Bacteriologists and doctors jetted to the area were dying with the rest, caught in disease for which there was no answer.
The propaganda attempts to make it seem as though cures were near were flatly not believed. Suez was remembered, but was remembered as a hoax—and the country had had its complete fill of hoaxes.
Randolph had a number of what he referred to—and reported—as "crank calls," asking Witch to try its might. He arranged for every call that reached him to be traced immediately. He remained in seclusion.
Oswald had a few of the "crank calls" and reported them as such.
Bill Howard had a number of calls, and didn't report them.
Bill Howard worried, and added two and two, and sweated, and reported the details of Formosa each night. The details giantized in gruesomeness until their very content was too much for the airways, and he had to censor them as he gave them out.
Bill Howard sweated in the cold January weather, and each day he ferreted further, seeking out the realities behind the censorship that lay heavy now even over the wires. By phone, by gossip, by hearsay and by know-how he got the stories behind the story—the real horrors that he couldn't broadcast.
Sometimes he rebelled at the censors and himself as one of them, but he knew better than to rebel. It's facing us all, he thought. We each have the right to know.
This is the way the world ends, he thought. With a whimper that comes after the agony, when agony is too great.
And he kept remembering a little girl walking towards a camera with big eyes.