This story was told by a person incarcerated at New Folsom.
Caller: To be honest, there were people here – they’re just panicking and make you say that we’re not going to make it. And it was just going to infect everybody in here, and there’s no way about it, you know, that we can’t contain it because the air conditioning here, it just – everybody breathes the same air because it just comes through one tube and just goes and spreads all over.
So, they were saying – people were covering up their vents, they were covering the bottom of the doors. They would take their shoes off when they’d go in the cell and clean them up. I mean, everybody was just doing their own little thing to supposedly, you know, not to be infected.
Clean up the phone every time we use the phone or something. Right now, every time here we use the phone, the staff gives you a wipe so you can wipe the phone with a disinfectant little wipe, right, that they give you. And, I mean, I think they did a good job containing the virus in this prison. I give them props for that. They were really concerned about – hello?
UCI: Oh, no, yeah, I was going to say it sounds like the staff was regularly tested then.
Caller: Yeah. Oh, the staff were being tested?
UCI: Yeah, in the beginning –
Caller: Yeah.
UCI: You said, you know, not a lot of you got infected, so it sounds like staff was consistently being tested then.
Caller: Oh, yeah. Right away, they were the ones that – every time they’ll come into the unit, they had to get a, they set up their own temperature, they’ll take your temperature. Just like a hospital, like you’re going inside a hospital. They’ll have masks right there. The staff reports to be sick of any cold or fever going up, they would not let them in at all.
It’s just they stopped the visits, actually physical visits for our family members, our girlfriends, you know, wife, they were not allowed to come in at all. And they’re still not allowed up to this point right now. So what they’re doing right now is they started, they came up with this good idea in a way that is positive because they’re going to allow us to have this, like, tablet sort now that I guess it’s going to have a type of gadget, technology that we’re going to be able to talk to family members maybe, like, once a week and be able to see them.
But, it’s actually going to happen. They’re going to do it. Because that’s the way a lot of people can afford to have – get visits because they live too far away. And they live too far away. So, basically, that’s going to help us a lot.
