One area where vaccines seem to be losing traction is prison. Nicole Lewis of The Marshall Project and Michael R. Sisak of the Associated Press report today on the difficulties of getting staff in US prisons to shoot the Covid footage.
They report that in Massachusetts, more than half of the people employed by the Department of Correction refused to be immunized. A statewide survey in California found that half of all correction workers are waiting for vaccination. In Rhode Island, prison staff have refused the vaccine at higher rates than inmates, according to medical director Dr. Justin Berk. And in Iowa, early polls of workers showed that just over half of the workforce said they would be vaccinated.
Some correctional officers refuse the vaccine because they fear both short and long-term side effects from the immunizations. Others have embraced conspiracy theories about the vaccine.
Public health experts remain concerned about the prospect of controlling the pandemic both indoors and out. The infection rate in prisons is more than three times that of the general public. Prison staff helped speed outbreaks by refusing to wear masks, downplaying people’s symptoms, and haphazardly enforcing social distance and hygiene protocols in confined, poorly ventilated areas ripe for the spread of viruses.
“People working in prisons are a vital part of the equation that will lead to reduced disease and less chance of re-explosive outbreaks of Covid-19 in the future,” said Brie Williams, a correctional health expert at the University of California, San. Francisco. or UCSF.
At FCI Miami, agents are constantly taking sick and elderly inmates to the hospital. Kareen Troitino, the local correctional officer’s union chairman, said that as a result, a skeletal staff remains to run the prison. Unvaccinated staff only exacerbates the problem because they run the risk of getting sick if outbreaks appear in the prisons.
“A lot of workers get scared when they find out, ‘Oh, we had an outbreak in one unit, 150 inmates have Covid,” Troitino said. “Everyone is calling in sick.”
Part of the backlash against the vaccine is the widespread misinformation among correctional staff, said Brian Dawe, a former correctional officer and national director of One Voice United, a policy and advocacy group for officers. A majority of people in law enforcement are leaning to the right, Dawe said. “They get a lot of their information from the right-wing media,” he said. “A lot of them think you don’t have to wear masks. It’s like the flu. National polls have shown that Republicans without college degrees are the most resistant to the vaccine.
The refusal of guards to be vaccinated has been a boon to some inmates. The vaccines have a short shelf life after thawing, so officials have offered the leftover vaccines to inmates instead of letting them go to waste. Julia Ann Poff is incarcerated at FMC Carswell, a federal prison in Texas, where she received her first shot in mid-December after several agents were denied.
“I consider myself very blessed to have received it,” she wrote using the prison’s email system. “I have lupus and a recent diagnosis of heart disease, so I couldn’t afford to let myself get (sick).”