This story was told by a person incarcerated at Calipatria.
UCI: And how is COVID, being handled at your facility at the beginning of the outbreak and has that changed as it’s progressed?
Caller: Yeah, in the beginning it was cool. It was like, laid back, we just heard about it in the news. And then, and it was chill. Like, we’d just hear about in the news and you really didn’t think like, at first I thought it was kind of like a hoax, like just a regular fever, you know what I mean.
Like it wasn’t that drastic, it wasn’t that bad. And then people started actually catching it in prison and people started getting really sick. And then, I felt the symptoms. So I was like oh, shit.
It really is real. And then, they started providing us with masks and stuff like that. And, yeah, that’s about it.
UCI: And what can your facility do to make the situation better for you guys?
Caller: Mmm, I guess. I don’t know. Start opening up visits.
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: Visits would be cool. Because yeah some people, and maybe programs also. Because like the majority of our housing unit, is, there’s 200 people housed in this unit, right?
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: And then, the majority of us already caught it. So, we can’t pass it to anybody, or get it again right?
And then, but they’re only, like they’re not allowing us to get haircuts and stuff like that and-.
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: Just little stuff that, that people need, to make you feel good. You know what I mean. Like a haircut always make me feel better.
UCI: Yeah.
Caller: And for them to deprive you that, that’s not cool. You get me? But, yeah.
