Lying on his double bunk bed in San Quentin State Prison, M can touch both walls of the four-by-nine-foot cell he shares with one other inmate. They’re both sick with Covid-19, he believes, like more than 2,000 other people in San Quentin who have contracted the disease since an outbreak began raging through the Bay Area maximum security facility last month. They’d put up a curtain on their door to shield the cell from errant droplets, but a guard ordered them to take it down. Through the slim bars, he can hear other inmates coughing.
M won’t share his name, because he called me on an illegal cell phone after a friend passed along my contact information from an internal listserv. His symptoms showed up after a shower about three or four weeks ago. He started getting queasy, he says, then was blinded by a headache. During the worst of it, he was throwing up constantly.
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