被遗忘的“新冠孤儿”

近日，《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）刊文称，由于疫情，有大约20万美国儿童沦为“孤儿”。文章称，在18岁以下的孤儿中，每12人就有1人是因为疫情而失去监护人的。

无注释原文：

America’s Pandemic Orphans Are Slipping Through the Cracks

The Atlantic

APRIL 7, 2022

Losing a parent may be one of the most destabilizing events of the human experience. Orphans are at increased risk of substance abuse, dropping out of school, and poverty. They are almost twice as likely as non-orphans to die by suicide, and they remain more susceptible to almost every major cause of death for the rest of their life.

Because of the pandemic, some 200,000 American children now face these stark odds. Even after two years that have inured the country to the carnage of the coronavirus, the scope of the loss is so staggering that it can be hard to comprehend: Caregiver loss during the pandemic is now responsible for one out of every 12 orphans under the age of 18, and in every public school in the United States, on average two children have lost a caregiver to the pandemic. COVID-19 case counts rise and fall, but “orphanhood doesn’t come and go. It is a steadily rising slope, and the summit is still out of sight,” Susan Hillis, a co-chair of the Global Reference Group on Children Affected by COVID-19, told me. “It’s not like you’re an orphan today and then you’re recovered in two weeks.”

Even if orphans face an immense set of challenges, their fate isn’t sealed: For decades, researchers have known that programs that tap into children’s extraordinary resilience can help orphans overcome the unthinkable, especially if kids get help in the immediate aftermath of a death. And yet, so far, the plight of pandemic orphans has not proved to be much of a pressing issue in the United States. No law or executive order has provided any resources specifically for pandemic orphans, even as Congress and the White House have spent trillions of dollars to help Americans get through this crisis. And while a memorandum issued by President Joe Biden yesterday promises that the administration will develop a plan for orphans, it’s poised to be too little, too late. “It really doesn’t outline any plan or commitment,” Rachel Kidman, a social epidemiologist at Stony Brook University, told me.

And the inaction goes deeper than that: With a few exceptions, even the parts of the country most inclined toward action don’t seem to be doing much to help these kids. “No one has even established a system for figuring out who these children are,” Hillis said. The pandemic’s orphanhood crisis matters most for orphans, but it also matters for the rest of us. If America can’t do anything to help the children most profoundly affected by COVID, what hope is there to make any sort of long-lasting changes as we try to leave the pandemic behind?

A 10-year-old in New York City who lost her father in the first wave of early 2020. Four children in Boynton Beach, Florida, left behind by a single mother who died 48 hours after being taken to the hospital. A 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl from McAlester, Oklahoma, who lost their mother to COVID just two and a half years after losing their father to liver failure. With COVID deaths now nearing 1 million, all types of American children have been orphaned by the pandemic. But the well-documented racial and ethnic disparities in the virus’s toll are further compounded in caregiver loss. For example, the COVID death rate for Hispanic Americans is just slightly higher than that for white Americans, but Hispanic caregiver loss is more than double that of white Americans. Similar trends hold for other groups, according to an analysis by Dan Treglia, a social-policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert contributor at the COVID Collaborative, a coalition of experts in health, education, and economics.

Because of how easily COVID can spread within a household, some kids have lost both parents; others may have lost a grandparent who was a primary caregiver. Almost a quarter of American children live with one parent and no other adults, meaning it can take only a single death for catastrophic loss to occur. Because these children are disproportionately low-income and nonwhite, they already face systemic barriers that amplify the fallout of orphanhood—and many families are unprepared from the start. Unlike some other diseases that leave children orphaned, COVID strikes quickly. It’s more like a car crash than cancer. With COVID, “somebody drops dead in weeks,” Hillis said. It’s so sudden that no one has even thought about, “Oh my goodness, who’s gonna take care of the kids?”

注：考虑到篇幅长度，仅节选部分原文进行学习。中文文本为机器翻译及环球时报中文报道编译，并非一一对应，仅供参考。

- ◆ -

含注释全文：

America’s Pandemic Orphans Are Slipping Through the Cracks

The Atlantic

APRIL 7, 2022

Losing a parent may be one of the most destabilizing events of the human experience. Orphans are at increased risk of substance abuse, dropping out of school, and poverty. They are almost twice as likely as non-orphans to die by suicide, and they remain more susceptible to almost every major cause of death for the rest of their life.

失去父亲或母亲可能是人类经历中最令人不安的事件之一。在孤儿中，吸毒、辍学和陷入贫困的风险增加。他们死于自杀的可能性几乎是非孤儿的两倍，而且他们在一生中更容易受到几乎所有主要死亡原因的影响。

slip through the net / slip through the cracks 表示“漏网；被漏掉”，英文解释为“to escape a punishment or be missed by a system that should deal with or protect you”举个🌰：

There are laws to protect the mentally ill, but now and then someone does slip through the net.

虽然有保护精神病患者的法律，可是时不时会有人没有被照顾到。

orphan /ˈɔː.fən/ 作动词，表示“使成为孤儿”，作名词，表示“孤儿”，英文解释为“a child whose parents are dead”举个🌰：

The civil war is making orphans of many children.

内战正在使许多孩子成为孤儿。

表示“滥用毒品，滥用药物”，英文解释为“the use of a drug to get pleasure, or to improve a person's performance of an activity, or because a person cannot stop using it”

susceptible /səˈseptəbl/ 表示“易受影响（或伤害等）；敏感；过敏”，英文解释为“very likely to be influenced, harmed or affected by sb/sth”举个🌰：

Some of these plants are more susceptible to frost damage than others.

这些植物中有一些较其他的易受霜冻危害。

Because of the pandemic, some 200,000 American children now face these stark odds. Even after two years that have inured the country to the carnage of the coronavirus, the scope of the loss is so staggering that it can be hard to comprehend: Caregiver loss during the pandemic is now responsible for one out of every 12 orphans under the age of 18, and in every public school in the United States, on average two children have lost a caregiver to the pandemic. COVID-19 case counts rise and fall, but “orphanhood doesn’t come and go. It is a steadily rising slope, and the summit is still out of sight,” Susan Hillis, a co-chair of the Global Reference Group on Children Affected by COVID-19, told me. “It’s not like you’re an orphan today and then you’re recovered in two weeks.”

由于疫情，大约20万美国儿童现在面临着这些严峻的困难。即使两年时间让这个国家可以坦然面对新冠病毒的屠戮，但这样的损失程度依然触目惊心、难以接受：现在每12个18岁以下的孤儿中就有一个是在疫情中失去监护人的，而在美国的每所公立学校中，平均就有两个孩子因疫情而失去了一名监护人。新冠确诊病例数有升有降，但“孤儿身份并不是时有时无的。这是一个稳步增加的坡度，峰值仍然还不知道在哪。”全球受新冠影响儿童评估小组（Global Reference Group on Children Affected by COVID-19）联合主席苏珊·希利斯（Susan Hillis）告诉我，“这不是说你今天沦为孤儿，两周后就能恢复的事了。”

1）表示“（对比）明显的，鲜明的”，英文解释为“If two things are in stark contrast to one another, they are very different from each other in a way that is very obvious.”如：stark differences 鲜明的区别，举个🌰：

The good weather was in stark contrast to the storms of previous weeks.

这时的好天气和前几个星期的暴风雨形成鲜明的对比。

2）表示“严酷的；赤裸裸的；真实而无法回避的”，英文解释为“unpleasant; real, and impossible to avoid”。

表示“不利条件；掣肘的事情；逆境”，英文解释为“something that makes it seem impossible to do or achieve sth”举个🌰：

They secured a victory in the face of overwhelming odds.

尽管情况非常不利，他们仍得到了胜利。

📍奥巴马卸任后首次重返白宫 和拜登互开玩笑文中提到，奥巴马讲话：“Despite great odds, Joe and I were determined, because we met too many people on the campaign trail who shared their stories, and our own families had been touched by illness.”“尽管困难重重，乔和我还是下定决心，因为我们在竞选路上遇到了太多分享他们故事的人，我们自己的家庭也被疾病所影响。”

📍great odds 表示“困难重重，困难诸多”，相当于a lot of difficulties，举个🌰：

We believe that, despite great odds, we can achieve a peaceful settlement.

我们相信，尽管困难重重，我们还是能够实现和平解决。

inure sb to sth表示“使（某人）习惯于（令人不快的事物）”，英文解释为“If you become inured to something unpleasant, you become familiar with it and able to accept and bear it.”举个🌰：

After spending some time on the island they became inured to the hardships.

在岛上呆了一段时间后，他们适应了那儿的艰苦生活。

carnage /ˈkɑː.nɪdʒ/表示“（尤指战争中的）大屠杀，残杀”，英文解释为“when a lot of people are killed and injured, especially in a war”，如：a scene of terrible carnage 可怕的大屠杀场面。

表示“令人震惊的”，英文解释为“Something that is staggering is very surprising.”如：a staggering $20 million in short- and long-term debt 令人震惊的两千万美元的短长期债务。

🎬电影《迷失东京》（Lost in Translation）中的台词提到：- Just staggering, unbearable pain. - Ooh, that's too bad. - 疼得难以忍受 - 真不走运。

🎬电影《电锯惊魂6》（Saw VI）中的台词提到：and the subsequent cost to you will be staggering. 代价将会非常大/惊人。

表示“来来去去；时有时无；忽隐忽现”，英文解释为“to exist or happen somewhere for a short time and then go away”举个🌰：

The feeling of nausea comes and goes.

恶心的感觉一阵儿一阵儿的。

Even if orphans face an immense set of challenges, their fate isn’t sealed: For decades, researchers have known that programs that tap into children’s extraordinary resilience can help orphans overcome the unthinkable, especially if kids get help in the immediate aftermath of a death. And yet, so far, the plight of pandemic orphans has not proved to be much of a pressing issue in the United States. No law or executive order has provided any resources specifically for pandemic orphans, even as Congress and the White House have spent trillions of dollars to help Americans get through this crisis. And while a memorandum issued by President Joe Biden yesterday promises that the administration will develop a plan for orphans, it’s poised to be too little, too late. “It really doesn’t outline any plan or commitment,” Rachel Kidman, a social epidemiologist at Stony Brook University, told me.

即使孤儿们面临着一系列巨大的挑战，他们的命运也不是就成了定局：几十年来，研究人员已经知道，利用儿童非凡的适应力的项目可以帮助孤儿克服不可想象的情况，特别是如果孩子在成为孤儿后立即得到帮助。然而，到目前为止，新冠疫情下孤儿的困境在美国还没有被证明是一个紧迫的问题。没有任何法律或行政命令专门为疫情孤儿提供任何资源，即使国会和白宫已经花费了数万亿美元来帮助美国人渡过这场危机。虽然乔·拜登总统（President Joe Biden）昨天发布的一份备忘录承诺政府将为孤儿制定一个计划，但它还是太少，太晚了。石溪大学（Stony Brook University）的社会流行病学家雷切尔·基德曼（Rachel Kidman）告诉我，“它确实没有提出任何计划或承诺。”

immense /ɪˈmɛns/表示“极大的；巨大的；无限的”，英文解释为“extremely large or great in size or degree”，如：immense wealth/value 巨大的财富/价值，an immense amount of work  to be done 大量工作要做。

表示“注定（或决定）（某人）的命运”，英文解释为“If an action, event, or situation seals your fate, nothing can stop some unpleasant thing happening to you.”举个🌰：

From the moment she stepped into the busy road her fate was sealed.

在她走上那条繁忙的道路时，她的命运就注定了。

表示“使用…以获得好结果”，英文解释为“to manage to use something in a way that brings good results”举个🌰：

If only we could tap into all that energy and creativity.

如果我们能够用上那些精力和创意就好了。

resilience /rɪˈzɪliəns/ 表示“快速恢复的能力；适应力”，英文解释为“the ability of people or things to feel better quickly after sth unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc.”

表示“（战争、事故、不快事情的）后果，创伤；（不快事件）结束后的一个时期”，英文解释为“The aftermath of an important event, especially a harmful one, is the situation that results from it.”举个🌰：

A lot of rebuilding took place in the aftermath of the war.

战后进行了大量的重建工作。

表示“困境，窘境”，英文解释为“an unpleasant condition, especially a serious, sad, or difficult one”，如：the plight of the poor/homeless 穷人/无家可归者的困难处境。

补充：

📍plight作动词，plight one‘s troth表示“答应结婚，订婚；结婚”（to promise to marry someone）。

🎬电影《笔下求生》（Stranger Than Fiction）中的台词提到：lts desperate attempts to escape... only underscore the hopelessness of its plight. 它绝望的挣扎 只能强调它无望的处境。

memorandum /ˌmem.əˈræn.dəm/ 1）表示“协议备忘录”，英文解释为“an informal legal agreement”举个🌰：

The three countries have signed a memorandum pledging to work together.

这3个国家签署了一份协议备忘录，承诺会进行合作。

2）表示“备忘录；备忘便条（同 memo）”，英文解释为“a memo ”

表示“平衡的；作好准备的，摆好姿势的”，英文解释为“If an object or a part of your body is poised, it is completely still but ready to move at any moment.”举个🌰：

The cup was poised on the edge of the chair.

杯子放在椅子边上（随时可能掉下来）。

My pencil was poised over the page, ready to take down her words.

我的铅笔对准了本子，随时准备记下她的话。

表示“略述，概括”，英文解释为“to give the main facts about something”举个🌰：

At the interview she outlined what I would be doing.

面试时她简要介绍了一下我将要从事的工作。

And the inaction goes deeper than that: With a few exceptions, even the parts of the country most inclined toward action don’t seem to be doing much to help these kids. “No one has even established a system for figuring out who these children are,” Hillis said. The pandemic’s orphanhood crisis matters most for orphans, but it also matters for the rest of us. If America can’t do anything to help the children most profoundly affected by COVID, what hope is there to make any sort of long-lasting changes as we try to leave the pandemic behind?

而无所作为的情况远不止于此：除了少数例外，即使是该国最有意采取行动的地区，似乎也没有采取什么措施来帮助这些孩子。希利斯说：“甚至没有人建立一个系统来弄清这些孩子是谁。”这场疫情的孤儿危机对孤儿来说最为重要，但对我们其他人也很重要。如果美国不能做任何事情来帮助受新冠影响最深的儿童，那么当我们试图将疫情抛在身后时，还有什么希望能做出任何形式的长期改变？

表示“无行动，不作为”，英文解释为“failure to do anything that might provide a solution to a problem”举个🌰：

The West's inaction has put millions of people at risk of starvation.

西方世界不采取行动，导致数以百万计的人面临饥饿的威胁。

表示“倾向于…的；有……意向”，英文解释为“likely or wanting to do something”举个🌰：

He is inclined to be lazy.

他喜欢偷懒。

A 10-year-old in New York City who lost her father in the first wave of early 2020. Four children in Boynton Beach, Florida, left behind by a single mother who died 48 hours after being taken to the hospital. A 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl from McAlester, Oklahoma, who lost their mother to COVID just two and a half years after losing their father to liver failure.

纽约市的一名10岁儿童在2020年初的第一波疫情中失去了她的父亲。佛罗里达州（Florida）博因顿海滩（Boynton Beach）的一位单亲妈妈在被送往医院48小时后死亡，留下了四个孩子。来自俄克拉荷马州（Oklahoma）麦卡莱斯特（McAlester）的一个6岁男孩和一个8岁女孩，他们在父亲因肝衰竭离开后仅两年半就因新冠失去了母亲。

With COVID deaths now nearing 1 million, all types of American children have been orphaned by the pandemic. But the well-documented racial and ethnic disparities in the virus’s toll are further compounded in caregiver loss. For example, the COVID death rate for Hispanic Americans is just slightly higher than that for white Americans, but Hispanic caregiver loss is more than double that of white Americans. Similar trends hold for other groups, according to an analysis by Dan Treglia, a social-policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert contributor at the COVID Collaborative, a coalition of experts in health, education, and economics.

随着新冠死亡人数现已接近100万，形形色色的美国儿童都因这一场疫情而成为孤儿。但是，因新冠而失去监护人的数量上，显而易见的种族和民族差异进一步加剧。例如，西班牙裔美国人的新冠死亡率仅比美国白人略高，但西班牙裔监护人的死亡数是美国白人监护人死亡数的两倍多。根据宾夕法尼亚大学（University of Pennsylvania）的社会政策研究员和新冠合作组织（一个由健康、教育和经济专家组成的联盟）的专家撰稿人丹·特雷利亚（Dan Treglia）的分析，其他群体也有类似的趋势。

表示“有大量文件记载的；书面证据充分的；显而易见的”，英文解释为“having been often recorded”举个🌰：

The medicinal value of garlic is well documented.

有大量文献记载了大蒜的药用价值。

disparity /dɪˈspærɪtɪ/表示“（尤指不公正的）不同，差异”，英文解释为“a difference between two or more things, especially an unfair one”，如：a disparity between the rates of pay for men and women 男性与女性在工资水平上的差异。

相反的：

📍parity表示“（尤指薪金、权利或权力的）相同，相等，同等”，英文解释为“the state of being equal, especially having equal pay, rights, or power”举个🌰：

Women workers are demanding parity with their male colleagues.

女职工在要求与男同事享有同等的待遇。

还可以指两个不同国家的货币单位的“平价，等价”(equality between the units of money from two diffe-rent countries）；

📍2019年「妇女节」联合国秘书长发表讲话时，就提到：

📍在2018年政府工作报告中，居民收入增长和经济增长基本同步；就处理为：Basic parity in personal income growth and economic growth.

1）表示“伤亡；损失；破坏”，英文解释为“suffering, deaths, or damage”，一般指“（死亡、事故或灾难的）总数”举个🌰：

Independent sources say that the death toll from the earthquake runs into thousands.

独立消息人士称地震中的伤亡人数达到数千人。

2）表示“(道路或桥梁）收费；通行费”，英文解释为“A toll road or toll bridge is a road or bridge that you have to pay to use.”举个🌰：

Most people who drive the toll roads don't use them every day.

大部分开车上收费公路的人不是每天都走公路。

Prepaid tolls only/ Pay toll

表示“使加重，使加剧，使恶化”，英文解释为“to make a problem or difficult situation worse”举个🌰：

Her terror was compounded by the feeling that she was being watched.

她有种被人监视的感觉，这加剧了她的恐惧感。

🎬电影《盗梦空间》（Inception）中的台词提到：And when you enter a dream within that dream, the effect is compounded. 当你进入梦中梦，效果会更强。

Hispanic /hɪˈspæn.ɪk/ 表示“西班牙（人）的；西班牙语言（文化）的；（尤指拉丁美洲）西班牙语国家的”，英文解释为“connected with Spain or Spanish-speaking countries, especially those countries in Latin America”

coalition /ˌkəʊəˈlɪʃən/ 表示“（不同政党或不同群体的人为特定目标而暂时形成的）联盟，同盟，联合体”，英文解释为“the joining together of different political parties or groups for a particular purpose, usually for a limited time, or a government that is formed in this way”。

Because of how easily COVID can spread within a household, some kids have lost both parents; others may have lost a grandparent who was a primary caregiver. Almost a quarter of American children live with one parent and no other adults, meaning it can take only a single death for catastrophic loss to occur. Because these children are disproportionately low-income and nonwhite, they already face systemic barriers that amplify the fallout of orphanhood—and many families are unprepared from the start. Unlike some other diseases that leave children orphaned, COVID strikes quickly. It’s more like a car crash than cancer. With COVID, “somebody drops dead in weeks,” Hillis said. It’s so sudden that no one has even thought about, “Oh my goodness, who’s gonna take care of the kids?”

由于新冠很容易在家庭中传播，部分孩子已经失去了双亲；另一些孩子可能已经失去了作为主要照顾者的祖父母。几乎四分之一的美国儿童与父母一方生活在一起，没有其他成年人，这意味着只需要一次死亡就会发生灾难性的损失。由于这些儿童低收入和非白人比例过高，他们已经面临着沦为孤儿后果的系统性障碍，而且许多家庭从一开始就没有准备好。与其他一些使儿童成为孤儿的疾病不同，新冠病毒的侵袭很快。它更像是一场车祸，而不是癌症。对于新冠，“有人在几周内就会死亡，”希利斯说。它是如此突然，以至于没有人想过，“哦，我的天哪，谁来照顾这些孩子？”

表示“不成比例地；不相称地；太大（或太小）地”，英文解释为“too large or too small when compared with sth else”举个🌰：

The lower-paid spend a disproportionately large amount of their earnings on food.

低工资者将收入花在食物上的比例很大。

表示“增强，放大”，英文解释为“To amplify something means to increase its strength or intensity.”举个🌰：

These stories only amplified her fears.

这些故事徒增了她的恐惧感。

表示“不良影响，恶果”，英文解释为“the unpleasant results or effects of an action or event”举个🌰：

The political fallout of the revelations has been immense.

这些被曝光事件产生的负面政治影响是巨大的。

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