Hopefully this is the end of this giant ship and their failure to deep clean these ship after each cruise, really show the lack of concern with cleaning and more on a rush to get another ship full of people out to sea.
When we will start seeing the effect of throw all those people on a plane from China and only scanning them with some gauge without real testing to confirm a disease or not, because we all know the airlines DO NOT CLEAN THEIR PLANES after each trip just get the trash out and off they go
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I suspect the this will not be a banner year for the cruise industry.
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Some guy writes, " I'd suggest the rest of the world ban all travelers from China and simply abandon them to their own fate. Let the country go full dystopia and apocalypse style out of existence. What has China ever done to help anyone? All they do is go around the world and coerce poor countries into debt-ridden development projects designed to support Chinese expansion. #zeroempathy".
Just wow. Guess, the American way of bombing people into submission is much more civilzed. Well heck, I mean those few hundred thousand dead in Iraq were all terrorists right? Or most were and what were the others doing consorting with them anyhow?Well fine, not terrorists but they had WMDs. No WMDs, yeah well they would've had them if they had the science to make them.
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And the real plan is...
Everyone is being quarantined on the ship for 14 days because 10 people were diagnosed with the virus and we want to make sure no one else is sick before letting them disembark and possibly spreading the virus
Now, days later, 10 new people were diagnosed as sick
Each time there is a new person diagnosed as sick, the 14 day quarantine clock needs to be reset and restarted
...which means the people on that ship will stay on the ship for a long time.
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I understand that those identified as infected are being taken to hospital, as they should be. But if anyone knows and can contact people who think they are sick but no medical care is available--in some parts of China, or?--then this might be useful.
https://www.myshepherdconnection.org/respiratory/postural-drainage-clapping
This is a link to a hospital in Georgia that practices the old, pre-anti-biotic methods of clearing of the lungs, for people with pneumonia or cystic fibrosis. It's a method of loosening lung congestion with systematic thumping on the back, or by vibration, while in a posture to aid drainage.
I understand these methods were used by--if I recall correctly--Seventh Day Adventist hospitals during the Spanish Flu epidemic. The mortality rate was much lower in the hospitals where this was practiced as part of the patients' care, compared with hospitals that didn't do it.
May you all be well!
15
In the old days before medicine and vaccines, when a ship sailed into port in Europe with a crew stricken with small pox or the plague, they would let all of them die and then burn the ship. So happy that we no longer live in those times, but sad for everyone who must experience the fear of encountering a new disease on a cruise ship or a locked down city in China.
I've seen some disgusting comments about China and their society, easy to take a shot at them, but like us they too have friends and loved ones they worry about and actually must plan funerals for, so a little empathy would be nice. Diseases come from every corner of the world (anyone remember the Zika outbreak in Brazil?), it's just China's bad luck this time around.
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@Decebal I remember the Zika outbreak in the U.S. Virgin Islands, because I was there when it happened. It wasn't anything like this.
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@Decebal Its not bad luck. This new virus has the same close relation to the SARS virus that they contracted back in 2003 from eating bats. Once again this virus has been traced back to a specific "wet" market offering the freshest of the fresh - live wild exotic animals that have been kept in close proximity to Bats. It appears to have jumped species. So no... its a self induced disease... Not Bad luck my friend.
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Recommended read: "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," by David Foster Wallace. PDFs of this essay can be found online. The writer describes his own experience of traveling on an alleged luxury cruise and the nightmare of getting "pampered to death" on a megaship that he can't leave once it departs.
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Cruise ships . Incubators of disease .
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I would not be pleased were I being forcibly kept aboard a ship with a raging virus spreading. Is this seriously the best way?
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Everyone loves a floating infectious disease prison.
Cruises: when zero imagination seems like a great idea.
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just stay home. those ships also dump raw sewage in the ocean, gross
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@thomas kenstowicz It's actually against the law for them to do so, and a somewhat rare occurrence, but ships do violate on a regular basis (I spent 7 years as cruise ship crew).
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This Virus situation has many factors involved. International travellers all interacting in closer quarters on a Cruise. But many of them travelled by plane in much tighter conditions.
Many would have used crowded transit systems also. These interactions would be possible in many ports of call. So with over 50 million people under quarantine just in China lets hope things can level out and go back to normal. Pray or Hope.
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Hence the phrase that long preceded the Coronavirus relating to the yuck-factor inherent to cruise ships: Germ Barge.
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@POV
Or Giant Floating Petri Dish.
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So the 14-day with no infections clock gets reset, everytime a new passenger is found to have the infection ? How long would that cycle last ? Until the last passenger is infected ? I don't want to be alarmist or make light of the situation, but consider the hazards of the policy. Letting passengers of and holding each of them in total isolation from each other , would have been the only way to prevent spread. Its still not too late to do it. Japanese government and Princess Cruises, need to do the right thing.
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@IdoltrousInfidel There are CDC epidemiologists banging their heads on their desks right now.
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So the assumption, when the 3500 people on the cruise ship were quarantined, that if no other people on ship , showed any sysmtoms , after 14 days, all could be let off the ship. But the reality is unfolding dramatically different. Every time they check, they find more people infected, who are then removed of the ship, while the people not showing infected, stay in ship. So the only way now to get off the ship is to have the coronavirus. Are they going to wait till the last passenger gets the virus or let people off the ship and hold them in isolation from each other in a proper facility, so that they do not continue to infect each other ?
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And at this point, is the staff acting as carriers between passengers? It's madness!
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An enormous amount of surface area on the ship must be infected with this virus. It will take a monumental effort to clean after the passengers are allowed to disembark. The AC filters are notoriously dirty on cruise ships, especially the ones that service interior cabins. With growing population, and oceanic flights, this will only get worse with future contagions. The WHO must be given the authority to take global action, along with the UN, whenever the first sign of the next disease becomes known.
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This met get interesting for us. We're booked out of Yokohama on Holland America on April 8. Can we even fly into Tokyo then? More information, please.
@OldPadre I would strongly advise rescheduling your holiday.
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@OldPadre Just read that future bookings are now being cancelled. Sorry
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@OldPadre Yokohama in April is warm, so you should be fine. These type of viruses thrive in cold weather. Enjoy your trip!
Unless the ventilation system for each room is self-contained, this seems like a perfect way to infect all of the now healthy passengers.
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These mega cruise ships are a notorious insult to the environment even if the management (obviously), uses all kind of rhetorics to improve the image of the industry. Despite their loud denials, these ships are regularly caught dumping toxic substances into the ocean, which must mean we are actually only hearing about the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended). Furthermore, the (paid!) promiscuity regularly favors on board epidemics, the most notorious one being the norovirus. All in all, a pretty perverse form of tourism.
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Windowless cabins? Really? People pay for that?
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@Thistime Yes. Have you ever been on a cruise? Most people spend time OUTSIDE their cabin eating, dancing, playing sports, watching movies, reading in the library, etc. Windowless rooms are also cheaper.
It's the same reason I stay at basic hotels when I travel. I'm not there to stay in my room.
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@Thistime - Deluxe steerage. Good food, though.
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I did on my honeymoon. And learned the walls were very very thin
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How do the windowless cabins get their air? Is it circulated
throughout all the duct work on the ship? Is all the air then
combined and recirculated? Is this air contaminated?
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Great article. It took all the disparate details accrued over he past weeks and summarized them correctly. Especially the part about twenty passengers testing positive. One can get out of synch with all the details, and last reported it was 10, so bravo explaining where the 20 came from. The scary part is that 2,600 people alighted the one ship and scattered into Japan and beyond! We really needed to know that.
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Some people, when ill, do not do well with confinement. I quarantined (at different times) my wife and my daughter when they had the flu, and took care of them. My elderly father lives with us - so it was essential. My teenage daughter did fine. My wife, although she had a 25 by 25 room with a bathroom, after a few days (compounded by the fever) went a little mad. She began to believe she was never going to get better, she had flashbacks to childhood trauma, she was super lonely. We arranged it so she could come down to a room on the second floor which was a little more in the daily “traffic”. Then at night we would go for a walk outside when my dad was asleep and wasn’t near. But it was bad. She told my kids “I might not make it!” Even when she simply had relatively mild influenza.
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@Italian special
Oh my goodness. I'm sorry but you have me laughing so hard, and it feels so good. I think this is the first time in a month I've actually had a really good laugh. I'm claustrophobic so I sympathize with your wife. However, since it was a mild strain, imagining the whole scenario was amusing. Sorry, couldn't help it.
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@Italian special
With the exclusion of the childhood trauma, which is very sad, the above comment stands. Please forgive my oversight.
@Becca Helen
The 25 by 25 room presumably had windows.
1
As a non-medical professional I think it sounds dangerous for small groups of passengers to be allowed to congregate for some fresh air, since this would seem to raise the chances of transmission from person to person if any are carrying the virus.
Further, if all the cruise ship passengers are quarantined for two weeks, but one of them presents with coronavirus on, say, day 11, are the rest of the passengers allowed to leave after day 14 or are they quarantined for an additional two weeks?
I am hoping qualified medical professionals will respond to this question.
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@Mon Ray I wondered the same thing, that the 14 day period had the potential for continual extension every time someone new developed symptoms.
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@Mon Ray Yes, that does seem correct, that continuing the extension would have to happen. This is not a quarantine but instead a contaminated ship. We should truly quarantine all of these people off ship for their safety. Otherwise, we are doing an experiment on them and will soon know the true infectivity and incubation period and fatality rate-at least anecdotally since there are no medical personal on board.
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I hope someone can interview crew members at some point: they are the true heroes. Hopefully Japan has the resources to get these international laborers safely through a bout of the virus.
In the meantime I look back on my recent fall cruise out of this same port with pleasure. These stories only help me to plan for any and all contingencies on my next cruise. To all those very original commenters who say they will never set forth on one of these large, densely populated vessels, I say it’s just another interesting way to see the world. Either you have the travel bug or you don’t. After I’m too old to stride up the local mountains, explore cities on public transportation, and embark on long road trips, I look forward to seeing even more places from these comfortable, floating hotels.
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@Flânuese Sorry, you don't see the world on "these comfortable, floating hotels". This isn't travel. Just go check into a Marriot and go to the all you can eat buffet. Spending four hours in a country and then going back to your American accomodations, which are known to dump trash in the ocean and pollute...uh, no.
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"Either you have the travel bug or you don’t."
In this case, the "travel bug" will end up with you getting a "virus bug".
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Will they get a refund?
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@Marty Wilkins possibly not. In US quarantine facilities costs their health insurance doesn't pay, the person is getting charged with health expenses.
And they got their cruise - just a little extra time. Now for customer service reasons compensation is warrented, but probably it will be in cruise credits - spend on next cruise - so there is a next cruise.
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@Marty Wilkins
Maybe a voucher for a free cruise?
3
@Marty Wilkins
The operator has a website devoted to the events. It doesn't mention compensation for those on the quarantined voyage of the Princess, but for the next voyage (now canceled - since the Princess is out of commission for the time being) the website states as follows:
Diamond Princess was due to depart Yokohama (February 4, 2020) for an eight day round trip cruise. However, the decision was made to cancel the cruise because of the time needed for the authorities to complete their comprehensive review.
All guests will receive a full refund. Each guest will also receive a one hundred percent future cruise credit.
https://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/notices/diamond-princess-update.html
4
Wouldn’t it be a great thing for the health of the seas and the environment if this virus could put a nail in the coffin of the cruise industry.
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@Winteca Not a chance ! They can't build them fast enough! Check out how they cut them in half and add a third to their length just to carry more guests. Until the places they go have had enough and elect leaders that will enact bans or strict restrictions on the amount of people allowed unto their towns and cities it will only continue to grow. There are places reaching that point but their economies depend on the tourist dollars. Rock and a hard place for many.
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@Winteca How about including all long distance oceanic flights, and theme parks?
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@Winteca
Agreed !
Did you see this sentence frrom an earlier NY Times article on this ship:
"The ship is steaming back out to sea so it can empty its bilge and supplement its water supplies, its owner, Princess Cruises, said on its website."
11
The horror of being in a small closed room with no fresh air;
but, -- if authorities want to gauge exactly how contagious the virus is, how easily it spreads from human to human, what better petri dish? A set number of passengers and staff; tightly controlled conditions...
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@Cheryl. You can believe the Health authorities are thinking the same as you.
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@cheryl
Tightly controlled conditions exist on airplanes, passenger trains, and buses. This is not a situation unique to one particular industry.
2
I feel bad for those affected but Japan is very lucky the passengers did not make port and head into town.
Yokohama China Town/downtown areas are a popular escape from central Tokyo, and several major (very crowded) train lines feed into Yokohama central areas from various parts of Tokyo. No doubt the virus would have easily spread into central Tokyo and surrounding areas.
Passengers will be well looked after by medical staff, and will have to put up with some boredom...there are worse things in life.
19
Ugh... yet another reason to never go on a cruise.
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@John
As if one more were needed.
21
Retired doc, here.
I can think of no better place than a cruise ship to breed an epidemic. They’re notorious for viral diarrheal diseases. Nothing like close quarters, a/c ventilation systems, common food prep and boredom.
I’d strongly consider taking it on a cruise to nowhere so the passengers and staff can get some truly fresh air.
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@Dr. Dixie The whole situation doesn't sound like a quarantine, it sounds like an intentional infection of the full roster of passengers. These people need to be removed from the ship and placed in a true quarantine with adequate care.
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I think the breeding was done in a wet market in a large Chinese city, not on a cruise ship.
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@Larry D There is primary breeding and secondary breeding. Either way the infection can spread.
7