President Trump’s Prime-Time Pandemic
白宮疫情記者會 川普的黃金時段秀
By James Poniewozik

“I’ve gotten to like this room,” President Donald Trump said March 23 in the White House briefing room.
美國總統川普3月23日在白宮新聞簡報室裡說：「我開始愛上這個房間了。」

If the walls had ears, they’d have been surprised to hear it. Until recently, the Trump administration had all but done away with formal press briefings, and the president preferred to talk to reporters amid the helpful din of a helicopter or in a Fox News studio.
牆若有耳，聽了會很驚訝。川普政府直到最近幾乎完全不開正式簡報記者會，總統更喜歡在直升機的嘈雜聲中，或在福斯新聞的攝影棚內跟記者交談。

But the briefing room has one amenity that Trump, suddenly without rallies and travel appearances amid a pandemic, cannot resist: a camera.
然而對因疫情而頓失參與群眾聚會與旅行露臉機會的川普而言，簡報室裡有一樣他無法抗拒的東西：攝影機。

Trump became a prime-time star through TV, a political figure through TV and a president through TV. But he has not, as president, had what he had with NBC’s “The Apprentice”: a regular TV show in which he plays an executive in control.
川普透過電視成為黃金時段的明星，透過電視成為政治人物，透過電視成為總統，然而身為總統，他並沒有像他扮演高管的國家廣播公司節目「誰是接班人」那樣，擁有一個固定播出的電視秀。

Now, the coronavirus briefings have given him a new, live and unfiltered daily platform before a captive national audience. True to his résumé, he has conducted them as a kind of reality TV, or rather, create-your-own-reality TV.
現在，有關冠狀病毒的簡報會提供他一個每天在跑不掉的全國觀眾面前，全新、現場直播且未經過濾的表演舞台。川普果然拿出看家本領，把這些節目當成一種實境秀來主持，或者更確切地說，當成創造個人專屬實境的電視秀。

In this reality – often subject to later fact-checking by the press or to backpedaling by staff – help and needed equipment are always just around the corner. Accurate reports of his conflicts with governors over federal support are “fake news.” And no one could have anticipated a pandemic like this.
在這個通常需要媒體事後查核真假或由幕僚善後的實境中，各種幫助與需要的設備就在眼前。有關他跟州長們在聯邦政府支援問題上衝突的正確報導都是「假新聞」。而且，誰也料不到會發生這樣大流行的疫情。

The daily coronavirus briefings, increasingly timed to run live on cable and broadcast right around the evening news, are a journey. The president begins them by soberly reading statements. He can be expansive – even, astonishingly, praising the media – and he can be peevish.
每天的新冠病毒簡報，愈來愈多地選在有線電視上直播並在晚間新聞前後播出，這是一趟旅程。總統以嚴肅地閱讀聲明開場。他可以友善而健談，甚至令人訝異地讚揚媒體，也可以很暴躁。

Trump’s critics have said that his briefings are simply campaign rallies in another form. The two things do have elements in common: the litanies of grievances, the insulting of reporters and political rivals, the self-aggrandizement and selective history.
批評川普的人士說，他的簡報會只是另一種形式的選舉造勢大會。這兩件事確有共同之處：一連串的牢騷、侮辱記者和政敵、自我吹噓和選擇性的歷史。

Trump’s career has always been based on the premise that appearance is everything. That may be proving effective for him now, as measured by his cable ratings and his rising poll numbers. But there are limits to this media strategy; you can’t simply give a disease a mean nickname or dismiss it as if it were Don Lemon or Nancy Pelosi.
川普的職業生涯一直建立在「曝光率決定一切」的前提之上。從他的有線電視收視率和不斷上升的民調數字來看，這策略在現階段可能證明對他是有效的，但這種媒體策略也有局其限性;你不能只是給一種疾病起個刻薄的綽號，或把它當成（電視記者）唐．雷蒙或（眾院議長）波洛西那樣不予理會。

You can go a long way, in TV and politics, producing a successful reality show. A virus, ultimately, produces its own reality.
在電視和政治這兩個領域，你可以製作一個成功的實境秀而功成名就。而病毒，到頭來，終會成就它自己的實境。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/arts/television/trump-coronavirus-briefing.html

2020-04-19．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．陳韋廷譯 核稿/樂慧生

說文解字看新聞 陳韋廷

平常很少進白宮新聞簡報室的川普，近來卻天天報到並親自主持黃金時段直播的疫情簡報，趁機大搞個人秀。黃金時段指的是電視節目收視率最高的一段時間，通常是晚上8-11點，其他時段則是non-prime time，亦稱fringe time，而prime-time ratings則指黃金時段收視率。

誰是接班人是川普最早主持的電視節目，英文名是The Apprentice，字面意思為「學徒、見習生」，同義詞有colt、novice與rookie等，作動詞用時指「當學徒」，與之相對的則是master（師傅）。另外，pandemic是最近熱門的單字，意指疫病的「大（範圍）流行」，其範圍可能是整個國家，一個或數個洲，甚至遍及全世界。

動詞片語do away with意思為「廢除、取消」，介系詞with後接上要廢除之事物，又just around the corner在文中則指的是「在附近、在手邊」之意，其中just可略去不用。

White House Economists Warned in 2019 a Pandemic Could Devastate America
白宮經濟學家早警告疫情影響嚴重
By Jim Tankersley

White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy. It went unheeded inside the administration.
白宮多名經濟學家去年9月發表一篇研究報告警告道，美國若出現大流行疫情，可能導致50萬人死亡並重創其經濟。這篇報告並未受到美國政府重視。

In late February and early March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread from China to the rest of the world, President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers played down the threat the virus posed to the U.S. economy and public health.
今年2月底到3月初，新冠病毒開始從中國大陸傳播到世界其他地方之際，美國總統川普的最高經濟顧問群淡化新冠病毒對美國經濟和公共衛生的威脅。

“I don’t think corona is as big a threat as people make it out to be,” the acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Tomas Philipson, told reporters during a Feb. 18 briefing, on the same day that more than a dozen American cruise ship passengers who had contracted the virus were evacuated home. Public health threats did not typically hurt the economy, Philipson said. He suggested the virus would not be nearly as bad as a normal flu season.
白宮經濟顧問委員會代理主席菲利普森2月18日簡報時對記者說：「我認為新冠病毒的威脅並不像人們說的那麼大。」當天正是十幾名感染新冠肺炎的美籍郵輪乘客被接回國的日子。菲利普森說，公衛威脅通常不會傷害經濟，他表示新冠病毒造成的損害將遠不如通常的流感季那麼嚴重。

The 2019 study warned otherwise – specifically urging Americans not to conflate the risks of a typical flu and a pandemic. The existence of that warning undermines administration officials’ contentions in recent weeks that no one could have seen the virus damaging the economy as it has. The study was requested by the National Security Council, according to two people familiar with the matter.
2019年那分研究報告卻不這麼說，還特別要求美國人，不要把普通流感和疫病大流行的風險混為一談。美國官員近幾周辯稱，無人能預見新冠病毒會如此重創經濟，前述報告存在的事實削弱了官方說詞的可信度。兩名知情者 透露，報告是應美國國家安全會議要求而撰寫。

One of the authors of the study, who has since left the White House, now says it would make sense for the administration to effectively shut down most economic activity for two to eight months to slow the virus.
報告作者之一在報告發表後就離開白宮，這位作者現在主張，為了減緩新冠病毒的傳播速度，美國政府暫停大多數經濟活動兩到八個月，實屬合情合理。

Outside economists have been pumping out analyses on the optimal length of a shutdown almost daily. One that has been shared with officials inside the White House comes from Anna Scherbina, an author of the 2019 study who is now an economist at Brandeis University and the American Enterprise Institute. It seeks to determine the optimal length of a national suppression of economic activity, which Scherbina does not define precisely in the paper. In an interview, she said it would encompass school closures, shutting down many businesses and the sort of stay-at-home orders that many states have imposed.
政府機關之外的經濟學家幾乎每天都大量撰寫分析，探討經濟活動停止多久最適宜。一分在白宮內部流傳的分析文章來自安娜．謝爾比娜，她是2019年那分報告的作者之一，目前在美國布蘭戴斯大學和智庫「美國企業研究所」擔任經濟學家。這篇分析文旨在探討國家抑制經濟活動以多久為宜，但並未圈定這些經濟活動。謝爾比娜受訪時說，這包括關閉學校、勒令許多店家停業，以及美國許多州已經下令實施的居家避疫。

In a best-case scenario, Scherbina concludes, a national suppression of economic activity to flatten the infection curve must last at least seven weeks. In a worst case, where the shutdown proves less effective at slowing the rate of new infections, it would be economically optimal to keep the economy shuttered for nearly eight months.
謝爾比娜下結論說，在最好的情況下，國家為了平抑感染曲線而壓制經濟活動，至少必須持續七周；在最壞情況下，也就是經濟活動停止對減緩新增感染沒那麼有效時，使經濟停止運行近8個月，對經濟最為適宜。

The White House study estimated that a pandemic flu could kill up to 500,000 Americans and inflict as much as $3.8 trillion in damage on the economy. Those estimates did not account for any economic loss incurred by “healthy people avoiding work out of fear they will be infected by co-workers.”
白宮報告估計，流感大流行會導致50萬美國人死亡和3.8兆美元經濟損失。這並不包括「健康者害怕被同事傳染而不去工作」造成的經濟損失。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/business/coronavirus-economy-trump.html

2020-04-19．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．李京倫譯 核稿/樂慧生