greatest trick the CDC ever pulled was convincing the world containment wasn’t possible,” she said. “Our dignity was lost in not even trying to contain it.” She wondered if perhaps they had undergone a process similar to her own—a descent, which ended with them devoting lots of energy to appearing to know what to do when they did not. “In the beginning it’s filling in gaps,” said Charity. “You let the falsehood continue until slowly the falsehood takes over. By the time you’re done, you are no longer just filling blank spots. You have this burden of maintaining optics.
