All serious languages have unsafe constructs that you can use as an escape hatch, even Haskell or Rust. Keeping the ability to do dangerous stuff in C++ isn't a compromise, it is vital. Building tools that makes it easier to separate the unsafe parts is a good thing, other languages got there first but having the possibility to clean up those billions of lines of C++ is great.

Also, it's time to lay off your metaphor, it obscures the issues and trades just on disgust value.

It's not inner decay. It just more possibilities C++ allows you to do, which can give you more power if you know what you are doing.