Six on History: The Rona -- a Year On
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When America went into lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, the incarcerated were locked in with it.
"Rodney Bush, 53, is serving the last year of a 10-year federal prison sentence for robbery. His life, he says, “is like two different books.” In one, “I grew up in an educated, middle-class family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I did well in school and went on to study at Howard University. I have a beautiful daughter and granddaughter.” In the other, Bush says, “I was a casualty of divorce, raised by a single working mom who didn’t have much time to supervise me. Because I was smart and school came easily, no one really noticed when I became a juvenile delinquent. I started using drugs around age 13.”
According to data collected since March 2020 by The Marshall Project and the Associated Press, at least 386,765 men and women in American prisons have been infected with the coronavirus. That’s one in five state and federal prisoners, an infection rate more than four times that of the general population. For at least 2,459 inmates nationwide, the virus was a death sentence. Prison staff have not been spared: At least 105,602 employees in US prisons have contracted COVID-19, and nearly 200 have died.
I first heard about the coronavirus watching the news from Wuhan, China. At first, I didn’t think about it a whole lot, but when it jumped to this country, I started to become concerned. I kept hearing the advice to avoid congested areas and large groups. I knew that if it hit the prison, it would spread like wildfire. There would be no way to contain it.
Last March, they decided to lock down all the prisons to keep the virus out. Later, they handed out face masks, but most people don’t [wear them], and with one officer for about 300 inmates, they don’t enforce it. It’s just not possible. The only time they’d make people wear them was if someone was coming through for a tour or inspection.
When we went on lockdown, my daily routine came to a screeching halt. All programming and visitation were canceled. There were no more classes, no religious services, nothing to keep our minds busy. It was very depressing and discouraging. Guys were walking around lethargic. Some were sleeping all day. Older guys worried they’d been left to die in here.
I sleep in a six-man bunk room. There’s a guy above me and a guy next to me. They told us to sleep “head to toe” to keep from getting sick.
The first COVID case in my building was reported in October. A few nights later, I woke up and heard my bunkmate thrashing around in his bed. I thought he was having a nightmare, so I tried to wake him. By the expression on his face, I could tell he was really in distress. He said, “Rod, I can’t breathe.” We went to the on-duty officer for help, but he said there were no medical staff on duty. The officer said he’d just have to “tough it out” until morning. My friend was panicking. He was really scaring me. But the way it works in here, if you don’t fall down on the floor, they don’t call an ambulance.
All of us were tested a few days later. Everyone in my room had it. Out of 232 guys in the whole building, all but eight or nine had it. They removed those guys and locked the rest of us in.
I have health conditions that increase my vulnerability to the virus, so I was praying I wouldn’t die or wind up on a ventilator. I was feeling pretty bad for a while. I lost my taste and smell for a week, suffered the worst headaches I’ve ever had in my life, and felt pain in my kidneys and legs that lasted for weeks.
The craziest part was how they scrambled after the virus hit — working backwards to address it. After our building was hit in October, they started running around putting up signs everywhere, installing soap dispensers, putting six-foot markers on the floor. But it’s hard to stop the water when the dam has already burst.
When they learned that some state inspectors were coming in, they raced to make everything look as good as possible. One of the inspectors noticed the mold growing all over the bathroom ceiling because of poor ventilation. Instead of fixing it, they just had some of the inmates scrub it with bleach and cover it up with paint.
We noticed they put only rookie officers in here after the virus hit. The senior officers wouldn’t set foot in here. The unit team staff stopped making their rounds and locked themselves in their offices. We were on our own.
The prison’s medical director came in for a “town hall.” She and her staff were dressed in decontamination suits, with face shields and eye goggles, the whole works. This made us feel like we were toxic. She told us we’d just have to “ride it out.” She said they’d let us off lockdown after everyone in the building tested negative.
After this meeting, animosity started to build. It was obvious that there was no plan. Depression set in deeper. Some guys were sicker than others, but we were all suffering in our own ways. My roommates and I recovered, but a couple older guys were taken to the hospital and I never saw them again.
After 45 days, they suddenly announced that the lock-in was over. I don’t know why. My last test said I was positive. But they told us we were all recovered, just like that. Nobody believed it. They sent us back to work that day. We all thought this was crazy, but we put our masks on and did as we were told.
The worst part is that it’s dragging on. New cases keep popping up all the time. I don’t want to use the word “hopeless.” But it messes with your hope a little bit. Everything feels out of your control. It’s very depressing. There’s nothing we can do about it. You just have to learn to live with it.
I’m at the age now where I can feel my own mortality. I lost my mother in the middle of all of this and I couldn’t even be there. This pandemic has put me through all different emotions: fear, because of the horror stories I’ve heard about people dying from the virus; anger, because it seemed as if we were being forsaken; hopelessness, since we have no control over our own welfare in here. With no programming and no visitation, the days creep by and I feel more isolated than ever.
What keeps me going is that I focus on the future. My family helps. It’s a joy to hear my new granddaughter laugh or cry over the phone. I try to stay focused on what life will be like after this.
The virus is in here to stay. That’s how it seems to me. Thank God I don’t have that much time left. The way things are going, I will be out of this place before the virus is."
Liz Oyer is senior litigation counsel to the Federal Public Defender in Maryland.
"A year into this pandemic, we have the opportunity to reflect on the crucial breakthroughs that have shaped our response to the coronavirus, as well as how we’ve in some ways failed our most vulnerable. Here’s a look at what we’ve learned about this virus — how it spreads, what it does to the body and how we can outsmart it — and how the pandemic became the latest in a long line of historical events to highlight deeply-rooted racial and socioeconomic inequity in this country.
The coronavirus can be unpredictable, but we’ve learned how it spreadsResearchers have made remarkable progress in solving the many puzzles the coronavirus has presented, but some still remain unanswered.
We now know that the virus spread across the globe so efficiently in part because of its ability to be transmitted by asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people — those who are infectious in days leading up to the onset of symptoms associated with COVID-19. Both groups may not be aware that they’re infectious, meaning they could be less likely to take precautions that prevent transmission.
It’s not yet entirely clear how much asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic spread contributes to case counts. But at least one recent study from the CDC suggests that asymptomatic carriers could account for more than half of all transmissions.
The reality of superspreaders, or the small fraction of COVID-positive people who account for a disproportionate number of new infections, presented yet another complication when it comes to controlling the coronavirus.
While it’s estimated that an infected person in the U.S. passes COVID-19 on to one other contact on average, some transmit the disease to far more people. Although there’s no strong consensus among scientists yet, research from Hong Kong last year estimated that just 19 percent of cases caused 80 percent of local transmissions, while around 70 percent of cases didn’t transmit the virus at all.
Animation by Megan McGrew/PBS Newshour
That phenomenon helps explain “superspreader events,” which researchers suspect happen when an infected person who is shedding a large amount of virus infects a disproportionate number of fellow attendees.
“If you’re just the unlucky one that’s in the room with one of those people at that time, and you breathe the same air, there’s a good chance you’re going to get infected,” said Kim Prather, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at the University of California San Diego.
In addition to confusing transmission patterns, the toll the coronavirus takes on those who become infected varies dramatically. Some COVID-19 patients get severely ill, and others don’t. A yet-unconfirmed portion of survivors, estimated now to be about 10 percent, experience lasting symptoms weeks and months after most people recover."
"Judgment has become as much a part of the COVID-19 pandemic as a pile of crumpled masks. Seeking to avoid criticism, some people (and organizations) have been known to photoshop masks onto faces in their social media posts. Others, seeking to criticize, have blown up once-friendly group chats over COVID-questionable invitations — Heidi Cruz's neighbors providing only the most high-profile example.
Those who've been hunkered down for months can't stand seeing their friends' selfies from inside bars and restaurants and airplanes. Friendships have ended over arguments about the safety of attending a protest or going on a date. And it's not only double-maskers condemning maskless "covidiots." It's the eye-rolling reserved for anyone still wiping down their groceries.
Even vaccines, which ought to be cause for celebration, have become a source of tension, magnified by distinctions in eligibility criteria — smokers versus teachers, diabetics versus trash collectors. Looking at my state's vaccination schedule, I seem to rank after "shipping port and terminal workers" but before "bottled beverage industry workers." Somehow, it feels like a comment on my worth.
So along with anxiety, confinement and isolation, we've suffered 12 months of resenting other people's travel photos on Instagram and their roomy home offices on Zoom. Twelve months of fraught conversations with friends and family over whether going to the grocery store means you're still quarantining — or selfishly risking the health of an underpaid Instacart shopper. A whole category of derisive internet meme is devoted to people who wear their masks below their noses.
The acrimony is understandable. Passing judgment probably had a useful evolutionary function back in the days when humans were running from saber-toothed tigers, said Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist. Humans survived only with one another's help, and it was useful to have a sense of what was right and wrong for the group. The pandemic has thrown us back into a world where the collective looms large: With a deadly disease in the air, each person's decisions affect other people's health.
At the same time, local authorities have often left people to make up their own minds as to what's risky and what's not. This creates a perfect breeding ground for censure. Expect it to get worse as states drop their COVID restrictions.
Righteous indignation has an addictive quality, said Eurich. But all this side-eyeing is exhausting. "There's an empirical link between being overly judgmental and the amount of stress we feel," she said. Getting worked up about other people's behavior "is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die."
If shaming is so costly, why do people still do it? Eurich said it's psychologically easier to decide that so-and-so is a bad person than to accept the dissonant idea that a good person might make a "bad" choice.
Shaming also offers an illusion of control. "He went to a bar, so of course he got COVID" is a way of keeping distant from someone else's situation — and hoping our own choices are protecting us. It shields us from recognizing how little control we really have over a noisy, indifferent and sometimes dangerous world.
The pandemic has undermined our mental wellbeing. By any measure, rates of anxiety and depression are up. And judgment is just wearing us down further.
It's also undermining public health. Yes, norms around behaviors like masking are good. But if people know they'll be judged for testing positive, they'll avoid getting tested. Associating getting COVID with being irresponsible nudges people to lie to contact tracers, to household members ("Yes, of course I wore my mask the whole time") and even to symptom-checkers.
Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, historians noted that after the 1918 flu pitted fearful neighbor against fearful neighbor, the people who'd lived through that era really didn't want to talk about it. I'm starting to understand why.
Eurich said ideally we'd be able to muster some compassion for each other — and ourselves — in this difficult time. "Forgiveness is a superpower. It actually helps us function in the best possible way," she said. "Empathy is the antidote to ruminating about other people's choices."
But she concedes that some people might find such perspective-taking a bridge too far. For them, a different approach can be nearly as helpful: The next time someone makes an unwise choice, make a conscious decision to refrain from thinking of them as a bad person. This sort of motivated choice reduces anger and, after 12 months of pandemic, can provide a vacation from judgment.
As vacations go, that's not one on my bucket list. But with real travel off the table, a visit to the Isle of Indifference doesn't sound bad."
Sarah Green Carmichael is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. She was previously managing editor of ideas and commentary at Barron's, and an executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she hosted the HBR Ideacast.
"Somebody needs to school Governor Charlie Baker.
You cannot demand students return to class without a proactive plan to protect the teachers who are not only educating children, but are taking care of them throughout the day.
And demonizing hard-working teachers risking their lives in his rush to reopen schools is ridiculous. Hiding behind his senior adviser, Tim Buckley, he, how would Michelle Obama put it? Went low.
“The teachers’ unions continue to demand the Commonwealth take hundreds of thousands of vaccines away from the sickest, oldest and most vulnerable residents in Massachusetts and divert them to the unions’ members, 95 percent of which are under age 65,” Buckley said Thursday.
It’s not a greedy ask to want to safely expedite and localize the process. They weren’t trying to thieve from the elderly.
“It is sad, and frankly, reckless that on the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down our state, Governor Charlie Baker is pitting one vulnerable group against another,” a joint reply from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, AFT-Massachusetts, and Boston Teachers Union read.
The administration is creating a narrative to divert attention from its inability to prioritize public health meaningfully.
While the sick and elderly and especially those in group homes do need to be front and center in the rollout, it’s worth noting not everyone over 64 is unhealthy, in assisted living, and unable to quarantine a little while longer.
Nuance. Try it, governor. Perhaps if Baker hadn’t been so busy packing his pandemic advisory board with business leaders, he would be less defensive and more sympathetic to the valid concerns of educators.
Last month, Baker insisted it was time to bring remote learning to a close. Yet it wasn’t until a week ago, under federal authority, that Baker fell in line with what his administration called “reasonable efforts to prioritize educator vaccinations.”
Real generous, Charlie. Less spin and more truth: Counting on kids to wear their masks correctly, to maintain 6 feet of distance — oh, I mean 3 feet — and for everything to go just right while teachers go unvaccinated and are expected to gamble with their lives, is reckless.
Sure, evidence suggests schools aren’t COVID-19 hot spots. Until they are.
In Florida, there were 21 new coronavirus infections and hundreds of exposures reported in Manatee Public Schools on Monday. One might say well, Florida is going to Florida. Except, nah.
There are already variants of the virus. If we aren’t safe, it could further mutate before we vaccinate.
Baker wants us back to business and all students in class? Perhaps a thorough vaccination rollout, a working website, and way more consultations with epidemiologists should have come before relaxing pandemic capacity limits.
As of March 1, with only our most vulnerable and our essential workers in the midst of being vaccinated, Baker announced the relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions.
Indoor venues, like concert halls and theaters, can open at half capacity up to 500 people. Restaurants no longer have a limited capacity. Six people can sit at a table. And in less than two weeks, the arenas can open at 12 percent capacity, a few thousand folk in some instances.
Celebratory gatherings will be on again, too. Couples can host indoor weddings of up to 100 people. You think they are going to be masked and distant on the dance floor?
We’re headed toward the other side of this virus. Numbers are way down. Things are looking hopeful. But we aren’t in the clear quite yet.
Over the last few weeks, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as Dr. Anthony Fauci, have warned against this type of disregard for the very real dangers we still face.
“It’s important to remember where we are in the pandemic. Things are tenuous,” said Walensky, a member of the state’s economic Reopening Advisory Board and the former head of infectious diseases at MGH. “Now is not the time to relax restrictions.”
Making it easier for people to party inside before we’ve reached the general public phase of this rollout is a blueprint for a big, infectious mess of coronavirus. Forcing schools to reopen and vilifying teachers for wanting vaccines is foolish at best, cruel at worst.
If anyone is not doing the math, it’s Baker."
