Some went on in this manner for months before dying. A very few survived and regained consciousness but not their former liveliness. They existed in a state of profound apathy, "like extinct volcanoes," in the words of one doctor. In ten years the disease killed some five million people and then quietly went away. It didn't get much lasting attention because in the meantime an even worse epidemic——indeed, the worst in history——swept across the world.
有的幾個月處于那種狀態，然后死去。極少的人幸免于難，恢復了知覺，但不再像以往那樣充滿活力。他們處于沒清打采的狀態，用一位醫生的話來說，“猶如一座座死火山”。這種病在10年時間里致使大約500萬人死亡，然后悄地消失了。它沒有引起太久的重視，因為同時另一種更可怕的流行病——實際上是歷史上最可怕的流行病——正在世界各地傳播。
It is sometimes called the Great Swine Flu epidemic and sometimes the Great Spanish Flu epidemic, but in either case it was ferocious. World War I killed twenty-one million people in four years; swine flu did the same in its first four months. Almost 80 percent of American casualties in the First World War came not from enemy fire, but from flu. In some units the mortality rate was as high as 80 percent.
那種病有時候被稱之為“豬大流感”，有時候被稱之為“西班牙大流感”，但無論如何是很兇猛的。第一次世界大戰在4年內使2100萬人喪生；豬大流感在頭4個月里就造成了同樣的結果。第一次世界大戰期間，在美軍的傷亡人數中，差不多80%不是敵人的炮火而是流感造成的，有的部隊死亡率高達80%。
Swine flu arose as a normal, nonlethal flu in the spring of 1918, but somehow over the following months—no one knows how or where—it mutated into something more severe. A fifth of victims suffered only mild symptoms, but the rest became gravely ill and often died. Some succumbed within hours; others held on for a few days.
1918年春天，豬大流感以一種不致命的普通流感的癥狀出現然而在隨后的幾個月里，不知怎的——誰也不知道以什么方式，在什么地方——那種疾病變得嚴重起來。五分之一的病人只有很輕的癥狀，但其余的病得很重，許多人死亡。有的在幾個小時里就倒下了；有的只堅持了幾天。
In the United States, the first deaths were recorded among sailors in Boston in late August 1918, but the epidemic quickly spread to all parts of the country. Schools closed, public entertainments were shut down, people everywhere wore masks. It did little good.
擗記載，美國的第一批死者是波士頓的海員，那是在1918年8月來。流行病很快就傳播到全國各地。學校停課，公共娛樂場所關門，人們都戴著口罩。這么做沒有起多大作用。
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