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Kelly gave a small shake of her head and continued: "I’ve spent the last year studying reservoir conditions The CDC tracks anyone with a KA-related ’s ever really been done with the data So I thought I’d start"

"Hey, that’s not true," I protested "George was in all kinds of studies There was always so to poke her in the eyes and see what happened"

"There have been studies of the individual kinds of reservoir conditions, but nobody’s really looked into the syndro, farther back into the couch "Why does it happen? Why does it happen in specific parts of the body? How is it that the virus is contained? Everything we know says that anyone with a reservoir condition should a until they die It doesn’t inal nod "Uh-huh That’s when I found it"

"Found what?" asked Alaric

"Look at the statistics" Kelly sighed, tilting her face up toward the ceiling "The first column is population The second column is percent of population with a known reservoir condition--type is irrelevant in this instance"

I squinted at the numbers I’d seen the nuuess: "Column three is KA-related deaths in the last year?"

"Yeah"

"So what’s the fourth colu horror She’d s out just a little faster than the rest of us, and she didn’t sound happy about her epiphany "Oh, my God It’s--that’s the number of people with reservoir conditions who died, isn’t it?"

Kelly nodded

I squinted at the nu I was about to open ain, Shaun

I looked And I understood

"This can’t be right," I said, suddenly cold Reservoir conditions don’t increase the odds of viral amplification; they actually tend to reduce them, since most people who suffer from a latent form of KA wind up even more paranoid about infection than the rest of the population People like George, ent out into the field, or E horses even after she developed retinal KA, were the exception rather than the rule