This story was told by a person incarcerated at Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility.
Caller: The police. The police are not taking the vaccine for some reason. I just know that you get a rapport with the people that you’re around daily, so I asked a couple of the officers, like, “Hey, you guys take the COVID-19?” And they were like, they were like, “No, we haven’t taken it. We’re not going to take it.”
I’m like, I don’t understand why not. You know what I mean, they’re officers, they would take it, but no.
There’s a lot of fear in it. Half the population of inmates, I’ll say, 60 percent took the, the COVID, the other 40 percent denied it. They came with- well they came with the Pfizer, Moderna, and the Johnson and Johnson. Even though they pulled the Johnson and Johnson, they still gave inmates Johnson and Johnson here. And, some inmates got sick off of it, off the Johnson and Johnson, real bad too. It messed them up.
UCI: Mm. So, do you think that made it worse, obviously, for other people to take it in the future?
Caller: Well people just literally I would say, I would say there’s a future shock to it. I mean, I feel fine, I feel good, you know. The medication I’m taking, you know, I got depressed. There was a lot of depression behind that because my wife was going through a lot and, in here, it was hard.
At first, you had to pay for, like, phone calls and store and stuff and she couldn’t support all that. Plus, trying to pay a lawyer off and everything.
You know, she worked and her job wasn’t sure if she was gonna, for like a month and a half, she had to get unemployment for like a month and a half at the beginning. That was like February, March or April of last year when it first started. After that, she had work, but to pay the bills, you know, house, no. Car, no. Oh, my God.
So, it’s a little bit better, but I was stressed out to the point that I got diabetes now. I stress-ate, and I got overweight in here, and psych medication mixed with my stress and mixed with the COVID pandemic.
I’m in here, actually, for the COVID ‘cause I couldn’t find work. I couldn’t help out and, like I said, I came June last year, going into COVID. It was, like, one thing after another. It was bad.
