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Quarantine has shaped our buildings, cities, and borders for centuries, yet, as a concept, it remains both feared and misunderstood. In Until Proven Safe, journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley climb through the ruins of quarantine hospitals in Venice, Dubrovnik, and Malta, don hardhats to visit a new federal quarantine facility in the heart of the United States, and attend simulated pandemics -- one eerily similar to COVID-19 -- in New York and Washington D.C. Although quarantine, at its heart, works by separating people suspected of illness from those known to be well, even this simple distinction leads to entire realms of philosophical uncertainty, ethical risk, and the potential abuse of political power. What if we don't know we are infected? Quarantine has been an effective medical tool for 600 years, but it is also an unusually poetic metaphor for any number of moral and religious ills: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside you will be revealed.