1-fraught 令人极度忧虑的，十分担心的

2-respirator 防护面具

It's hard to think of a symbol of Covid-19 more fraught than the N95 respirator.

3-flimsy 薄的

4-polymer 聚合物，高分子

How did a flimsy polymer cup become the most significant health device of the 21st century?

5-glorified 美其名的

6-airborne 空气传播的

They weren't much more than a glorified handkerchief tied around one's face, and they weren't designed to filter airborne disease-that's still not the point of surgical masks today.

7-autopsy 尸体剖检

8-plague 瘟疫

But after conducting an autopsy on one of the victims, Wu determined that the plague was spread through the air.

9-hearty 强劲的

10-gauze 纱布

11-inhalation （空气等的）吸入

Expanding upon the surgery masks he'd seen in the west, Wu developed a heartier mask from gauze and cotton, which wrapped securely around one's face and added several layers of cloth to filter inhalations.

12-descendant 衍生物

The N95 mask is a descendant of Wu's design.

13-team up 与……组队，与……协作

So in the 1970s, the Bureau of Mines and the National Institute Occupational Safety and Health teamed up on creating the first criteria for what they called " single use respirators."

14-drug-resistant 耐药的，抗药的

N95 respirators were in industrial applications for decades before the need a respirator circled back to clinical settings in the 1990s with the rise of drug-resistant tuberculosis, which infected many healthcare workers.

15-necessitate 使……成为必需，需要

Even still, respirators are rarely used in hospitals to this day because it's only outbreaks like COVID-19 that the necessitate so much protection.