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1

0:00/1:34

Despite a long lull that convinced even the most cautious Americans to return to “normal,” the virus continued to circulate — and evolve. Now, due to new variants and the natural ebbing of immunity, it’s starting to spread more widely.

번역 보기
lull
소강상태
ebbing
약화 (서서히 약화됨)

The good news is that almost everyone has some form of immune protection, and that’s enough to keep serious illness at bay. (The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID, though rising, is currently level with previous low points during the pandemic.) The risk of long COVID is also lower today than ever before.

번역 보기
at bay
더이상 달아날 수 없게 된, 궁지에 몰린
hospitalize
입원시키다

2

0:00/1:34

So if the threat of COVID has largely receded — and if these sorts of waves will keep coming for the foreseeable future — do we still need to rearrange our lives when they do? Or can we finally treat COVID the way we treat other bugs like the flu?

번역 보기
recede
물러나다, 약해지다
foreseeable
예측(예견)할 수 있는

Probably the biggest factor behind the current wave is new variants. The most prevalent among them is EG.5 (nickname: Eris). Eris has one notable mutation that helps it evade antibodies, which probably explains how it became dominant worldwide. But the variant doesn’t have any new capacities in terms of contagiousness, symptoms or severity, so the World Health Organization says that “the public health risk posed by EG.5 is evaluated as low at the global level.”

번역 보기
prevalent
일반적인, 널리 퍼져있는
mutation
돌연변이, 변형
antibody
항체
contagiousness
전염성
severity
심각성

3

0:00/1:34

Far less prevalent — but potentially more irksome — is BA.2.86 (nickname: Pirola). Unlike Eris, Pirola boasts so many mutations (about 35) that it represents “an evolutionary jump similar in size” to the first Omicron variant, according to virologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

번역 보기
irksome
짜증나는, 귀찮은
virologist
바이러스학자

Initially, researchers feared that vaccines and previous infections wouldn’t do much to shield people from Pirola. But three studies released this week show that “the variant does not penetrate cells very well” and that it doesn’t evade the immune system as much as expected.

번역 보기
penetrate
뚫고 들어가다, 관통하다

4

0:00/1:34

The era of mask mandates and vaccine requirements has long since ended. So personal risk tolerance and responsibility has been (and will continue to be) key. If you don’t want to catch COVID or pass it to someone else, you know what to do: Vaccinate, mask, test and isolate if positive.

번역 보기
mandate
지시 명령
isolate
격리하다, 고립시키다

For now, COVID remains riskier than influenza; a report published in JAMA in April found that COVID still killed hospitalized patients nearly twice as often as the flu. But those numbers are on track to become roughly equivalent over the next year or so, to the point where both viruses may be responsible for fewer than 50,000 annual U.S. deaths.

번역 보기
equivalent
동등한, 맞먹는

5

0:00/1:34

“When you are sick, don’t soldier through it; rest, and try not to spread it,” Slate’s Shannon Palus recently explained. “It doesn’t have to change your whole life. But with a little attention, what we went through with COVID might apply, just a little bit, to everything else.”

번역 보기
soldier through
어려움이나 역경에도 힘든 일을 계속하다