According to mattvsjapan, if you can’t recall at the time of review and have to press “again”, stability decreases, which means in order for anki to guess correctly when the card should be tested next, the ease factor must be <1. The lowest possible is 1.3 so anki will overestimate the time it takes for the memory to reach target retrievability & thus the review will take place when retrievability is too low. The card will likely be failed and anki’s guess will overestimate leading to another fail and so on. Once you fail once, it seems like anki sets you up to fail the card forever. Is this correct thinking?
Your question does not make sense. By default Anki resets a card when you fail it. Ease factors only come into play when you answer a card correctly, and a value less than 1 would mean delays got shorter, not longer.