In January 2020, the idea of the coronavirus sweeping the globe “Contagion”-style sounded to me like manufactured hysteria. I assumed Covid was a far-away problem, confined mostly to China and Italy. Even if the disease did start to creep into the U.S., I reasoned that it couldn’t be more deadly than the typical flu.
But starting in February, an onslaught of events steadily proved me wrong. First, a cluster of infections sprang up near Seattle – worrisome, but still on the opposite side of the country from me. Then the disease hit closer to home. The first patient in New York City, a 39-year-old healthcare worker who had just returned from abroad, was confirmed to have Covid on March 1.
Meanwhile, situations overseas kept getting worse, foreshadowing the apocalyptic clusterf*ck headed our way. Whole cities were quarantined. Hospitals were overflowing. Death tolls marched upward. Even more stunningly, on March 3, I saw the news that Iran, of all places, had temporarily released 54,000 prisoners for humanitarian and public health reasons.
My stomach lurched over the implications. Prisons are natural hotspots for disease. If Iran, a country where it’s still legal to stone people to death, deprioritized punishing wrongdoers, then the crisis must be really, really bad, I realized. At the same time, my intuition told me the U.S. would be unlikely to make the same preemptive move. Too many political careers were built on being “tough on crime,” meaning officials could lose their jobs if they were “nice” to prisoners.
Before Covid set in, Martin Shkreli got a taste of how much misery a highly transmissible virus could wreak behind bars. About a week after Jan. 1, 2020, norovirus – the nasty stomach bug that haunts cruise ships – broke out in Allenwood Low. Martin characteristically downplayed the awfulness in his emails, but I heard enough details from his friends to piece together an image of pure hell.
