hce_tcu
112年
英文
第 41 題
📖 題組：
【C】How can we summarize the Covid year from a broad historical perspective? Many people believe that the terrible toll coronavirus has taken demonstrates humanity’s helplessness in the face of nature’s might. In fact, 2020 has shown that humanity is far from helpless. Epidemics are no longer uncontrollable forces of nature. Science has turned them into a manageable challenge. Why, then, has there been so much death and suffering? Because of bad political decisions. In previous eras, when humans faced a plague such as the Black Death, they had no idea what caused it or how it could be stopped. When the 1918 influenza struck, the best scientists in the world couldn’t identify the deadly virus, many of the countermeasures adopted were useless, and attempts to develop an effective vaccine proved futile. It was very different with Covid-19. The first alarm bells about a potential new epidemic began sounding at the end of December 2019. By January 10, 2020, scientists had not only isolated the responsible virus, but also sequenced its genome and published the information online. Within a few more months it became clear which measures could slow and stop the chains of infection. Within less than a year several effective vaccines were in mass production. In the war between humans and pathogens, never have humans been so powerful. Alongside the unprecedented achievements of biotechnology, the Covid year has also underlined the power of information technology. In previous eras humanity could seldom stop epidemics because humans couldn’t monitor the chains of infection in real time, and because the economic cost of extended lockdowns was prohibitive. In 1918 you could quarantine people who came down with the dreaded flu, but you couldn’t trace the movements of pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers. And if you ordered the entire population of a country to stay at home for several weeks, it would have resulted in economic ruin, social breakdown and mass starvation. In contrast, in 2020 digital surveillance made it far easier to monitor and pinpoint the disease vectors, meaning that quarantine could be both more selective and more effective. Even more importantly, automation and the Internet made extended lockdowns viable, at least in developed countries. While in some parts of the developing world the human experience was still reminiscent of past plagues, in much of the developed world the digital revolution changed everything.
【C】How can we summarize the Covid year from a broad historical perspective? Many people believe that the terrible toll coronavirus has taken demonstrates humanity’s helplessness in the face of nature’s might. In fact, 2020 has shown that humanity is far from helpless. Epidemics are no longer uncontrollable forces of nature. Science has turned them into a manageable challenge. Why, then, has there been so much death and suffering? Because of bad political decisions. In previous eras, when humans faced a plague such as the Black Death, they had no idea what caused it or how it could be stopped. When the 1918 influenza struck, the best scientists in the world couldn’t identify the deadly virus, many of the countermeasures adopted were useless, and attempts to develop an effective vaccine proved futile. It was very different with Covid-19. The first alarm bells about a potential new epidemic began sounding at the end of December 2019. By January 10, 2020, scientists had not only isolated the responsible virus, but also sequenced its genome and published the information online. Within a few more months it became clear which measures could slow and stop the chains of infection. Within less than a year several effective vaccines were in mass production. In the war between humans and pathogens, never have humans been so powerful. Alongside the unprecedented achievements of biotechnology, the Covid year has also underlined the power of information technology. In previous eras humanity could seldom stop epidemics because humans couldn’t monitor the chains of infection in real time, and because the economic cost of extended lockdowns was prohibitive. In 1918 you could quarantine people who came down with the dreaded flu, but you couldn’t trace the movements of pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers. And if you ordered the entire population of a country to stay at home for several weeks, it would have resulted in economic ruin, social breakdown and mass starvation. In contrast, in 2020 digital surveillance made it far easier to monitor and pinpoint the disease vectors, meaning that quarantine could be both more selective and more effective. Even more importantly, automation and the Internet made extended lockdowns viable, at least in developed countries. While in some parts of the developing world the human experience was still reminiscent of past plagues, in much of the developed world the digital revolution changed everything.
According to the author, in the face of nature’s power such as Covid-19, human beings _____.
- A are simply hopeless
- B know how to use science to control it
- C need to resort to the almighty for help
- D learn how to emigrate to avoid it
思路引導 VIP
請比較文中提到的 1918 年大流感與 2020 年新冠疫情，作者認為現代人類擁有哪些前人所沒有的「工具」或「能力」，使得這兩場災難在人類的應對歷史上產生了本質上的差別？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準捕捉到作者的核心觀點並選出 (B)，顯示你具備優秀的邏輯歸納能力。這篇文章的主旨並非在哀悼災難，而是強調人類能力的進步。作者在第一段就開宗明義地反駁了「人類面對自然很無力」的看法，並強調「科學已將流行病轉變為一種可應對的挑戰（manageable challenge）」，這正是選項 (B) 的直接對應。
科技實力與歷史的對比
這題的解題關鍵在於作者使用的「對比手法」。文中將 13 世紀的黑死病、1918 年的流感與 2020 年的新冠肺炎並列，點出過去人類對病因一無所知，但現代科學能在短短幾週內完成基因定序，並在一年內量產疫苗。此外，作者也提到資訊技術（IT）與自動化讓封城變得可行。這些細節都在驗證一個核心：人類已擁有足夠的工具來主導局面，而非被動受難。
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