2021考研英语：纽约时报精选·衡量生命价值

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he(Trump) was raising an issue that economists have long grappled with: How can a society assess the trade-off between economic well-being and health?

他(特朗普)提出了经济学家长久以来努力解决的问题：一个社会如何评估经济福祉和健康之间的取舍?

President Trump and leading business figures are increasingly questioning the wisdom of a prolonged shutdown of the American economy — already putting millions out of work — to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

特朗普总统和商界领袖们越来越多地质疑，为遏制新型冠状病毒的蔓延而让美国经济长期停摆是否明智——这种停滞已经让数百万人失去了工作。

however, a widespread consensus among economists and public health experts that lifting the restrictions would impose huge costs in additional lives lost to the virus — and deliver little lasting benefit to the economy.

经济学家和公共卫生专家倒是普遍认为，取消这些限制将使更多的人死于这种病毒，付出巨大的代价，而且几乎不会给经济带来什么长期的好处。

Weighing economic costs against human lives will inevitably seem crass. But societies also value things like jobs, food and money to pay the bills — as well as the ability to deal with other needs and prevent unrelated misfortunes.

权衡人类生命的经济成本似乎不可避免地显得愚蠢。但是，社会也重视工作、食物和支付账单的钱等事物，以及满足其他需求和防止不相关的不幸的能力。

Government agencies calculate these trade-offs regularly. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has established a cost of about $9.5 million per life saved as a benchmark for determining whether to clean up a toxic waste site.

政府机构定期计算这样的取舍。例如，美国环护署(Environmental Protection Agency)设定了一个标准，每拯救一个生命的成本约为950万美元，将其作为是否清理有毒废物场地的决定基准。

Other agencies use similar values to assess whether to invest in reducing accidents at an intersection or to tighten safety standards in a workplace. The Department of Agriculture has a calculator to estimate the economic costs — medical care, premature deaths, productivity loss from nonfatal cases — of food-borne disease.

其他机构使用类似的方法进行量化评估，以决定是投资减少十字路口的事故，还是加强工作场所的安全标准。农业部有一个计算标准，用来估计食源性疾病的经济成本——医疗保健、过早死亡、非致命病例造成的生产力损失。

Now, some economists have decided to stick their necks out and apply this thinking to the coronavirus pandemic.

现在，一些经济学家决定冒险把这种想法应用到冠状病毒大流行上。

Based on epidemiological projections, as the virus ran unchecked, it would quickly expand to infect somewhat over half the population before herd immunity would slow its course.

根据流行病学预测，当病毒不受控制地传播时会迅速扩大，感染半数以上的人口，然后群体免疫才会减缓其进程。

A policy to contain the virus by reducing economic activity would slow the progression of the virus and reduce the death rate, but it would also impose a greater economic cost.

通过减少经济活动来遏制病毒的政策，可以减缓病毒发展并降低死亡率，但它也将带来更大的经济代价。

It comes down to what a life is worth.

归根结底，这是在衡量生命的价值。