Date: 6/10/2023 2:19:35 PM
Subject: Prometheus Writes

Nate's News 10 June 2023: College & COVID
By Nate A. Lindell

Last week I received a letter from Madison Area Technical College (MATC, madisoncollege.com)'s President, Jack E. Daniels, notifying me that because I achieved a GPA above 3.75 that I made the Dean's List for Spring of 2023. That was pleasant news. I'm doing a Small Business Entrepreneurship program, aiming for an Associate's Degree.

Twenty-five years ago I was pursuing a similar Associate's Degree in Marketing Management @ the Western Wisconsin Technical College (WWTC). Then I was arrested, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to life in prison. For the next twenty-five years, I was denied Pell funding, effectively college classes. All I had was self-education through studying the free books that charities sent me. Yet even with that limited opportunity at educating myself, given what I've seen of those around me (many are focused on getting high or drunk or gang banging or nurturing toxic emotions of several varieties), I'm far ahead of the rest. Yet I wish and hope other captives pursue the same path, growth, maturity, responsibility, and disregard the petty messes that are everywhere in prison.

On Thursday, 8 June, I was diagnosed with COVID, put on quarantine.

The symptoms for me are always the same: feel like a raptor is digging its claws into my sinuses above my soft palette, temporal headache, osteoarthritis flares up, feel chilled yet sweaty, am dizzy/wobbly/brain fog.

This is the fifth time that I've had these symptoms. The last time, about two months ago, I had those symptoms and asked for a COVID test. But the nurse told me that if I asked for a COVID test that that alone would get me put on quarantine. Just asking for the test. I couldn't afford quarantine as I had to finish work for my MATC classes. So I retracted my request for the test.

If you think that the nurse did the responsible thing and still put me on quarantine and had me tested: you are wrong. The Inmate Complaint (IC) that I filed about this [#CCI-2023-3151] was dismissed.

Ironically another IC that I filed about being denied the COVID booster (IC CCI-2022-15182) was also dismissed. That booster might've prevented this current infection...

Of course, many captives are pissed at me for insisting on the test this time because of the positive results. Several others, guys who look worse off than me, also tested positive. It resulted in our entire unit being locked down. Others are pissed that I still (with staffs' approval) leave my cell wearing a KN-95 mask (that I saved when our prison distributed them, more effective than the flimsy ones that they recently passed out) to use the microwave and phone.

Apparently none of these captives realize that COVID had already thoroughly spread. Patient zero apparently was a captive who exhibited symptoms, sought the test, tested positive, and was thus kept in his cell for ten days. Obviously that quarantine failed. This happened days before my symptoms manifested.

Nor do these captives direct their anger in a productive direction: at the architects of the prison world. Architects who have designed a near-perfect ground zero for any pandemic.

To his bafflement, my cellie, a 61-year-old man with COPD who almost died from COVID, was left in the cell with me.

COVID isn't gone. And there will be more pandemics. There will continue to be outbreaks of drug-resistant bacteria and fungus within prisons.

Getting angry at me is futile, yet safer than exhibiting anger at the people who are carrying out the plans of the architects of prison. If these captives had better access to higher education...

COVID and other pandemics will, or should, force the powers that be to rethink their prison system. Pandemics will kill people who are crammed (two or more) in cells the size of an average American bathroom. We're forced to shower and recreate in poorly ventilated, poorly cleaned cramped areas. We're forced to share phones and eating ware, all "cleaned" by underpaid and untrained captives who are underequipped. This is especially so given that captives are graying. More old people are being kept in prisons. And medical care within prisons is already terrible.

This is the fifth time I have had these symptoms. Sooner or later COVID will kill me.

If you would like to support my writing and litigation endeavors, you may do so by sending me money at accesscorrections.com or by calling Access at 866-345-1884. My info is Nate A. Lindell DOC #303724, and I'm at the Columbia Correctional Institute, within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.