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LADIES LEAD THE WAY IN COVID NUMBERS JUMP

Bureau of Prisons inmate COVID numbers have jumped 65% in the last two weeks to 243, fueled by a spike at FCI Waseca, where 125 female inmates were sick last Friday. That number has dropped by half as of yesterday, due in no small part to the BOP’s habit of declaring any inmate to be recovered after t days, no matter her condition as long as she has no fever.

The BOP’s technique, a bastardization of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, no doubt accounts for the fact that 56% of all inmate COVID deaths in the last nine months have been of prisoners who had been declared “recovered” at some point in the past 20 months by the agency. Some inmates have reported that they were declared “recovered” ten days after COVID was diagnosed after nothing more than a quick temperature check. Others have reported that temps weren’t even taken: after ten days (provided you were not dead), you were considered to be “recovered” and sent on your way.

Case in point: an inmate whose death was reported today had COVID last February. “On Tuesday, February 16, 2021, in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, [he] was converted to a status of recovered, following the completion of medical isolation and presenting with no symptoms,” the BOP recounted in what has become its Newspeak for such situations.

Staff cases are stubbornly holding, at 229, within a rounding error of two weeks ago (232). The number of BOP facilities affected by COVID stands at 102, about the same as two weeks ago.

The BOP has logged four more inmate COVID deaths in the past two weeks. One of them was a Terminal Island inmate whose death last May 10 was only now attributed to COVID. Like more than 60% of inmates dying since March 2021, the inmate had recovered from COVID once before contracting it again and dying of it the second time around.

Nearly 93% of the federal workforce has now received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Avernment Executive magazine, more than 97% is in compliance with President Biden’s mandate by either getting a shot or requesting an exemption. But BOP compliance is lagging significantly: As of last Friday, only 68% of BOP employees and 72.3% of inmates have been vaccinated. With the Biden Administration admitting no one will be fired for not getting the jab, new employee vaccinations have slowed to a crawl.

The real COVID news in the last few weeks is not the delta variant, which is still responsible for current inmate cases. Instead, delta may be a tortoise next to the COVID-19 omicron variant. That variant – identified in South Africa for the first time on November 24, 2021 – has been found in 25 U.S. states in just 16 days. Officials of the UK and other European countries have predicted that omicron will become the dominant strain of COVID in their countries “within days, not weeks.” Cases in Europe are doubling “every two to three days.”

Vaccines appear not to provide heightened resistance to omicron. An Oxford University study has found that two doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines are substantially less effective at warding off omicron than previous coronavirus variants. The study tested blood samples of people 28 days after their 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 same is true for the J&J single-dose vax. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine produced virtually no antibody protection against the omicron coronavirus variant in a laboratory experiment, underlining the new strain’s ability to get around one pillar of the body’s defenses.

While there has been some speculation that omicron may not generally cause symptoms as severe as those caused by alpha and delta variants, no studies have yet confirmed that. In fact, Dr. Paul Burton, chief medical officer for Moderna, predicted yesterday there is a very real risk of getting a “dual infection” from both omicron and delta. He said: “In the near future these two viruses are going to coexist.”

The UK logged its first omicron death on December 13, only two weeks after the nation recorded its first omicron case. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, warned that “the idea that this is somehow a milder version of the virus, I think that’s something we need to set on one side and just recognize the sheer pace at which it accelerates through the population.”

The silver lining to the coming 4th wave is this: with a COVID pill about 100 days away, this may be the last chance for prisoners to convince a court to grant a compassionate release based on COVID.

Mankato Free Press, Waseca prison has biggest COVID-19 outbreak in country (December 9, 2021)

BOP, Inmate Death at FCI Terminal Island (December 6, 2021)

BOP, Inmate Death at FCI Butner II (Medium) (December 14, 2021)

Government Executive, An inside look at the White House’s approach to implementing Biden’s mandate (December 10, 2021)

New York Times, South Africa detects a new variant, prompting new international travel restrictions (November 25, 2021)

CNBC, Omicron detected in Florida and Texas as it takes root in 25 U.S. states (December 10, 2021)

Washington Post, Omicron could soon become dominant in some European countries, officials predict (December 10, 2021)

Oxford University, Reduced neutralisation of SARS-COV-2 Omicron-B.1.1.529 variant by post-immunisation serum (December 13, 2021)

– Thomas L. Root