Mixed COVID News From the BOP – Update for October 15, 2021 | Legal Information Services Associates LLC

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BOP OFFICIAL COVID NUMBERS DOWN, BUT THE NEWS ISN’T REALLY THAT GOOD

As of yesterday, the Bureau of Prisons reported 261 inmate COVID cases, down 20% from a week before. Staff cases were only down 6%, to 455, and COVID was still in 113 of 122 BOP facilities. Inmate deaths now total at least 277, with another death of an inmate who – according to the BOP – had previously “recovered” according to CDC guidelines.

If the BOP is correct – and it always wants people to believe it is – 64% of all inmate deaths in the last seven months have been people who had COVID before and recovered. This is real-life data that refutes the government’s canard in compassionate release filings that if you have already had COVID, you won’t catch it again, and if you do, it won’t be any worse than the prior round.

Other unsurprising but bad news last week: the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that prisons had “consistently higher COVID-19 incidence and standardized mortality rates… relative to the overall US population in the first year of the pandemic. While COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates peaked in early 2021, with a decline since then, “the prison population had several times greater cumulative toll of COVID-19 relative to the overall US population.”

And more: Two real-world studies published last week confirmed that the immune protection offered by two doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine drops off after as little as two months. The studies, from Israel and Qatar, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, support arguments that even fully vaccinated people are not nearly as COVID bulletproof as early CDC prognostications made them out to be.

As of last Friday, 66.84% of inmates were vaccinated, up 1.24 points from a week before. But only 55.21% of staff had been vaxxed, and that number was up a paltry 0.46 points from the week before.

According to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s survey earlier this year, 63% of the BOP staff reported already been vaccinated or were planning to get vaccinated as soon as possible, by the BOP or otherwise. However, nearly 20% said that they were not sure whether they would get vaccinated and another 18% said they did not plan to get vaccinated at all. But President Biden has ordered that all federal employees get vaccinated, and BOP Director Michael Carvajal issued an internal memo on September 29, 2021, implementing Biden’s order and specifying “you must be fully vaccinated by November 22, 2021, or you will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including removal from the federal service.”

Brandy Moore, a national union officer for Council of Prison Locals C-33, said there has been a lot of pushback and concern about the mandate for a variety of reasons, including “this was not a condition of employment, flu shots are not mandated, there is limited research on the long-term effects of the shots and inmates are not required to be vaccinated.” She told Government Executive, “The national union is very concerned about the amount of people that have actually said ‘I’m going to retire early, I’m going to quit, I’m going to go somewhere else. I don’t feel like this is a mandate that is constitutional…’ She said she estimated the BOP “may lose 10-20% of our staff,” which is “troublesome” because “staffing is our No. 1 concern” and has been since 2016.

John Butkovich, acting president for the union local representing 450 BOP workers at FCC Florence, told the Pueblo Chieftain that “he fears some correctional officers will quit when COVID-19 vaccinations become mandatory by November 22.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last Tuesday on the death of Tammy Lamere, the eighth inmate to die from COVID-19 at FMC Carswell. One inmate told the paper that the “hospital unit at Carswell is ‘infected with COVID’.”

“We are all scared and worried that this is not under control and we are being taken one at a time,” the inmate told the newspaper via email. “We are in trouble here in Carswell… the most vulnerable… and we are dying.” Another said, “In the world, any human sick as she is and with all her medical issues would be hospitalized and supported and cared for,” Blake wrote in an email. “Here they live or don’t. But one thing is promised, you will suffer and be alone.”