This story was told by a person incarcerated at Donovan.
Caller: When I would push him for – I’ve been in this facility for a couple of years and I used to be an ATA. Meaning I used to push people that were in wheelchairs that cannot wheel themselves to medical or wheel themselves to the chow hall. I used to take this man to the chow hall every morning to sit down and eat breakfast with this man. And when he died, Oh that, that hurt.
But the thing was, when everybody had COVID, they were not giving us nothing. You could have a high temp, you could have problems breathing and they won’t take you nowhere. And basically if you died, you died.
They were not giving us nothing for a fever, they’re not giving us no, nothing for a headache. Two types of medication. There was too many people that caught COVID that they were overwhelmed. They got this facility, I know they [unintelligible], they were not prepared for what happened.
I have no animosity towards the staff. I know that there’s some bad apples and some cops that they really don’t care about us. They think that we’re the scum of the earth. But there’s also the medical staff that do care, that do give a shit.
There’s officers that do care and yeah it was crazy. But then they sent us to quarantine in a building where six people died. And I was like, one of them was a canteen worker that I knew for years too and it was mainly elderly. You know, if you were old and had health complications, you were likely one to pass away.
There was another old man from San Diego actually too, oh man. Just broke my heart. Just elderly people that were just dying and this frustrated me because I had a high fever, I couldn’t breathe, and there was no fever reducer, no type of medication, nothing.
Nothing. All they did was come, take your temperature, take your, your vitals. Basically your blood pressure, test to see you’re good in oxygen, in your lungs, and just because and I had a fever and I didn’t understand like, I know when you’re cooking up a 104, 106, fever they’d take you to the hospital or something to cool you down but.
But they did not do nothing and it amazes, not amaze me but just like, upsetted me and I was just like, it was real weird how easy our, this pandemic has just toppled society. Even us, being in prison it just like, really knocked us, knocked everybody down it was crazy.
