# COVID-19 in Georgia Prisons > In March 2020, a 58-year-old inmate was locked down with 63 other men in a cramped concrete dormitory at Macon State Prison during the COVID-19 outbreak. This firsthand account reveals the prison's failure to provide basic health protections, medical testing, and adequate staffing—and how a journalist's investigation briefly exposed the system's deadly negligence. **Published**: 2026-05-16 **Source**: https://gps.press/covid-19-in-georgia-prisons/ **Author**: MorningCedar --- Author: MorningCedar "Death smiles at every man, and all a man can do is smile back. Live everyday as if thy last. You could die right now. Let this fact guide the rest of your life." ~ Marcus Aurelius I was living in 64 man open dormitory at Macon State Prison in Oglethorpe Georgia in March 2020 when the entire country and Georgia prison system went on lockdown for the Covid-19 virus. Sixty four men (64) warehoused and crammed in a concrete box together like sardines in a tin can. It's a miracle we all didn't die from Covid-19. The virus had been around since before the March 2020 lockdown. In November 2019 an old black man in our dorm died of Covid before anyone had ever heard of the Covid virus before. He was deathly ill with flu like symptoms of body aches, chills and a high fever. Being unable to catch his breath and breathe, he was taken to the infirmary and died before the end of the year. That winter of 2019 I remember seeing a lot more people than usual with severe cases of the flu. Only it wasn't the flu. That November I remember seeing several people stretched out on the steel benches in the waiting room at medical, while they waited to be seen for sick call. I was transferred to Macon State out of the blue, on June 20, 2019. Located just 50 miles south of Macon Georgia, but too far south for friends and family to make the trip to visit with me. I was assigned to an open dorm with 16 double bunk beds down stairs, and with an identical set-up upstairs. Sixty four (64) men jammed altogether, living in a 25' x 40' prefabricated concrete box. Tent city, with blankets and sheets covering three sides of each bunk for privacy. When I first arrived at Macon State Prison I was placed in M-building which had sealed glass windows and air conditioning. After having lived for over three decades in prison cells of one hundred degrees or more in the summertime, I was not used to living in an air conditioned environment 24-7. It took my body awhile to acclimate and get used to it. Now I lived in a controlled constant 55° degree cold, sleeping under a blanket, two sheets, with a stocking cap on my head and my jacket laid across my feet in order to stay warm enough just to go asleep. The top floor where I was assigned to a top bunk, was located directly in front of a air vent blowing icy cold air directly on me. That vent I soon covered over, like most the rest did, with cardboard and tape. On the ceilings, and especially the corners of each wall, there was green and black mold from where the walls would sweat from water condensation when the weather temperatures changed outside. No windows could be opened, the only fresh air was from the air conditioning ventilation and when the small yard door was opened. The thermostat was locked inside a metal box that only maintenance had a key to open, and were the only ones allowed to adjust. They kept it cold to keep you on ice, aka chill-out, calm, and slowed down. M-building itself had four 64 men dormitories with a total of 256 prisoners assigned. There was no count at all of the assigned inmates for the first two years I was there. Anyone from any building on the compound could sneak in and spend a few days, or move in and live there, without the prison's administration being wise of it. The officers "pencil whipped" or forged their counting sheets at each of the official count times. There were no security cameras there in 2019, so no one but the officers working, and the inmates knew. The black male counselor I was assigned to was fired when auditors discovered that he had falsified the records of one of his assigned inmates for over a whole year — having completed four 90-day required wellness check forms, on a man who had died there more than a year earlier. In 2019 Macon State was without question the most violent prison in the GDC. Because of all the assaults and murders the prison stayed on lockdown status a lot. Usually lasting up to thirty to ninety days at a time. Because of governor Brian Kemp's 2020 and 2021 GDC budget cuts, about the only time we saw an officer was at feeding times when an officer escorted and unlocked the doors for kitchen inmates to bring our food trays to us. When the afternoon feeding was completed, between 4:00 & 6:00 pm, we didn't see another officer again until breakfast the next morning. If there was an emergency medical situation, they usually died. In some emergency medical situations, those with cell phones called the local ambulance service, just five miles away in Montezuma Georgia, to come to the prison. I witnessed this once in the 64 man dorm next to us when a man there had a heart attack. When the ambulance service arrived at the prison's entrance gate the warden was contacted who then allowed them to enter. Through our dorm's hallway glass window, I witnessed the paramedics wheel the guy out on a gurney. He was already dead and stiff when they got there. The governor's GDC budget cuts for the years 2020 and 2021 raised inmate store prices to increase GDC profits, while freezing the hiring of any new GDC employees, and doing away with all overtime pay. If you were a guard and worked over, you didn't get paid, you had to take time off. Already with a shortage of prison guards who were over worked and stressed out, being placed in dangerous situations all by themselves with nothing but a radio — many with any sense quit and found employment elsewhere. Then Covid-19, and nobody at all wanted to work shut up in a prison environment. Creating a CRITICAL shortage of prison guards. On the weekends at Macon State there were only three employees to run the entire prison of 1,600 inmates. Why work at all with the government providing Covid subsidiary pay. That's when the gangs were allowed to take over, and still do control Georgia prisons. Critical shortages still remain in the entire GDC. Lockdown only slows the gangs down. I was a 58 year old white man in a dormitory of 51 blacks and 13 whites. Two wall mounted television sets, numerous radios, and 64 men — do you really know what noise is? Priority #1 was getting a pair of ear plugs from a friend downstairs. Cold, dressed in thermal underwear, two pairs of socks, and with a stocking cap always worn on my head. A female psychologist, a mental health counselor Mrs. Jenson at Hays State Prison had once suggested to me that I journal. She was so adamant about me doing so that she gave me a notebook to journal in. Having not done so previously, I soon put the empty notebook to use. As recorded on July 6, 2019: "Up on the floor walking the dorm at 3:05 am. Can't sleep because of a serious sinus infection and headache. Blowing puss from both sides of sinus cavity and miserable. Nothing to take but the 81 milligram baby aspirins prescribed for my heart. Took four packs of table salt and mixed into a Styrofoam cup of warm water and snorted it through both nostrils for relief. The whole upper level of the dorm with 32 people reeks of burning toilet paper wicks burning all night long in order to light cigarettes, marijuana, 'strips', and the methamphetamine pipes made of glass nitroglycerin bottles, glass tubes taken from exit signs above the doors, and broken glass light bulbs. My sinuses are fucked up! Gideon pocket bibles used for rolling papers, or any type of paper available. Brown paper towels soaked in coffee, then dried out to roll up 'blunts' made of marijuana and tobacco. On a scale of 1 to 10 I've a #9 sinus headache with every tooth in my head aching. Doesn't help that I don't have a pillow to help elevate my head. They had no pillows here to issue out upon my arrival. Had I the opportunity, and if I could have gotten the attached small yard door open, I'd be out jogging for a slow thirty minutes or so to work up a good sweat and clear out my sinus cavity. It always worked well before in the past, but no such luck here with the doors locked and no officers to open them. So I made a snot rag out of a clean sheet to blow my nose with instead." "Scrambled eggs and toe jam sandwiches on toasted light bread is what I called them. They were the sandwiches brought back to the dorm by the kitchen worker that morning who wrapped them up in clear plastic wrap. Then stuffed them down his knee length rubber boots unto his sweaty feet and legs in order to smuggle them out of the kitchen to sell in the dorm." The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) Commissioner James Donald visited every dorm at Macon State Prison offering a $10.00 "warden's sacks" of store snacks to everyone who took the Covid-19 vaccination. It was not mandatory to take the shot, but if you didn't have the vaccinations you were ineligible to transfer without them. Not wanting to be stuck there, I took all three shots that were offered. Had it been up to me I'd not been vaccinated at all. The first Covid vaccination shot I was given was on April 04, 2021. The second shot I was given was on May 25, 2021, and the third shot or "booster" as it was called, was administered to me on November 06, 2021. All inside the dorm by a visiting nurse. At no time were we ever given hand sanitizer soap to clean our hands with as had been recommended by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Instead of hand sanitizer we were issued two bars of Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI) lye soap per week instead of one. Instead of buying the recommended free world face mask, the GDC had free inmate labor making face mask out of preexisting clothing material at one of the GCI sewing factories. I was never offered nor have I ever had a Covid test before or after the outbreak. Robert Rogers who slept in the row of bunk beds across from me was displaying symptoms of Covid: severe headaches, low grade fever, chills, no sense of taste and trouble breathing. He was placed in the hole for three months. When he was finally moved back in the dorm he said that he had never been given a Covid test, and was left in the hole, with a bunkmate, and was never monitored by medical personnel. Left to die, he was lucky he had overcome it. A news reporter named Saskia Lindsay working for Fox 24 News WGXA out of Macon Georgia, did a two part investigative series concerning Covid-19 in the Georgia prison system. Aired on public TV for two nights at 10:00 pm beginning on Wednesday November 25, 2020. Most of our 64 man dorm was in front of the dorm's two television sets and watching. She reported detailed information of prison inmates who went untreated and were isolated to the hole, then left to die. And how the GDC was both underreporting Covid-19 deaths as contributed to natural causes. The federal government gave the state of Georgia a $15 million dollar grant in April 2020 to help fight the outbreak and spread of Covid in the state's prisons. When Ms. Lindsay contacted the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) in November 2020 concerning the allocation of the federal funds, a spokesperson for GDC informed her that the 15 million grant was still in an interest bearing savings account. Some 8 months after the Covid lockdown, and numerous under-reported Covid deaths in GDC prisons, the state of Georgia continued to sit on the interest being money. The very next week after the public airing of her consecutive two night investigative exposé, Ms. Lindsay was fired from her job at WGXA and ran out of the state Georgia. When a friend of mine downstairs in the dorm contacted Ms. Lindsay to see if she would be interested in investigating the manufactured evidence used to convict him at his trial, she was by then employed and working for a TV station in South Carolina. After her two part investigative airing, the GDC started coming into each and every dormitory and spraying with some type of antiviral accelerant. This was done on at least two separate occasions that I remember. Instead of remaining locked inside the dorm 24-7 since March 2020, we were briefly allowed the fresh air and sunshine of yard call. We were now herded outside on the small yard while the dorm was mechanically fogged with a antiviral spray. Then being quickly herded back inside before the fog had even cleared, there remained a greasy to the touch type film covering everything inside. After the first spraying, we soon learned to roll up our thin cotton mats with bedding before leaving out for the dorms spraying. It was also after Ms. Lindsey's public TV airing that the GDC started allocating and giving monthly "Incentive Meals" to every single one of the 52,000 prisoners in the state of Georgia's prison system. At Macon state, once a month, we would receive a two piece fried chicken box from either Popeyes, Kentucky Fried, or Bo Jangles fast food chicken restaurants. A subway sandwich from Firehouse Subs. A chicken sandwich from Zaxbys. Two cheese burgers from either McDonalds or Burger King. A small personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. And once we had a two piece cod fish tray with cole slaw and hush puppies from Captain D's seafood restaurant. The monthly incentive meals went on for well over a year. Just a minute fraction of the interest earned of the $15,000,000 dollar grant the feds gave Georgia to help fight Covid-19 and prevent deaths inside the Georgia prison system. For $4.00 each, I bought all the meals I could, and thoroughly enjoyed myself while it lasted.