Pratica di Shadowing: The Coronavirus Explained & What You Should Do - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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In December 2019, the Chinese authorities notified the world that a virus was spreading through their communities.
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In the following months, it spread to other countries, with cases doubling within days.
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This virus is the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome related coronavirus 2
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that causes the disease called COVID-19 and that everyone simply calls coronavirus.
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What actually happens when it infects a human and what should we all do?
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A virus is really just a hull around genetic material and a few proteins, arguably not even a living thing.
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It can only make more of itself by entering a living cell.
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Corona may spread via surfaces, but it's still uncertain how long it can survive on them.
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Its main way of spreading seems to be droplet infection, when people cough, or if you touch someone who's ill and then your face, say rubbing your eyes or nose.
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The virus starts its journey here and then hitches a ride as a stowaway deeper into the body.
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Its destinations are the intestines, the spleen or the lungs, where it can have the most dramatic effect.
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Even just a few coronaviruses can cause quite a dramatic situation.
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The lungs are lined with billions of epithelial cells.
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These are the border cells of your body, lining your organs and mucosa, waiting to be infected.
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Corona connects to a specific receptor on its victims' membranes to inject its genetic material.
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The cell, ignorant of what's happening, executes the new instructions, which are pretty simple, copy and reassemble.
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It fills up with more
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and more copies of the original virus until it reaches a critical point and receives one final order, self-destruct.
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The cell sort of melts away, releasing new Corona particles, ready to attack more cells.
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The number of infected cells grows exponentially.
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After about 10 days, millions of body cells are infected and billions of viruses swarm the lungs.
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The virus has not caused too much damage yet, but corona is now going to release a real beast on you, your own immune system.
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The immune system, while there to protect you, can actually be pretty dangerous to yourself and needs tight regulation.
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And as immune cells pour into the lungs to fight the virus, corona infects some of them and creates confusion.
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Cells have neither ears nor eyes, they communicate mostly via tiny information proteins called cytokines.
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Nearly every important immune reaction is controlled by them.
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Corona causes infected immune cells to overreact and yell bloody murder.
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In a sense, it puts the immune system into a fighting frenzy and sends way more soldiers than it should, wasting its resources and causing damage.
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Two kinds of cells in particular wreak havoc.
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First, neutrophiles, which are great at killing stuff, including ourselves.
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As they arrive in their thousands, they start pumping out enzymes that destroy as many friends as enemies.
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The other important type of cells that go into a frenzy are killer T cells, which usually order infected cells to commit controlled suicide.
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Confused as they are, they start ordering healthy cells to kill themselves too.
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The more and more immune cells arrive, the more damage they do and the more healthy lung tissue they kill.
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This might get so bad that it can cause permanent irreversible damage that leads to lifelong disabilities.
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In most cases the immune system slowly regains control.
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It kills the infected cells, intercepts the viruses trying to infect new ones and cleans up the battlefield.
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Recovery begins.
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The majority of people infected by corona will get through it with relatively mild symptoms.
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But many cases become severe or even critical.
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We don't know the percentage because not all cases have been identified, but it's safe to say that there is a lot more than with the flu.
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In more severe cases, millions of epithelial cells have died and with them the lungs protective lining is gone.
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That means that the alveoli, tiny air sacs via which breathing occurs, can be infected by bacteria that aren't usually a big problem.
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Patients get pneumonia, respiration becomes hard or even fails, and patients need ventilators to survive.
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The immune system has fought at full capacity for weeks and made millions of antiviral weapons.
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And as thousands of bacteria rapidly multiply, it is overwhelmed.
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They enter the blood and overrun the body.
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If this happens, death is very likely.
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The coronavirus is often compared to the flu, but actually it's much more dangerous.
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While the exact death rate is hard to pin down during an ongoing pandemic, we know for sure that it's much more contagious and spreads faster than the flu.
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There are two futures for a pandemic like corona, fast and slow.
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Which future we will see depends on how we all react to it in the early days of the outbreak.
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A fast pandemic will be horrible and cost many lives.
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A slow pandemic will not be remembered by the history books.
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The worst case scenario for a fast pandemic begins with a very rapid rate of infection
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because there are no countermeasures in place to slow it down.
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Why is this so bad?
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In a fast pandemic, many people get sick at the same time.
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If the numbers get too large, healthcare systems become unable to handle it.
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There aren't enough resources like medical staff or equipment like ventilators left to help everybody.
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People will die untreated.
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And as more healthcare workers get sick themselves, the capacity of healthcare systems falls even further.
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If this becomes the case, then horrible decisions will have to be made about who gets to live and who doesn't.
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The number of deaths rises significantly in such a scenario.
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To avoid this, the world, that means all of us, needs to do what it can to turn this into a slow pandemic.
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A pandemic is slowed down by the right responses, especially in the early phase,
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so that everyone who gets sick can get treatment and there's no crunch point with overwhelmed hospitals.
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Since we don't have a vaccine for corona, we have to socially engineer our behavior to act like a social vaccine.
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This simply means two things.
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Not getting infected and not infecting others.
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Although it sounds trivial, the very best thing you can do is to wash your hands.
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Soap is actually a powerful tool.
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The coronavirus is encased in what is basically a layer of fat.
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Soap breaks that fat apart and leaves it unable to infect you.
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It also makes your hands slippery and with the mechanical motions of washing, viruses are ripped away.
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To do it properly, wash your hands as
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if you've just cut up some jalapenos and want to put in your contacts next.
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The next thing is social distancing, which is not a nice experience, but a nice thing to do.
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This means no hugging, no handshakes.
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If you can stay at home, stay at home to protect those who need to be out for society to function, from doctors to cashiers or police officers.
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You depend on all of them.
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They all depend on you to not get sick.
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On a larger level, there are quarantines, which can mean different things from travel restrictions or actual orders to stay at home.
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Quarantines are not great to experience and certainly not popular, but they buy us and especially the researchers working on medication and vaccination crucial time.
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So if you are put under quarantine, you should understand why and respect it.
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None of this is fun, but looking at the big picture, it is a really small price to pay.
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The question of how pandemics end depends on how they start.
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If they start fast with a steep slope, they end badly.
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If they start slow with a not-so-steep slope, they end okay-ish.
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And in this day and age, it really is in all of our hands.
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Literally and figuratively.
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A huge thanks to the experts who helped us on short notice with this video, especially Our World in Data,
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the online publication for research and data on the world's largest problems and how to make progress solving them.
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Check out their site.
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It also includes a constantly updated page on the Corona pandemic.
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Perché esercitarti a parlare con questo video?
Questo video è una risorsa eccezionale per imparare l'inglese con i video e migliorare la tua pronuncia e fluenza. La lingua usata è chiara, tecnica ma accessibile, ideale per esercitarti nel shadowing—una tecnica provata per imitare la pronuncia, l'intonazione e il ritmo dei madrelingua. Parlando di un argomento attuale e scientifico, ti mette in contesto reale, aiutandoti a gestire conversazioni complesse e a usare vocaboli specifici. È perfetto per chi vuole passare da un livello base a uno intermedio o avanzato, sfruttando un contenuto che stimola anche la comprensione del mondo attuale.
Grammatica e espressioni nel contesto
Analizziamo alcuni strutture chiave del video:
- "It can only make more of itself by entering a living cell": L'uso di "by + gerundio" per esprimere il modo in cui qualcosa accade. Utile per spiegare processi, come nel video. Esercitati a ripetere frasi come "You can improve your skills by practicing daily".
- "The virus has not caused too much damage yet, but...": "Yet" usato in frasi negative per indicare che qualcosa non è accaduto finora, ma potrebbe accadere. È una parola chiave per creare suspense o contrasto, come in "I haven't finished the book yet, but I'm enjoying it".
- "Which future we will see depends on how we all react": Struttura con "which" e "how" come pronomi relativi, fondamentale per formare frasi complesse. Ripeti frasi simili per rafforzare la gramma: "The result depends on how hard you work".
Trappole di pronuncia comuni
Nel video, alcuni vocaboli possono creare difficoltà: ecco come affrontarli per migliorare la pronuncia inglese:
- "Coronavirus": La pronuncia corretta è /kəˈrəʊnəvaɪrəs/ (in inglese britannico). Attenzione a non accentare la "o" iniziale troppo forte e a pronunciare la "v" netta.
- "Epithelial": /ˌɛpɪˈθiːliəl/. La "th" è un suono difficile per gli italiani—prova a mettere la lingua tra i denti e respira leggermente mentre parli.
- "Cytokines": /ˈsaɪtəʊkaɪnz/. La "y" si pronuncia come "i" in "firenze", e la "k" è netta. Ripeti la parola lentamente per non confondere le sillabe.
Usando tecniche di shadowing in inglese, come ripetere immediatamente dopo il speaker, potrai superare queste trappole e rendere la tua pronuncia più naturale. Un shadowing site o un tool come shadowspeak può aiutarti a sincronizzare la tua voce con il video, ma anche un semplice ripetizione costante funziona. Ricorda: la chiave è la pratica regolare!
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | are lined · be infected · are infected |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | instructions, which are · neutrophiles, which are · everyone who gets |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | has not caused · have been identified · has fought |
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.