科罗纳多CORONADO

现在的问题是:你如何阻止这个棺材? （提醒我向西内说明如何拼写这个单词。）不管怎样，这不是你所谓的真正的旅行，尽管我们称之为病毒的小家伙可能会。我说的就是天花，尽管现在大家都在谈论一种冠状病毒，据说这种病毒感染了一条蛇，然后由蛇传染给了一些中国人。西内不想讨论这个话题。我也不想,因为在冠状病毒出现之前的几个世纪就出现了类似故事:天花困扰了人们几个世纪,直到1949年一些科学家终于找到了消灭它的方法。(奥拉和西内一定要我指出那不是经济学家的功劳。)——我觉得病毒可能称之为一次旅行。事实上，因为尽管它的体积很小，但它却演变成了一件大事，因为它覆盖了地球表面越来越广泛的区域，随着我们从埃及到中国和印度，最终到达欧洲。哥伦布的船员和后来的探险者们无意中把它带到了美洲。尽管西内告诉我，我们发展到现在的唯一途径是让所有其它的细菌和生活在我们体内的任何东西和谐地生活，但是这个小东西，天花病毒，是个贪得无厌的家伙，非常自私。它不在乎它的主人(就是我们)是活是死，只要它自己吃饱了就行。
The question of the day is: How do you stop this coffin? (Remind me to get on Sine about how to spell this word.) Anyway, this isn’t really what you call a tour, though the little guys we call virus probably would. Smallpox is the one I’m talking about, even though at the moment everybody is talking about the coronavirus it’s believed bothered a snake and somehow got from the snake into some Chinese dude. Sine doesn’t want to talk about it. I’m not going to either, because the one that got into our story turned up centuries before coronavirus came along: Smallpox bugged people for centuries until 1949 when some scientists finally figured out how to kill it off. (Aura and Sine are quite insistent that I point out it wasn't economists who accomplished this feat.) --- I suppose the virus might call this a tour. A tour de force in fact, because, despite its diminutive size, it got to be a very big deal as it covered a wider and wider area of the earth’s surface, hitching a ride on us from Egypt to China and India and eventually to Europe. Columbus’s crew and subsequent explorers unwittingly gave it a lift to the Americas. Even though Sine tells me the only way we got to where we are was for all the other bacteria and whatever else that live in us to live in harmony, this little bugger, the smallpox virus, was just a moocher and very self centered. It didn’t care if its host (That’s us.) lived or died so long as it got its fill.

当哥伦布开始航行时，水手们都是幸存下来的人，基本上对它免疫。但当他们到了美洲，就像他们走进了一个幼儿园，那里没有人，甚至包括成年人，听说过天花。由于一个水手也许对着他们打喷嚏，或者一个印第安人看看、穿穿水手的衬衫等等，天花病毒就进入印第安人的身体内了，成为了它们尽情狂欢的处女地。小恶魔们只想繁衍后代，像别人一样欣欣向荣。奥拉对树上的鸟儿和一切与人类无关的东西如此着迷，她不在这里为这些微生物辩护也算是一个奇迹。事实上，你可以把这次所谓的旅行归咎于她对忽悠印第安人和他们受到的不公平待遇的过分关注。
When Columbus got going, the sailors were men who’d survived and were basically immune to it. But when they got to America, it was like they’d walked into a kindergarden where nobody, not even the adults, had even heard of smallpox. And when it got into some Indian thanks to a sailor maybe sneezing in their direction or an Indian maybe checking out or wearing a sailor’s shirt or what-have-you, the smallpox virus landed on virgin territory and had a field day. The little devils just want to have progeny and prosper like everybody else. Aura’s so taken with the birds in the trees and everything that isn’t human, it’s a wonder she’s not here to advocate for the microbes too. - In fact, you can blame this so-called tour on her being so fixated on touting the Indians and the raw deal they got.

回到科罗纳多的时代，在人们还没有弄清楚发生了什么事情之前，唯一说得通就是：这就是命运，既然每个人都解释说，命运是指他们自身之外的力量，命运就像是创造了一切的神的杰作。
Back in Coronado’s time, before anybody’d figured out what was going on, the only thing that made any sense was that this was Fate, and since everybody explained that by pointing to forces outside of themselves, Fate seemed the work of the gods who’d created everything.

我通过我们第一次见面时谈到的一些细节来介绍这次旅行。最重要的是，从与欧洲人接触的第一刻起，已经生活在美洲的这些人就感染上了他们从未有过的疾病，在接下来的一百年里，估计十分之九的人都死了。虽然欧洲人也受这些疾病的侵害，但他们至少有了免疫力。但是印第安人没有，由此造成的社会破坏让欧洲人更容易接管。事实上，第一次接触对欧洲人来说并非没有什么影响。不知怎么的，哥伦布的船员们在岸上睡觉的时候碰巧染上了梅毒，并把它带回到了欧洲。在哥伦布回来之前，梅毒在欧洲从未出现过。但梅毒对欧洲的影响远不及天花对美洲的影响大。
I’ve chosen a few amplifications of observations touched on in our first encounter to present this tour. The chief takeaway is that from the first moment of contact with Europeans, the peoples already in the Americas succumbed to diseases they hadn’t had before, to the degree that over the next hundred years it’s estimated nine out of ten died. Though European diseases hurt Europeans too, they had at least developed some immunity. But the Indians had not and the resulting devastation of their society made it much easier for the Europeans to take over. As it happens, first contact was not without consequences for the Europeans. Somehow, somebody or somebodys in Columbus’ crew happened to pick up syphilis while bunking on shore, and apparently escorted it on a ride back to Europe. Syphilis had never been a thing in Europe until Columbus got back. But it was by no means as big a deal for Europe as smallpox was for the Americas.