We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES… OR IT’S GOING TO BE
In its never-ending game of COVID whack-a-mole, the Federal Bureau of Prisons continues to tamp down outbreaks in one facility only to have the virus spike in another. Last week, inmate cases climbed 8% over the week before to 286, and staff numbers increased slightly from 237 to 242. Significantly, COVID is now present in 88% of BOP facilities, up six from last week’s 101-prison count.
The BOP reported two more inmate deaths, one at Butner and another at FMC Fort Worth. Both were of people who had previously recovered from COVID, meaning that since March 2021, 56% of all inmate COVID deaths were people who had caught the virus once before but suffered lighter symptoms. So much for the trope that recovering from a previous bout of COVID protects a person from reinfection…
Alderson, USP Allenwood, Waseca, FCI Pollock, and Coleman Medium all reported ten or more inmate cases as of last Friday. Carswell and Rochester reported more than ten staff cases.
The BOP’s problem is COVID-19 delta. And now, here comes the COVID-19 omicron variant to disrupt the BOP even more.
Omicron is spreading so quickly that almost anything I write will be outdated by the time you read it. As of last Friday, New York State broke its previous record for new daily cases, set 11 months ago. “This is changing so quickly. The numbers are going up exponentially by day,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Friday. Yesterday, outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told CNN, “If Americans don’t take COVID-19 seriously, the country could see 1 million daily infections.”
Nationally, the number of confirmed omicron cases increased 97% from Friday to Saturday. Omicron is now spreading in 44 states. The US is currently averaging 121,707 new Covid-19 cases each day with 1,286 deaths each day. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN last Thursday, “I think we’re really just about to experience a viral blizzard. I think in the next three to eight weeks, we’re going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of Delta, and we’re not yet sure exactly how that’s going to work out.”
Yesterday, outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told CNN, “If Americans don’t take COVID-19 seriously, the country could see 1 million daily infections.”
Take it seriously? While 92% plus of federal workers have heeded the President’s order to get vaccinated, as of last Friday, only 68% of the BOP staff have done so. And how do you think the virus gets into otherwise locked-down facilities? The BOP – where every change of watch is a superspreader event.
There’s more bad news. An Oxford University study released last week found that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are much less effective at warding off COVID omicron than previous variants of the coronavirus, especially beyond 28 days after the second dose. of either vaccine. When omicron was introduced to those samples, scientists reported “a substantial fall” in the neutralizing antibodies that fight off COVID compared to the immune responses seen against earlier variants. The research paper noted that some vaccine recipients “failed to neutralize [the virus] at all.”
The Johnson & Johnson “vaccine produced virtually no antibody protection against omicron, “underlining the new strain’s ability to get around one pillar of the body’s defenses,” according to one of the researchers. A Dec 16 Imperial College of London study found that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron coronavirus variant is more than five times higher, with no sign of being milder than prior COVID variants.
If that’s not enough, last Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended adults take the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine over the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine after agency officials reported the rate of a severe but rare blood-clotting condition was higher than previously detected.
Expect more lockdowns, restrictions, and inmate deaths.
NPR, U.S. could see 1 million cases per day, warns departing NIH director Francis Collins (December 19, 2021)
NBC, ‘This Is a Whole New Animal:’ NY Reports Highest Single-Day Case Total of Pandemic (December 17, 2021)
CNN, The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant (December 17, 2021)
Wanwisa Dejnirattisai, et al., Reduced neutralisation of SARS-COV-2 Omicron-B.1.1.529 variant by post-immunisation serum (Oxford University, December 13, 2021)
Bloomberg Quint, J&J Shot Loses Antibody Protection Against Omicron in Study (December 14, 2021)
Neil Ferguson, et al., Growth, population distribution and immune escape of Omicron in England (Imperial College – London, December 16, 2021)
Wall Street Journal, CDC Recommends Pfizer, Moderna Covid-19 Vaccines Over J&J’s (December 16, 2021)
– Thomas L. Root