Tag Archives: WorldNews

Texas prisons have doled out thousands of COVID-19 vaccines — but none have gone to prisoners who get the virus at high rates

No fixing dumb Texans, it seems – sad…
Texas Department of Criminal Justice William G. McConnell Unit at Chase Field in Beeville.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has not said when or how inmates will be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Credit: Jennifer Whitney for The Texas Tribune

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The Texas prison system has administered more than 5,500 doses of the coronavirus vaccine, but none have been given to inmates who qualify for the shot under the state’s current phase of the rollout.

And the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has repeatedly refused to provide information on when or how its older or medically vulnerable incarcerated population will be vaccinated.

More than 240 state inmates have died after contracting the coronavirus — about two of every 1,000 inmates — according to prison death reports analyzed by the Texas Justice Initiative. That’s a significantly higher percentage of the population compared to the rest of the state and many other prison systems in the country. Thirty-eight prison employees have also died, according to TDCJ.

Prisons are notorious incubators for illness, and repeated outbreaks have erupted throughout the state’s 99 prison units since the virus swept through the state last March. It is not abnormal for hundreds of inmates at any given time to test positive at a single prison, and experts say outbreaks inside prison walls often are caused by and lead to more cases in surrounding communities.

Of the 8,900 doses the state has reportedly allocated to 66 TDCJ lockups so far, the prisons’ health care partners had administered 5,562 doses by Monday, an agency spokesperson said. Officials first injected health care workers in the prisons, following guidance from the state health department. Then, an unspecified number of correctional staff working in COVID-infected areas were vaccinated.

The spokesperson declined to clarify if the agency gave doses only to older correctional staff or those with certain medical conditions, as the second phase of the state’s vaccination plan allows, or if the officers were being considered health care workers. Jeff Ormsby, the executive director of Texas prisons’ American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees branch, said correctional employees in hospital settings are starting to be vaccinated.

“They’re going to officers that are working in medical facilities or wings, then I was told they would go to COVID-restricted wings, then they’d start doing all the other staff,” Ormsby said.

Because of the disease-prone environment of prisons, inmate advocates in the state and throughout the country have urged officials to prioritize those who live and work in prisons to get the coronavirus vaccine quickly. Laurie Pherigo, a prison reentry advocate in Austin, said prisoners also often don’t get adequate medical care. She noted many of those who died in custody were serving only short sentences or were about to be released.

“You have more of a chance of getting it, and you have more of a chance of dying,” Pherigo said. “We’re sentencing people to death effectively for the most minor crimes on the block, and that’s not acceptable. That should never be acceptable.”

Still, she viewed the agency’s move to start vaccinating staff as a start. Ormsby said it was best to start with officers, for their safety and as a ripple effect.

“If we can prevent staff from bringing it in, then the inmates … are safer,” he said.

TDCJ has not provided any details on when or how it will vaccinate inmates, but spokesperson Jeremy Desel said the agency is listening very closely to state guidance. The Texas Department of State Health Services allocates the state’s vaccine doses and has set the parameters for who should be immunized while demand for the vaccine still far exceeds supply.

Texas is in Phases 1A and 1B of its vaccine rollout plan. Phase 1A includes front-line health care workers and nursing home residents. People 65 and older and those with certain chronic medical conditions qualify for the shot under Phase 1B.

Though prison officials so far have only immunized staff, a health department spokesperson told The Texas Tribune last month that the vaccines provided to TDCJ are for both inmates and staff who would qualify under the phases. Gov. Greg Abbott has previously dodged a question on whether inmates will be prioritized to get the vaccine, and his spokesperson did not respond to questions for this story.

Though TDCJ has been silent on the topic, advocates have noted that many inmates are still hesitant to get a coronavirus vaccine, especially one offered by the prison health care system. The wariness is similar to the distrust many people in the free world feel with the rapidly developed vaccine, exaggerated by the country’s history of medical experimentation on prisoners and a lack of information in lockups.

Desel said videos and posters have been put into the prisons to detail the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

“Doing the officers first could help in showing [inmates], ‘Hey, we need to do this,’” said Terra Tucker, the Texas state director at Alliance for Safety and Justice.

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Biden’s FCC takes its first steps toward making the internet affordable

FCC acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.
FCC acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel at an oversight hearing on June 24, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Jonathan Newton/AFP via Getty Images

Big Telecom is responding.

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President Joe Biden’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) isn’t wasting any time trying to get low-income families online. Under acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC is moving to expand a broadband services discount program to cover remote schooling. And at least one company, possibly hoping to get into the new FCC’s good graces, has now voluntarily doubled the internet speeds on its package for low-income people.

On Monday, the FCC announced it was seeking comment on requests to expand E-Rate, which offers schools and libraries discounts on equipment and services needed to access the internet. With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing many students to do their schooling from home, Democrats have called for expanding the E-Rate to cover residential connections as well. Millions of students don’t have adequate internet in their homes, forcing them to use mobile phone data and even internet from nearby fast food restaurants. So discounted home internet services could help quite a bit.

Previous FCC Chair Ajit Pai repeatedly denied calls to consider the expansion. Instead, he asked companies not to cut Americans off from the internet if they couldn’t pay their bills, waive any late fees, make their wifi hotspots free, and consider adopting programs for low-income people. Then, Pai had to hope that the companies would say yes to these suggestions. Rosenworcel, on the other hand, is a vocal proponent of E-Rate expansion, so it’s no surprise that she’s moving quickly here.

“It’s clear that a priority for the Biden-Harris administration and its FCC is going to be getting robust broadband to every household in the US,” Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology & Law Policy, told Recode. “It’s a social justice issue, it’s an economic issue, it’s a health care issue, it’s an education issue, it’s a democracy issue. In other words, broadband internet access enables all of the administration’s top priorities.”

Perhaps sensing which way the wind is blowing (and under pressure from student activists), Comcast announced on Tuesday that, starting in March, it will double the download speeds on its Internet Essentials package to 50 Mbps download and bump the upload speed to 5 Mbps for no extra cost. Currently, Comcast offers 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds for $9.95 per month to people who are on government assistance. That’s the bare minimum to meet the FCC’s standard for broadband speed, and it’s actually an increase over the 15/2 Mbps Comcast offered before the pandemic hit.

The FCC’s 25/3 Mbps standard has been in place for the last six years and the entirety of Pai’s tenure, despite the changes in what the internet offers and what people use it for, and despite repeated calls to raise the standard. Some of those calls came from Rosenworcel, who argued that necessary services like telemedicine and school need faster speeds, especially when multiple people are using them. She has advocated for a download speed baseline of 100 Mbps.

Comcast isn’t going that far, but its 50/5 Mbps — and the timing of its announcement — suggest that it’s paying very close attention to how the new FCC will regulate its business, and possibly hoping to get on its good side with these proactive changes. It’s safe to say that Comcast understands that Pai’s “light-touch framework” days are over.

In addition to the E-Rate expansion, the FCC is also accepting requests for comment from the public about its Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which offers discounts of up to $50 on broadband services and equipment. While Sohn says the latest moves are a good sign, much more is still needed to close the digital divide.

“That includes the FCC, other federal agencies, the states, localities, philanthropy, digital inclusion advocates, and industry,” Sohn said. “As the industry will readily admit (and did admit by supporting the $50 emergency broadband benefit), it can’t close the digital divide itself.”

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