suddenly changed this week.
对许多人来说，在本周，应对的规则突然改变了。
“They were saying, ‘just if you’re immuno-compromised,’” said M. Marbella, 27, a poet and writer who recently learned that a friend’s parents were both in the hospital. “Now everyone’s dropping like flies.”
“他们先是说，‘只有免疫系统有问题的人会生病，’”27岁的诗人、作家M·马尔贝拉(M. Marbella)说。“现在大家都像苍蝇一样纷纷往下掉。”
The speed could make it feel unreal. A person who enjoyed dinner in Manhattan before attending a Broadway show exactly one month ago could today be sick, mourning a family member, out of a job or all of the above. There was next to nothing to compare it to; thousands lost a loved one on Sept. 11, but those losses arrived in a single terrible day, in an instant. Some reached further back to find a comparison, to World War II or the Spanish flu of 1918, or beyond.
速度快得让人觉得不真实。一个月前在曼哈顿观看百老汇演出前享用晚餐的人，今天就有可能生病、悼念家人、失去工作，或者以上皆是。这种事几乎是史无前例的；9·11事件中，成千上万的人失去了亲人，但损失都是在那可怕的一天、在一瞬间发生的。有些人追溯到更早的时候，将它和第二次世界大战或1918年西班牙流感乃至更早的时期去做对比。
“It’s like the plague from England from the 14th century,” said Max Debarros, 67, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“这就像14世纪从英格兰来的瘟疫，”67岁、现居布鲁克林格林堡的马克斯·德巴罗斯(Max Debarros)说。
It is a plague playing out not only on the streets, but also on the screens, racing through people’s Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds as old friends and friends of friends announced personal losses. The threat seems to be everywhere.
这场瘟疫不仅在街头发生，也在屏幕中上演。在人们的Facebook和Twitter账户上，不停地有老朋友或者朋友的朋友宣布痛失亲朋好友的消息。威胁似乎无处不在。
“Every day on social media, we see someone new,” said Audrey Cardwell, 30, of Sunnyside, Queens. At first skeptical of the outbreak’s potential — “it felt like fearmongering” — she now seeks ways to address the anxiety she feels, though meditation and walks with her dog. “I have to monitor how much I’m reading and scrolling,” she said.
“在社交媒体上，每天都会看到新的感染者，”今年30岁、来自皇后区桑尼赛德的奥黛丽·卡德威尔(Audrey Cardwell)说。起初，她对疫情暴发的可能性持怀疑态度——“感觉像是在散布恐慌”——现在，她开始通过冥想和遛狗解决焦虑。“我必须控制自己在网上看东西的时间，”她说。
Likewise, Leora Fuller, 33, of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, who said two of her students at Rutgers University-Newark had been hospitalized, is focusing more on friendships and her own well-being. “Real care,” she said, “like not, ‘Oh, I’m going to buy something for myself.’”
同样，家住布鲁克林贝德福德-斯图维森特、现年33岁的莱奥拉·富勒(Leora Fuller)说，她在纽瓦克罗格斯大学(Rutgers University-Newark)的两个学生已经住院，她将更多的精力放在友谊和自己的健康上。她说：“真正的关心是这样，‘哦，我要给自己买点东西。’”
Other means of coping play out across the city. Aurelio Aguilar, 36, at work in a bodega on the Lower East Side, drinks a concoction of ginger, lemon and mashed garlic, his grandmother’s recipe to boost the immune system. In Fort Greene, Aidan Sleeper, 36, carries a homemade mix of 30-to-1 water and bleach and sprays every doorknob he’s about to touch.
在城市各处，其他的应对方法也发挥着作用。现年36岁的奥雷利奥·阿吉拉(Aurelio Aguilar)在下东区的一个小杂货店里工作，他喝着姜、柠檬和蒜泥混合调制的饮品，这是祖母用来增强免疫力的配方。在格林堡(Fort Greene)，现年36岁的艾丹·史力伯(Aidan Sleeper)携带了自制的30:1的漂白水，喷洒他即将碰触的每个门把手。
In Long Island City, Queens, Glenn Harris, 54, celebrated a birthday last week with 20 friends on the videoconferencing platform Zoom — “people from all over the country,” he said. At the same time, Andy Arroyo, 35, planned for the worst and spoke of the gun he’s owned since Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012.
在长岛市皇后区，现年54岁的格伦·哈里斯(Glenn Harris)在视频会议平台Zoom上和20个朋友庆祝生日——他说：“大家来自全国各地。”与此同时，35岁的安迪·阿罗约(Andy Arroyo)做好了最坏的打算，谈起了2012年飓风桑迪袭击后他拥有的那把枪。
“It may seem like an overreaction, but you really can’t predict how people will act during desperate times,” said Mr. Arroyo, who lives in Port Chester, in Westchester County, and was on the way to a potential job in the Bronx. “I need to make sure myself and my loved ones are safe.”
“这看上去也许是过度反应，但你真的无法预测人们在绝望的时候会怎么做。”阿罗约说。他目前居住在韦斯特切斯特县的切斯特港，正在去布朗克斯找工作的路上。“我需要确保自己和亲人的安全。”
Americans overall, not just in large cities, are feeling the arrival of the coronavirus in their own lives. A Civiqs/Daily Kos poll this past week asking 1,505 adults in the United States about the pandemic found that 13 percent had been infected or knew someone who had, and that 60 percent worried they would become sick.
美国人整体上——不仅是大城市——都感觉到了冠状病毒的到来。Civiqs/Daily Kos上周进行的一项民意调查向美国1505名成年人就疫情进行了询问，结果发现13％的人被感染或有认识的人被感染，还有60％的人担心他们会得病。
The coronavirus was an abstract concept to Cat Harper, 59, in the Bronx, until word arrived that members of her family’s church in Long Island City were becoming ill. Then, her sister began coughing, and it wouldn’t go away.
对于家住布朗克斯区、现年59岁的凯特·哈珀(Cat Harper)来说，冠状病毒曾是一个抽象概念，直到有消息传出在长岛市她家所在的教会有成员病倒。之后，她姐姐开始咳嗽，而且总治不好。
Her sister tested positive and was admitted to Montefiore Medical Center several days ago. “I was starting to get scared that I might not get to see her ever again,” Ms. Harper said. She called, but many days her sister’s throat was so sore she could barely speak.
她姐姐的检测呈阳性，几天前被送入蒙特菲奥雷医疗中心(Montefiore Medical Cente)。哈珀说：“我开始害怕我再也见不到她了，”她打电话过去，但是多天来，她姐姐的嗓子很痛，几乎无法说话。
“She was seeing all the other people around her, a lot of them way sicker than she was,” Ms. Harper said. “She was probably thinking that would happen to her.”
“她看到周围的人中有些比她病得更厉害，”哈珀说。“她可能在想她也会变成那样。”
Instead, she recovered and was released to quarantine at home. Other families have had much worse outcomes.
然而她康复了，随后出院回家隔离。其他家庭的结局要糟糕得多。
“There are people that are close to me, that I know, who are sick,” said Angelo Alston, 60, a retired employee of the New York City Housing Authority. “My ex-wife. My daughter. A friend of mine in Georgia that I grew up with passed away. Two other friends that I grew up with also passed.”
“我身边有些人病了，”纽约市住房管理局(New York City Housing Authority)退休雇员、60岁的安吉洛·阿尔斯顿(Angelo Alston)说。“我的前妻。我的女儿。我在佐治亚州的一个发小去世了。另外两个和我一起长大的朋友也去世了。”
He moved to Pennsylvania years ago, but was back in the city after the death of a stepson from a nonviral medical condition — a terrible loss at any time, but now, also a threat, bringing family back to the city to claim his remains.
他几年前搬到宾夕法尼亚州，但是现在回到了这个城市，此前他的继子因非病毒性疾病去世，全家为了领回继子的遗体而返回这个城市。失去亲人在任何时候这都是沉痛的损失，但现在也成了一种威胁。
“I’m trying to get out of here,” he said.
他说：“我正尝试离开这里。”
In Fort Greene, Blair Smith, 35, was already dealing with a sick relative when she ran into a neighbor with bad news about a handyman, Jorge, whom they both knew. He had just died.
在格林堡，现年35岁的布莱尔·史密斯(Blair Smith)正在照顾一个生病的亲戚时，碰到了邻居，邻居告诉他一个坏消息：他们都认识的杂务工约尔格(Jorge)刚去世了。
“Oh, my God,” she said. “It’s like watching a storm and you’re just watching for that moment when it really hits.”
“哦，我的上帝，”她说。“这就像等待暴风雨来临，而你只看到暴风雨袭来的那一瞬间。”
Dion Faria, 44, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, was more annoyed than afraid when he was forced to keep his club on Pacific Street closed. Now, with Facebook friends of friends getting sick and a viral video of bodies being loaded into a refrigerated truck outside a city hospital, he finds himself imagining a time after this one.
家住贝德福德-斯图维森特、现年44岁的狄恩·法里亚(Dion Faria)在太平洋街上的俱乐部被迫关闭，相比害怕，他更多的是感到烦恼。现在，随着Facebook上朋友的朋友病倒，尸体被装进城市医院外的冷藏卡车的视频疯传，他开始想象这场灾难过后的时光。
“Hopefully, the gates open,” he said on his stoop, “and we all go back to living.”
“希望那时，门都开了，”他站在家门前的台阶上说，“然后我们都能恢复生活。”