NEW YORK—On the heels of a report that New York’s jails have an infection rate eight times higher than that of the city at large, sources confirmed Wednesday that officers on Rikers Island have punished numerous inmates for attempting to produce bootleg coronavirus vaccines. “We recently sent multiple convicts to solitary confinement for trying to inoculate themselves with Covid-19 antigens they made in their cell toilets using yeast stolen from the mess hall,” said warden Lou Adamos, who has led a crackdown on the correctional complex’s black market for immunizations, in which items such as cup noodles and cigarettes are traded for contraband cell cultures and test tubes to create vaccines that are then tested on rodents infesting the facility. “Even though having a good vaccine can make you the king of the yard, we hope these punishments will send a message that trying to swipe syringes from the infirmary to run trials on your adjuvants isn’t worth the risk. We’ve also restricted visitation privileges for all inmates suspected of engaging in coronavirus vaccine R&D, as we now know many visitors have smuggled in tools that have been used to build improvised chromatography chambers.” At press time, sources reported that guards on Rikers had become frustrated after the entire prison population became immune thanks to the bootleg vaccine achieving a 100% efficacy rate.

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