Where Social Distancing Is Impossible
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2020
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rikers Island was not built to slow a pandemic. Buildings are decrepit, and the churn of guards and new inmates makes infectious diseases incredibly hard to contain. Over the past several weeks, Rikers has released more than 600 inmates in an attempt to lessen the public health threat posed by a Covid-19 outbreak in the jail complex. But it’s not clear that will be enough.
Guest: Rachael Bedard, senior director of geriatrics and complex care services at New York City’s jail complex on Rikers Island.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone. The team at What Next is committed to covering as many angles of this coronavirus story as we can. |
| 0:07.2 | And you can give us a hand. Call and leave us a message. Our number is 202-888-2588. Tell me a story about how you're getting through lockdown. |
| 0:17.7 | Tell me about your work situation. Tell me how you're staying positive. We want to hear it |
| 0:22.1 | all. Your message will inform our coverage. We might even play it on the show. That number again is |
| 0:27.6 | 202-888-2588. You can also just track me down on Twitter. I'm at Mary's desk. Okay, onto the show. |
| 0:44.9 | I was looking at your Twitter, and it looks like you got an account back in 2010, but you've had like two tweets on there until the last month. Yes, I have been until very recently a lurker, and the most I ever really did |
| 0:58.1 | was like some other tweet. And then a few weeks ago, I started tweeting and now I seem to tweet every day. |
| 1:07.6 | Rachel Bedard has one of those jobs where, until recently, it seemed better to be anonymous. |
| 1:14.0 | She's a doctor in New York City. |
| 1:15.8 | But the patients she treats live on Rikers Island. |
| 1:19.1 | That's the jail complex in the middle of the East River, between Queens and the Bronx. |
| 1:25.2 | For the last month, Rachel's had the same anxious feeling a lot of doctors have |
| 1:30.4 | had, anticipating the arrival of this new coronavirus. She warned her family about it, |
| 1:36.3 | worried about it on the job. What was the first conversation you remember having at work |
| 1:41.7 | about coronavirus? The first conversation I actually really remember was a text |
| 1:47.9 | exchange that I had with my boss where somebody else had sort of tweeted, this virus is going to be |
| 1:55.6 | a disaster for correctional settings. Someone described it as seeing a tsunami coming from the shore. And at the same time, |
| 2:02.8 | it sort of felt like a shared delusion because it wasn't here yet. And so a little bit, it felt like |
| 2:08.3 | being in the crucible. We were all sort of infecting one another with this anxiety. |
| 2:15.2 | But this anxiety, it got real fast. |
| 2:18.8 | According to the Legal Aid Society, the infection rate at Rikers is nearly eight times the |
| 2:24.7 | infection rate in New York City. |
... |
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