随着美国各州重新开放经济，一些地区的新冠肺炎病例重新开始增加。美国传染病专家安东尼·福奇近日表示，人们一直在谈论第二波疫情，但实际上美国第一波疫情尚未结束。
What’s all this talk about a “second wave” of US coronavirus cases?
当我们在谈论美国“第二波”新冠疫情时，到底在谈论什么？
In The Wall Street Journal last week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote in a piece headlined “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave'” that the nation is winning the fight against the virus.
美国副总统迈克·彭斯上周在《华尔街日报》发表了一篇题为《美国不存在“第二波”新冠疫情》的文章称，美国就要取得抗击新冠病毒斗争的胜利了。
Many public health experts, however, suggest it’s no time to celebrate. About 120,000 Americans have died from the new virus and daily counts of new cases in the US are the highest they’ve been in more than a month, driven by alarming recent increases in the South and West.
然而，许多公共卫生专家认为，现在庆祝还为时尚早。美国已有大约12万人死于新冠病毒感染，且受南部和西部地区感染病例大幅上升的影响，美国每日新增感染病例数量已达到一个多月以来的新高。
But there is at least one point of agreement: “Second wave” is probably the wrong term to describe what’s happening.
但至少有一点是毋庸置疑的：用“第二波”来形容当前的疫情很可能是错误的。
“When you have 20,000-plus infections per day, how can you talk about a second wave?” said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. “We’re in the first wave. Let’s get out of the first wave before you have a second wave.”
美国国家卫生研究院的 Clearly there was an initial infection peak in April as cases exploded in New York City. After schools and businesses were closed across the country, the rate of new cases dropped somewhat.
今年4月份，纽约市感染病例激增，美国随之出现了第一次感染高峰。随后，全美各地学校和企业关闭，新增病例数量有所下降。
But “it’s more of a plateau, or a mesa,” not the trough after a wave, said Caitlin Rivers, a disease researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.
美国约翰斯·霍普金斯大学健康安全研究中心的疾病研究员凯特琳·里弗斯说，但是“这更像是一座高原，或是一座平顶山 mesa [ˈmeɪsə]：n.台地；[地理]平顶山
Scientists generally agree the nation is still in its first wave of coronavirus infections, albeit one that’s dipping in some parts of the country while rising in others.
科学家们普遍认为，美国仍处于第一波新冠肺炎疫情之中，尽管一些地区的感染病例正在减少，但另一些地区却在增加。
“This virus is spreading around the United States and hitting different places with different intensity at different times,” said Dr. Richard Besser, chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who was acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when a pandemic flu hit the US in 2009.
罗伯特·伍德·约翰逊基金会首席执行官理查德·贝瑟博士说：“新冠病毒正在美国蔓延，并在不同的时间以不同的强度袭击不同的地方。” 2009年 Dr. Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan flu expert, echoed that sentiment.
密歇根大学流感专家阿诺德·蒙托博士也表达了同样的观点。
“What I would call this is continued transmission with flare-ups,” he said.
他说：“我认为这是伴有突发情况的持续传播。”
Flu seasons sometimes feature a second wave of infections. But in those cases, the second wave is a distinct new surge in cases from a strain of flu that is different than the strain that caused earlier illnesses.
流感季节有时会出现第二波感染。但在这些病例中，引发第二波病例激增的流感毒株与引起第一波流感的毒株不同。
strain[streɪn]：n.菌株
That’s not the case in the coronavirus epidemic.
新冠肺炎疫情不是这样的情况。
Monto doesn’t think “second wave” really describes what’s happening now, calling it “totally semantics.”
蒙托不认为“第二波”真正描述了现在的疫情，称之为“完全语义化”。
Some worry a large wave of coronavirus might occur this fall or winter — after schools reopen, the weather turns colder and less humid, and people huddle inside more. That would follow seasonal patterns seen with flu and other respiratory viruses.
一些人担心，美国今年秋天或冬天学校开学后，天气变得更冷，也不那么潮湿了，人们更多地呆在室内，可能会出现一波严重的新冠疫情。这将类似于流感和其他呼吸道病毒的季节性模式。
But the new coronavirus so far has been spreading more episodically and sporadically than flu, and it may not follow the same playbook.
但与流感相比，到目前为止新冠病毒的传播更具偶然性和散发性，而且它可能不会遵循同样的规律。
“It’s very difficult to make a prediction,” Rivers said. “We don’t know the degree to which this virus is seasonal, if at all.”
里弗斯说：“人们很难做出预测。就算是，我们也不知道这种病毒在多大程度上是季节性的。”
【全球疫情最新数据】
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