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2020-04-17 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Carnival Executives Knew They Had a Virus Problem, But Went Smithfield Anyway
[Bloomberg] The news, when it reached the Grand Princess early on March 4, barely registered at first. In a letter slipped under passenger cabin doors, Grant Tarling, Carnival Corp.’s chief medical officer, announced that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control had begun "investigating a small cluster" of Covid-19 cases in California that might have been linked to the ship. Thirteen days after leaving San Francisco for Hawaii, the vessel would be skipping a scheduled stop in Mexico on its return voyage and sailing back early to its Bay Area port.

That day, passengers noticed new hand sanitizer stations and crew members wearing gloves, but life on the Grand Princess, which advertises 1,301 cabins, 20 restaurants and lounges, about a dozen shops, and four freshwater swimming pools, otherwise went on as normal. Guests prepared for a ukulele concert, played bridge at shared tables, and took line-dancing classes. That night, Laurie Miller and her husband, John, attended True or Moo, a show featuring an emcee in a cow costume; the following morning, John joined about 200 other passengers in the ship’s Broadway-style theater for a lecture on Clint Eastwood movies. "I’m surprised they’re even letting this event happen," he whispered to a nearby friend. "This is a big crowd."

Around lunchtime on March 5, the ship’s captain, John Smith, announced a quarantine over the ship’s public address system. All 2,422 passengers needed to go to their cabins to shelter in place. Laurie Miller was in the Da Vinci dining room eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream. "Oh my God," she remembers thinking. "This is real." Then she ordered more ice cream.

Other passengers ambled to the ship’s stores and dining areas, too, to take advantage of the perks while they could. "Evvverrrybody went to the buffet," recalls 61-year-old Debbi Loftus, who was traveling with her parents. "I just thought, Oh, crap, the ukulele concert is going to be canceled." Crowds of elderly guests filed to their cabins through narrow hallways and down the stairs of the ship’s 17 decks. Sixty-nine-year-old Karen Dever tried an elevator only to find it packed with fellow passengers. "So much for social distancing!" she joked aloud.

As the lockdown progressed, the ship became a fixture on cable news and social media around the world, livestreamed by frustrated, scared passengers as if it were the Titanic of the TikTok age. Of the first 46 crew and passengers who were tested for the virus, 21 were positive. President Trump suggested they should be prevented from disembarking. At the time the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. was still low, and Trump implied that the vessel’s caseload would make it look like the U.S. was doing a poor job of handling the pandemic. "I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship," he said.
Posted by Besoeker 2020-04-17 02:35|| || Front Page|| [11135 views ]  Top

#1 Didn't want to hurt their business over some stupid models - perfectly understandable.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-17 04:19||   2020-04-17 04:19|| Front Page Top

#2 They had an e. Coli problem a couple years ago, nobody cared.
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-04-17 05:06||   2020-04-17 05:06|| Front Page Top

#3 My wife and I settled on another cruise line three years ago, and - at first, I was bothered by hand sanitizer being shoved in your face coming on board and outside every dining area. Their caution looks pretty smart, now.
Posted by Bobby 2020-04-17 09:24||   2020-04-17 09:24|| Front Page Top

#4 Get on a boat with 4000 people? Towns and villages that large frighten me.
Posted by Besoeker 2020-04-17 09:25||   2020-04-17 09:25|| Front Page Top

#5 Remember the Alamo Costa Concordia!
Posted by Raj 2020-04-17 10:09||   2020-04-17 10:09|| Front Page Top

#6 I think they threw il capitano in jail or at least put him on trial. That f-tard was showing off for his girl friend if I recall. Vai en culo, capitano.
Posted by Clem 2020-04-17 10:13||   2020-04-17 10:13|| Front Page Top

#7 When you have a ship full of passengers at sea, what are you supposed to do?

And I'd love to know the source of the quotes from Trump.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2020-04-17 10:22||   2020-04-17 10:22|| Front Page Top

#8 Al-Rooters - full quote: 'I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault'
Posted by Frank G 2020-04-17 10:35||   2020-04-17 10:35|| Front Page Top

#9 It looks like Carnival cruise ships are registered under the Bahamas and Panama as flags of convenience to minimize costs, not the U.S. I imagine that legally they could have been required to sail home, rather than allowed to disembark their passengers here.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-04-17 13:41||   2020-04-17 13:41|| Front Page Top

#10 Every company in the country has a virus problem of some kind, including Walmart and Kroger. That's what happens when you're big enough to have to deal with masses of people.
Posted by Zhang Fei 2020-04-17 19:14||   2020-04-17 19:14|| Front Page Top

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