美国找了个厉害的女人来对付新冠疫情

Dr. Deborah Birx was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014 to lead the government's fight against the global AIDS epidemic. Now she is coordinating the response to the coronavirus.

2014年贝拉克·奥巴马总统任命Deborah Birx博士带领政府抗击全球艾滋病蔓延。现在她又开始对抗新冠肺炎。

In the spring of 1983, even before the virus that causes AIDS had a name, a young Army doctor named Deborah L. Birx suffered excessive bleeding while giving birth. Moments before she passed out from pain, she screamed an order at her husband: “Do not let them give me blood!”

1983年春天，Deborah L. Birx还是一位年轻的军医，当时引发艾滋病的病毒都还没有被命名。她生产时大出血，在疼晕前对丈夫喊道：“不要让他们给我输血！”

She may have saved her own life. The blood she would have received was later discovered to be contaminated with H.I.V.

她救了自己一命。后来发现原本要输给她的血液被艾滋病病毒污染了。

Now, after researching H.I.V. and devising public health strategies to combat it for more than three decades, Dr. Birx has a new virus to fight. As President Trump’s newly named White House coronavirus response coordinator, she has the difficult task of tracking and orchestrating the government’s effort to contain the outbreak, while projecting a calm, authoritative presence to counter the mixed messages from Mr. Trump.

30多年来，Birx博士研究艾滋病病毒，并制定公共卫生战略来抗击艾滋病，现在她又要对抗新型病毒了。特朗普总统刚刚任命她为白宫新冠肺炎应变协调员，她负责追踪的艰巨任务，以及安排政府控制疫情的工作，同时还要对特朗普发布的混乱信息作出冷静、权威的判断。

Dr. Birx — who carried the rank of ambassador at the State Department — is stepping gingerly into the public eye. She has taken pains not to contradict the president, praising the White House for its “energy and efficiency.”

Birx博士是美国国务院的大使，现在正小心翼翼地走入公众视线。她尽力不反驳总统，还要称赞白宫的“努力和高效率”。

That kind of political savvy helps explain why Dr. Birx is one of only a handful of Obama political appointees who is still working for the Trump administration.

这种政治头脑就能解释为什么Birx博士是为数不多的曾被奥巴马任命，现在又能为特朗普政府效力的人了。

Dr. Birx, a colonel in the Army, began her career in the early 1980s as an immunologist in the army. She “was a star then, according to Dr. Fauci, another member of the coronavirus task force, “and what has happened over the years, she’s become a superstar.”

Birx博士有上校军衔，从20世纪80年代早期开始就是军队中的免疫学家。新冠肺炎特别工作组的另一成员Fauci博士说她“以前是小有名气。经过这么多年，现在名扬四方了。”

With the military committed to reducing the spread of H.I.V. in its own ranks, Dr. Birx was on the cutting edge of research. Shepherd Smith, an evangelical Christian leader and a founder of Children’s AIDS Fund International, said Dr. Birx and her colleagues at the Defense Department sometimes spotted epidemiological trends even before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

军队要努力减少其内部艾滋病的传播，Birx博士就处在研究前沿。福音派基督教领袖Shepherd Smith创办了国际儿童艾滋病基金会，他说Birx博士和她在美国国防部的同事们有时甚至比疾病预防控制中心先发现流行病的趋势。