Hypochondriacs Wanted!

Of course, the crisis du jour is the H1N1 virus. Everybody is panicked by it and somebody is seemingly deathly afraid that our whole prison population is going to be wiped out by it and put us all out of a job.

Don't worry there are still lots of stupid people out there. We'll never run out. Apparently stupidity in this state is like marijuana in California: we have enough for the whole country.

But some egghead somewhere decided that if there is any inmate who we suspect of being positive for the H1N1, then they need to be isolated from the general population.

So they decided to open up one of our empty buildings and use it for an isolation ward.

Nothing wrong with that, eh?

Well, it seems that any inmate with a sniffle, or a cough, or a fever, or a sore throat (right here as the fall rains and cold and flu season get into full swing) is being sent to the isolation ward. They started out with four inmates the first day. That grew to nineteen (I believe) by the time that first night was over. There's no telling how many they have now.

As far as I know, there is not one confirmed case of H1N1 on this camp. And would they tell us if there was? No.

So they have eighteen guys with the sniffles and they send in one guy with H1N1. And they lock them all together in one room.

It's not an isolation ward, it's a petri dish!

And what happens when they lock one up from there? We found out about that. Some genius decided that A-wing will be our isolation ward in the Hive. Flipped a coin or something, I dunno.

But they never told us what to do with the other 48 non-H1N1 suspected inmates still in A-wing. So we just made a bigger petri dish.

When we cleared out two cells and brought in two inmates wearing surgical masks and we were wearing surgical masks while dealing with them..... Well, let's just say that it didn't go over well. The whole wing went ballistic, demanding to be moved out to another wing. They were all wearing towels over their faces and demanding to see the captain or the major asap!

Half of them were saying they were going to file paperwork on us (like we care) and the other half were screaming they were going to call their "people" (like we care) and have our jobs.

Dude, you can have my job! And when nobody shows up to feed you I'll be at home drawing unemployment.

SO after all the hassles and all the room moves and all of the bitching and whining and complaining (and the inmates were even worse) we went back into the office and had a good laugh about the stupidity of this place. Sometimes that is all you can do.

And if somebody really does get sick we're probably screwed.