Covid's toll on Native Americans

原文地址：Covid's toll on Navitve Americans

Covid's death toll in Indigenous communities has on modern precedent.

• indigenous: 土著的
• no modern precendent: 没有现代先例 （只是在现代社会里没有先例，和史无前例的重量级不同（如下）
  • unprecedented / no historical precedent: 空前的 / 没有历史先例

So much loss

“I just wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with so much loss,”

• mentally prepared: 又心理准备
• so much loss: 损失巨大，这里指这么多亲属因新冠过世

Image Credit: The National Center for Health Statistics

That loss has been tragically common among Native Americans, the C.D.C. revealed last week: From 2019 to 2021, their life expectancy fell from 71.8 years to 65.2. Covid was largely to blame.

• life expectancy: 平均寿命
• 从71.8岁暴减到65.2岁

Typically, experts start to worry when they see drops in life expectancy that measure in just tenths of a year; Native Americans lost nearly seven years. 通常，专家们在看到预期寿命减少0.1岁时就会开始担心，原住民的平均年龄在两年内可是下降了大约7年！

Historical problems

Native Americans have some of the highest rates of health conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, that make a person much more likely to die from Covid.

• make sbody much more likley to do sth - 使某人更有可能发生什么

Health care is also often inaccessible. The Indian Health Service, a federal program that provides care to more than two million Native Americans, has a fraction of the funding on a per-person basis received by Medicare, Medicaid or the Veterans Health Administration.

• has a fraction of the funding on a per-person basis: 每人仅获得一小部分资金

As a result, Native Americans frequently have to travel long distances to get health care. Its quality can be shoddy. A quarter of Native Americans reported experiencing discrimination when visiting a doctor or a health clinic, one poll found.

• shoddy: 质量低劣的
• one poll found: 一项民意调查发现

Widespread poverty limits what precautions people can take to avoid Covid.

• 普遍的贫困限制了人们可以采取哪些预防措施来避免Covid。

And Native Americans often live in crowded, multigenerational homes

• multigenerational: 多代人共住

The suffering of Native Americans shows that preventing deadly pandemics isn’t just about containing the pathogens that cause them, but also about improving the health of communities across the board.

美洲原住民的苦难表明，预防致命的流行病不仅要控制引起它们的病原体，还要全面改善社区的健康。