Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Today we're going to study some vocabulary and some idioms together, watching a news clip on YouTube. It's Anderson Cooper interviewing Bill Gates on Covid-19, some of the therapies that are being developed, and what the fall is going to look like, a very current topic, something that's on a lot of people's minds. You're going to hear some words that relate specifically to Covid-19, but also just some more advance vocabulary words that can help your English sound more sophisticated. I think learning English this way is a great way because when you learn a word in a context like this, I think it makes it easier to remember. As always, if you like this video or you learn something new, please like it, give it a thumbs up, and subscribe with notifications, it really helps. Let's talk about the format of this video. You're going to watch a clip, and onscreen, there will be white words with a red outline, those are the words that we'll study after we watch the clip. Like this: That's always been the most promising therapeutic category. The other therapeutic categories, the antivirals, like Remdesphere has only had modest benefit-- Then after the clip, you and I will go over it in-depth, together looking at the pronunciation, the meaning, and the context of the word or phrase so that you'll definitely understand it and remember it. The first clip is the question that Mr. Cooper asked, it's 45 seconds long, let's take a look. The coronavirus death toll in the United states is now more than 212,000 people in this country, total number of cases more than seven and a half million. Staggering numbers of course. There's precious little sign of things slowing down. Add to that, president trump's diagnosis, the high infection numbers, the white house, the overall lag in widespread testing, contact tracing, it's certainly a recipe for concern as the fall begins in the winter, Bill Gates is joining us he's co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, has long put his fortune and talent behind searching for cures for this global health crisis and for other global health crisis. He joins me now, Bill, thanks for being with us. Looking at where the US is right now in this pandemic, and during the fall in the winter, cases on the rise, not just in small clusters, but across most of the nation, how concerned are you about the months ahead? Wow, okay, a lot of words there to learn there. The first was: death toll. The coronavirus death toll in the United states is now more than 212,000 people in this country-- Death toll. This refers to the number of people who died in relation to a particular event. For example here, the coronavirus pandemic. Or it could be a natural disaster like an earthquake or a tsunami. Death toll. We have an unvoiced TH, the tongue tip does have to come through the teeth there. Death-- and then you'll go right into a true T. Now the word 'toll' has the OH as in No diphthong, but when it's followed by a Dark L like it is here, it's not tow-- towl-- towl-- but it's toh-- ohl-- ohl-- A little bit more rounded, tongue pulled back a little bit more, death toll. Let's watch that clip again. The coronavirus death toll in the United states is now more than 212,000 people in this country-- Let's go on to the next clip. Total number of cases more than seven and a half million. Cases. This word has a couple of different uses. But in this particular case, it means an instance of something, an occurrence of something. In other words, one person who has the coronavirus. That would be a case. And all of the people would be a bunch of cases, people who have the coronavirus. Let's listen again. Total number of cases more than seven and a half million. Let keep going. Staggering numbers, of course. Staggering means overwhelming, a huge amount, a very large number. Let's watch again. Staggering numbers, of course. Our next clip. There's precious little sign of things slowing down. Precious little, you might also hear the term 'precious few', this means very little, a very little amount of something, extremely low in number, let's watch this clip again. There's precious little sign of things slowing down. 'Precious little sign' means really no sign at all. If anything, just a very, very small sign, but there's precious little evidence that the pandemic is slowing down. Let's go to our next clip. Add to that, President Trump's diagnosis, the high infection numbers, the White House. A couple words here. First, diagnosis. This is when you figure out a problem or an issue, specifically by looking at the different clues. For example, in medicine. If someone is sick, you look at the different ways in which they're sick. What hurts? What happened? What are their blood levels? This kind of thing. And you look at all of that information and you can make a diagnosis based on that information, you think you have this disease. Um, it can also be used for, for example, the word problem, we need to diagnose the problem. Let's say something is wrong with my car, it's not working, I don't know why. I have to get in there and look at what specifically is happening. Well, it looks like nothing happens when I turn the key. Okay, I'm going to make a diagnosis that my car needs a new battery. Diagnosis. Let's watch again. Add to that, President Trump's diagnosis, the high infection numbers, the White House. Infection and numbers. The number of people that are infected. What does this mean? Well, infected just means sick, in this case, got the disease. Let's watch that one more time. Add to that, President Trump's diagnosis, the high infection numbers, the White House. Let's go on to our next clip. The overall lag in widespread testing, contact tracing, it's-- To lag means to fall behind. So this could be either a goal that you have, you're falling behind your goal, you're lagging, or it can mean compared to someone else. For example, in a race, maybe you're winning the race, and you're running right next to somebody, and then when you're getting close again, you start to feel tired, you can't keep up, you start to lag behind just a little bit. Let's listen to this example again. The overall lag in widespread testing, contact tracing, it's-- A lag in widespread testing. What does widespread mean? It means something that many people are doing or feeling. For example, if a mayor is very popular of the town, you could say that mayor has widespread support. Most of the people, lots of people support that. So widespread testing means most people getting tested, many tests happening, in this case, we're lagging behind, so that's not happening, we're not meeting the goal of widespread testing. The overall lag in widespread testing, contact tracing, it's-- What is contact tracing? This is when someone is sick and you go back and you look at the window where they might have gotten sick. And you try to find out everyone that they were in contact with. Then you reach out to those people. You see are any of them sick? When you find somebody who's sick, you think: okay maybe this is how that person got sick. So you're going back to everyone that somebody was in contact with and you're trying to find out who's sick, who else might have gotten sick, and you find that path of how the infection was passed so you can understand how it's spreading. Let's listen one more time. The overall lag in widespread testing, contact tracing, it's-- And let's move on now. It's certainly a recipe for concern as the fall begins and the winter-- If something is a recipe for something, then that means it's likely to lead to it. You may have heard the phrase 'a recipe for disaster' it's a pretty common phrase, and it means what we're seeing makes it seem like it's very likely that a disaster will happen. Let's say for example, you have little kids, um, your toddler skipped his nap, didn't eat lunch, you can say, oh this is a recipe for disaster, your kid is probably going to have a meltdown and you're going to have a difficult day. Let's listen to how he used it again. Certainly a recipe for concern as the fall begins and the winter-- A recipe for concern, so everything that's going on is leading to a call to be concerned, it will likely make people concerned when they see that there's not enough contact tracing, not enough testing. It's a recipe for concern. Certainly a recipe for concern as the fall begins and the winter-- Let's go on to the next clip. Bill Gates is joining us he's co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-- Co-chair, this means he's sharing the position of chair. He's not the only chair of the foundation. And the chair of the foundation would be one of the people who leads it. You might have also heard the phrase co-pilot. So that means there's more than one pilot, more than one person in charge of flying the plane. Let's listen to this example again. Bill Gates is joining us, he's co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-- And let's keep going. So long put his fortune and talent behind searching for cures for this global health crisis and-- Fortune this means a lot of money, a lot of wealth, Bill Gates is certainly sitting on a fortune, he's made a lot of money in his lifetime. Let's listen to this example again. So long put his fortune and talent behind searching for cures for this global health crisis and-- Talent just means skill, something that you're good at, he's run a company and he runs a foundation, and now he's using that talent, that skill, to try to help the world find a cure for Covid-19, coronavirus. And that takes me to cure. What does this word mean? It means to relieve the symptoms of a disease, you could say he's cured of the disease he no longer has the disease. Let's listen one more time. So long put his fortune and talent behind searching for cures for this global health crisis and-- And let's keep going. Health crisis and for other global health crises-- A crisis. It's when things have gotten bad, it's dramatic. We are desperate to find an answer. Let's listen to how he uses it again. Health crisis and for other global health crises. So he calls what we're in a health crisis. And then he goes on to say other global health crises. Health crisis and for other global health crises. So really, that probably should have been plural, and the plural isn't crisis, it's crises. So this is a word where the plural changes one of the vowel sounds in the word. So crisis, singular, crises is plural. So it's not crisises, but crises. Let's listen one more time again, the last time he says it, he probably should have used the plural crises. Health crisis and for other global health crises. Let's keep going. He joins me now, Bill, thanks for being with us. Looking at where the US is right now in this pandemic, and during the fall and the winter, cases on the rise, not just in small clusters but across most of the nation-- A cluster is a group of something. So for example, a cluster of bananas it grows in a tight bunch a group. So when the coronavirus is in little clusters, then that means it hasn't really spread too far and wide yet. This group of people has it. This group of people has it. And you hope that that's how it stays. You hope it doesn't spread further than that. But in this case, he's talking about how it has. Cases on the rise, not just in small clusters but across most of the nation-- Not just in small clusters. Unfortunately, but it's really spread. Let's listen one more time. Cases on the rise, not just in small clusters but across most of the nation-- Let's keep going. How concerned are you about the months ahead? Now I want to talk about the pronunciation of the word months. He dropped the TH sound and instead made a T sound. Months. Months. Months. Months. And this is a common pronunciation, we'll hear Bill Gates use it later,