This story is told by a person incarcerated at Solano.
Caller: It was just sort of scary because we didn’t have any guidance. We didn’t have any real rules that made any sense. And some of the rules that they did come up with initially seem contradictory. As telling us to stand six feet apart or six feet away from somebody, but then putting us back in the cells where you’re never further than three feet away from your cellmate.
And then allowing us initially to walk to the chow hall, which is a community chow hall and being two feet away from the person sitting across from you at the table, you know, one foot next to you, two feet across from you. So, a lot of the spread, I think, just came from people not really knowing how to manage. I know that was a long answer, but that’s how it was in the beginning.
UCI: Yeah. Thank you. So how, has the vaccine – vaccination situation been like at Solano?
Caller: I don’t know. I don’t have the information about how many people or the percentage of how many people have been vaccinated but people have been vaccinated. It’s not something that’s forced. They’re allowing people to be vaccinated if they’d like to. They are making it available.
I seem to be aware that we were being allowed vaccinations prior to what the public knew about. ‘Cause I kept seeing it on TV like, this group of people get them, this group of people get ’em, not prisoners until this point or that point, when they were saying prisoners weren’t going to get ’em, we were already getting vaccinated.
You know, when I say we, I mean prisoners. It’s not me personally. I refused to be vaccinated. I’m not going to get the vaccine, and I don’t mind answering if you want to know about why I won’t personally take it.
UCI: Yeah, that’d be – that’d be great.
Caller: I will not take a vaccine because I’m Black.
I think maybe a further question. I can ask and answer my own question on that one. So, what does that have to deal with you taking it? Well, I have an inherent distrust of the government, and I remember Tuskegee.
If you are a college student, I don’t know if you are or not. But if you are a college student, I don’t know if you’re old enough to know anything about the Tuskegee Airmen and how they were given a disease just so the government could test them and see how it would react in their bodies.
And that’s one of the main reasons why, and because initially, it seemed that, people of color, in particular, Black people and Hispanic people seem to be suffering disproportionately, from not the vaccine, but from the disease itself. You know, then that started conspiracy theories that maybe there’s something out there that’s intended to hurt people of color or shorten the lifespan of people of color. And to me, seems like the next logical thing, if that were true, would be to include something in the vaccine that was specifically engineered to help a breach those ends.
I know that sounds diabolical, but I’m not the one making the vaccines. So, I’m not going to take a vaccine, you know, I’ll wait for herd immunity.
