据约翰·霍普金斯大学冠状病毒研究中心统计，截至周五，美国确诊人数已超过50万。
随着确诊和死亡人数不断攀升，越来越多的美国媒体都在反思：美国是如何浪费掉宝贵的抗疫时间、一步步走到眼下这种困难境地的。
4月4日，《华盛顿邮报》推出了一篇深度调查文章，全景式回顾了美国在冠状病毒危机最初70天的失败经历和深层原因。
By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president — and the coronavirus the enemy — the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
当特朗普宣布自己是战时总统并称新冠病毒是美国敌人的时候，美国正面临这样的可怕前景：美国死于新冠病毒的人数最终可能超过美国在朝鲜战争、越南战争、阿富汗战争和伊拉克战争中死亡人数的总和。
The country has adopted an array of wartime measures never employed collectively in U.S. history — banning incoming travelers from two continents, bringing commerce to a near-halt, enlisting industry to make emergency medical gear, and confining 230 million Americans to their homes in a desperate bid to survive an attack by an unseen adversary.
美国已经采取了一系列历史上从未同时颁布的战时措施——禁止来自两大洲的外国旅客入境，基本停止贸易活动，招募其他行业制造紧急医疗设备，将2.3亿美国人困在自己家中，以期扛住一个看不见的对手的攻击。
Despite these and other extreme steps, the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation.
尽管采取了这样那样的极端措施，美国可能还是会在历史上留下这样一笔：一个本该为抗击流行病做好最充分的准备的国家，最终却被新冠病毒击败，遭遇灾难性打击，死亡人数超过其他任何国家。
It did not have to happen this way. Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus.
事情本不该如此。尽管没有做好充分的准备，但与几十个最终在抵御病毒方面表现得好得多的国家相比，美国拥有更多的专业知识、资源、计划和流行病学经验。
The failure has echoes of the period leading up to 9/11: Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck.
这一失败让人想起了“9·11事件”发生前的一切：包括政府最高层在内的各方都发出了警告，但时任美国总统对这些警告充耳不闻，直到敌人发动攻击。
12月31日
The CDC learned of a cluster of cases in China on Dec. 31 and began developing reports for HHS on Jan. 1.
美国疾病控制与预防中心于12月31日获悉中国出现大量新冠病毒病例，并于1月1日开始为美国卫生与公众服务部编写报告。
1月3日
The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.
1月3日，特朗普政府收到关于新冠病毒在中国暴发的第一个正式通知。几天内，美国情报机构首次在总统每日简报中就这种冠状病毒威胁的严重性向总统发出警报，之后又发出了多次警报。
1月8日
The CDC had issued its first public alert about the coronavirus Jan. 8, and by the 17th was monitoring major airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, where large numbers of passengers arrived each day from China.
美国疾病控制与预防中心1月8日首次发布有关新冠病毒的公开警报，并于17日开始监测洛杉矶、旧金山和纽约的主要机场，这些机场每天都要接待大量来自中国的旅客。
In other ways, though, the situation was already spinning out of control, with multiplying cases in Seattle, intransigence by the Chinese, mounting questions from the public, and nothing in place to stop infected travelers from arriving from abroad.
然而，在其他方面，情况已经失控，西雅图的病例成倍增加，公众提出的问题越来越多，没有任何措施阻止来自境外的受感染旅客。
1月18日
Despite the flurry of activity at lower levels of his administration, Trump was not substantially briefed by health officials about the coronavirus until Jan.18, when, while spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, he tooka call from Azar.
尽管特朗普政府较低级别的官员已经开始一系列准备工作，但直到1月18日才有卫生官员向总统详细汇报有关新冠病毒暴发的情况，当时特朗普正在海湖庄园度周末，卫生部长阿扎尔向他做了电话汇报。
At the time, Trump was in the throes of an impeachment battle over his alleged attempt to coerce political favors from the leader of Ukraine. Acquittal seemed certain by the GOP-controlled Senate, but Trump was preoccupiedwith the trial, calling lawmakers late at night to rant, and making lists of perceived enemies he would seek to punish when the case against him concluded.
当时，特朗普深陷弹劾战泥潭，他被指试图从乌克兰领导人那里获得政治好处。共和党掌控的参议院似乎肯定会判他无罪，但特朗普当时满脑子都是这场官司，深夜还打电话给几位议员吵吵嚷嚷，并且列了几份黑名单准备秋后算账。
Azar told several associates that the president believed he was “alarmist” and Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention to focus on the issue, even asking one confidant for advice.
阿扎尔告诉几名助手，总统认为他“危言耸听”，阿扎尔则努力让特朗普关注病毒暴发的问题，甚至为此向一名密友征求意见。
1月21日
On Jan. 21, a Seattle man who had recently traveled to Wuhan tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the first known infection on U.S. soil.
1月21日，一名最近去过武汉的西雅图男子新冠病毒检测呈阳性，成为美国本土第一例已知感染病例。
1月22日
On Jan. 22, Trump received his first question about the coronavirus in an interview on CNBC while in Davos. Asked whether he was worried about a potential pandemic, Trump said, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. ”
1月22日，特朗普在达沃斯接受CNBC采访时第一次被问及新冠病毒。当被问及他是否担心潜在的流行病时，特朗普说：“不担心，一点儿都不担心。我们已经完全控制住了。”
1月29日
In Washington, then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Pottinger began convening meetings at the White House with senior officials from HHS, the CDC and the State Department.
在华盛顿，时任白宫代理幕僚长米克·马尔瓦尼和副国安顾问波廷格开始在白宫召集卫生与公众服务部、疾控中心和国务院的高级官员开会。
The task force was formally announced on Jan. 29.
工作组于1月29日正式成立。
1月31日
That move by Beijing finally prompted a commensurate action by the Trump administration. On Jan. 31, Azar announced restrictions barring any non-U.S. citizen who had been in China during the preceding two weeks from entering the United States.
中国的防疫举措终于促使特朗普政府采取相应的行动。1月31日，阿扎尔宣布了限制措施，禁止过去两周在中国停留的非美国公民进入美国。
Trump has, with some justification, pointed to the China-related restriction as evidence that he had responded aggressively and early to the outbreak. It was among the few intervention options throughout the crisis that played to the instincts of the president, who often seems fixated on erecting borders and keeping foreigners out of the country.
特朗普将这种限制措施作为证据，表明他在疫情暴发之初就做出了积极回应，这也不是毫无道理。这是整个危机期间符合特朗普本能的、为数不多的干预选择之一。他似乎总是专注于划定边界，将外国人挡在国门之外【编者注：邮报在这里暗讽特朗普总希望排斥移民和难民】。
2月初
In late January and early February, leaders at HHS sent two letters to the White House Office of Management and Budget asking to use its transfer authority to shift $136 million of department funds into pools that could be tapped for combating the coronavirus. Azar and his aides also began raising the need for a multibillion-dollar supplemental budget request to send to Congress.
1月底和2月初，卫生与公众服务部的负责人向白宫管理和预算办公室发出了两封信函，要求利用其权力将该部1.36亿美元的资金转移到可用于抗击新冠病毒的资金池中。阿扎尔和他的助手们也开始向国会提出一项数十亿美元的追加预算申请。
Yet White House budget hawks argued that appropriating too much money at once when there were only a few U.S. cases would be viewed as alarmist.
然而，白宫预算鹰派人士认为，在美国只有少数几个感染病例的情况下一次性拨款太多，会被视为危言耸听。
3月6日
On March 6, Trump toured the facilities at the CDC wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat. He boasted that the CDC tests were nearly perfect and that “anybody who wants a test will get a test,” a promise that nearly a month later remains unmet.
3月6日，特朗普戴着一顶写有“让美国保持伟大”【注：特朗普的竞选口号】的红色帽子视察了美国疾病预防控制中心，查看了那里的设施。他吹嘘说疾控中心的测试近乎完美，“任何想要测试的人都会得到测试”，可这一承诺在近一个月后仍未兑现。
3月9日
The common flu kills tens of thousands each year and “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” he tweeted March 9. A day later, he pledged that the virus would “go away. Just stay calm.”
3月9日，特朗普在推特上写道，普通流感每年导致数万人死亡，“没有什么会关停，生活在继续，经济在发展”。一天后，他承诺病毒将会“消失，大家只需要保持冷静”。
Two days later, Trump finally ordered the halt to incoming travel from Europe that his deputy national security adviser had been advocating for weeks. But Trump botched the Oval Office announcement so badly that White House officials spent days trying to correct erroneous statements that triggered a stampede by U.S. citizens overseas to get home.
两天后，特朗普终于下令禁止来自欧洲的入境旅行，他的国家安全顾问数周前就已提议他这么做。但是特朗普又把总统声明搞砸了，以致白宫官员花了几天时间努力纠正总统的错误表述，那些错误言论导致海外的美国公民大量返美。
3月底
In late March, the administration ordered 10,000 ventilators — far short of what public health officials and governors said was needed. And many will not arrive until the summer or fall, when models expect the pandemic to be receding.
3月底，政府订购了1万台呼吸机——这远远满足不了公共卫生官员和州长们所说的需求。其中很大一部分要到夏季或秋季才能交货，根据流行病学预测模型，那时新冠病毒大流行可能将消退。
3月31日
“It’s absolutely critical for the American people to follow the guidelines for the next 30 days,” he said at his March 31 news conference. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
3月31日，他终于在新闻发布会上说：“未来30天，美国人民一定要遵守这些指导方针，这是极其重要的。这是生死攸关的事情。”
The coronavirus may be the first crisis Trump has faced in office where the facts — the thousands of mounting deaths and infections — are so devastatingly evident that they defy these tactics.
新冠疫情可能是特朗普在任职期间面临的第一场真正的危机。这场危机中，显而易见的事实是，死亡人数和感染人数早已成千上万，并且还在上升——事实如此残酷，以至于种种措施似都失效了。
After months of dismissing the severity of the coronavirus, resisting calls for austere measures to contain it, and recasting himself as a wartime president, Trump seemed finally to succumb to the coronavirus reality. In a meeting with a Republican ally in the Oval Office last month, the president said his campaign no longer mattered because his reelection would hinge on his coronavirus response.
过去数月，特朗普一直淡化新冠病毒的严重性，抵制要求采取严厉措施加以遏制的呼吁，并给自己加冕为战时总统，现在他似乎终于屈服于新冠病毒肆虐的现实。总统上个月在椭圆形办公室与共和党伙伴会面时说，他的竞选不再重要，因为他的连任将取决于他如何应对这场新冠危机。
（所给翻译为方便理解原文的参考翻译）
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