1 . The vaccine (疫苗) news continues to seem very encouraging. Britain started its mass vaccination effort and the U.S. isn’t far behind.
But there is still one dark cloud hanging over the vaccines that many people don’t yet understand.
The vaccines will be much less effective at preventing death and illness in 2021 if they are introduced into a population where the coronavirus is still severe—as is now the case in the U.S.
A vaccine is like a fire hose (消防龙头). A vaccine that’s 95 percent effective, as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s versions appear to be, is a powerful fire hose. But the size of a fire is still a bigger determinant of how much destruction occurs.
At the current level of infection in the U.S. (about 200,000 confirmed new infections per day), a vaccine that is 95 percent effective—distributed at the expected pace—would still leave a terrible toll (伤亡人数) in the six months after it was introduced. Almost 10 million or so Americans would catch the virus, and more than 160,000 would die.
This is far worse than the toll in a different situation where the vaccine was only 50 percent effective but the U.S. had reduced the infection rate to its level in early September (about 35,000 new daily cases). In that case, the death toll in the next six months would be kept to about 60,000.
It’s worth pausing for a moment on this comparison. If the U.S. had maintained its infection rate from September and Moderna and Pfizer had announced this fall that their vaccines were only 50 percent effective, a lot of people would have panicked.
But the reality we have is actually worse.
How could this be? No vaccine can get rid of a pandemic immediately, just as .no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage.
There is one positive way to look at this: Measures that reduce the virus’s spread—like mask-wearing, social distancing and rapid-result testing—can still have great consequences. They can save more than 100,000 lives in coming months.
1. How does the author mainly present his argument?| A．By giving definitions. | B．By categorizing facts. |
| C．By drawing comparisons. | D．By appealing to emotions. |
| A．Improving the effectiveness of the vaccines. |
| B．Producing a greater variety of vaccines. |
| C．Looking at the situation in a positive way. |
| D．Wearing masks and practicing social distancing. |
| A．The vaccines are less effective than expected. |
| B．The US have controlled the spread of the coronavirus. |
| C．The death toll in the next six months will be about 60,000. |
| D．Fewer people will die if the infection rate is lower. |
| A．The vaccine is the hope of wiping out the pandemic. |
| B．The public are optimistic about the effects of the vaccine. |
| C．The public are concerned about the high infection rate. |
| D．The distribution of vaccine will end the pandemic quickly. |
2 . “Don’t get sick in July!”
This is a common concern in teaching hospitals in the U.S. It’s driven by the academic calendar: July is when the new interns, fresh out of medical school, start work. In other words, it’s when everyone is most
So is medical experience good or bad? Well, in most cases, your doctor’s experience is very helpful, allowing her to pick up on a(n)
In a variety of situations, though, experience can backfire. The reason is simple
Doctors are usually locked onto a diagnosis early and disregard new and
Also, some experienced doctors tend to believe evidence when it supports their previous opinion while subconsciously ignoring information opposing it. Let’s say your doctor is pretty certain you have ill digestion and orders a test to
In fact, there are clearly many benefits to having a highly experienced doctor, such as technical proficiency. But there may actually be some unexpected benefits to having a less-experienced one too. She may have a more up-to-date education, boundless energy and perhaps is less vulnerable to biases, freed from the same
To safeguard yourself as a patient, one thing you should always do is
| A．innocent | B．productive | C．inexperienced | D．prohibited |
| A．slight | B．objective | C．complex | D．sustainable |
| A．media | B．tradition | C．reality | D．textbook |
| A．psychology | B．education | C．procedure | D．priority |
| A．take advantage of | B．make sense of | C．fall victim to | D．play fire with |
| A．spring | B．depart | C．benefit | D．distinguish |
| A．highly-motivated | B．well-seasoned | C．deeply-offended | D．wide-eyed |
| A．moderate | B．visible | C．conflicting | D．permanent |
| A．initial | B．tough | C．multiple | D．private |
| A．evaluate | B．operate | C．confirm | D．revise |
| A．preoccupied | B．labelled | C．associated | D．concerned |
| A．professional circle | B．thinking pattern | C．academic background | D．operating order |
| A．investigating | B．questioning | C．monitoring | D．observing |
| A．obstacle | B．trap | C．horizon | D．struggle |
| A．practice | B．accommodate | C．justify | D．remove |
3 . The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeds to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.
Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of “double effects”, a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects----a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen---is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.
Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally ill patients’ pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.
Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient medication to control their pain if that might hasten death."
George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It's like surgery, " he says. “We don't call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn't intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you're a physician, you can risk your patient's suicide as long as you don't intend their suicide."
On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.
Just three weeks before the Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the undertreatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.
The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.
Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. “Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering,” to the extent that it constitutes “systematic patient abuse.” He says medical licensing boards “must make it clear ... that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension.”
1. From the first three paragraphs, we learn that_____________| A．doctors used to increase drug dosages to control their patients' pain. |
| B．it is still illegal for doctors to help the dying end their lives. |
| C．the Supreme Court strongly opposes physician-assisted suicide. |
| D．patients have no constitutional right to commit suicide. |
| A．Doctors will be held guilty if they risk their patients' death. |
| B．Modern medicine has assisted terminally ill patients in painless recovery. |
| C．The Court ruled that high-dosage pain-relieving medication can be prescribed. |
| D．A doctor's medication is no longer justified by his intentions. |
| A．Bold. | B．Harmful. | C．Careless. | D．Desperate. |
| A．manage their patients incompetently |
| B．give patients more medicine than needed |
| C．reduce drug dosages for their patients |
| D．prolong the needless suffering of the patients |
