The Pariah Ship

multi week journey around South America and Jason. Yet, just an hour earlier, the CDC had tweeted quote U s citizens, especially with underlying conditions, should not travel by cruise ship hashtag CDC notes increased risk of hashtag COVID nineteen on cruises. Zend M is a midsized cruise ship. It's got births, with one thousand, four hundred thirty two passengers and crew and the sedate vibe of an ocean liner. But within

days of its departure, the coronavirus had stricken the ship's population. Eventually, dozens would fall sick and three would die from the virus, and with passengers falling ill, the ship was denied a port by country after country. The full tally of COVID cases on the Zendem well that may never be known. And what's more, certain is that the company's executives badly

underestimated the virus. Passengers finally disembarked in Florida on April second, and yet Jason two months later, the cruise industry remains shut down and economically staggered. A no sale order issued by the CDC six days after the Zandam's departure has since been renewed through the end of July. In a sense, the Zandam's odyssey is a dark parable of what economists calls socializing losses. A company takes on risks it cannot handle itself, knowing that if things go awry, the public

will be forced to rescue it. The pariah ship. The cruise industry was already in a COVID nineteen crisis when the MS zan Dam set sail, Yet Holland America was unprepared when people began to fall sick, and country after country turned the ship away. By Michael Smith, Drake Bennett, and k Uan Ha on March, the MS Zandam sat at Anchor off the coast of Panama, its sun decks and swimming pools deserted, the lounges and casino quiet for

the seventh straight day. Passengers were confined to their cabins, with one of the few things cruises endeavor not to abundantly provide time alone with dark thoughts. Crew members moved through the narrow hallways, delivering meals and medication. Periodically, a doctor or nurse brought another passenger to the Zandam's small medical center as its receptionaria filled coughing patients stood in

the corridor. The previous day, Captain Anni Smitt had come over the intercom and announced what most of his listeners already suspected, COVID nineteen was on the ship. Two people had tested positive so far, and four passengers had died. One of those deaths, according to the u S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would turn out not to be from the coronavirus. In addition, because the ship was carrying the disease, its request to pass through the Panama

Canal into the Caribbean had been denied. As Smitt made his announcement, fifty three passengers and eighty five crew members were sick. The ship had been in limbo for almost two weeks, but until now it had at least been moving up the entire Pacific coast of South America, as nation after nation refused to let the passengers ashore. Now it had come to rest. A small Panamamian patrol boat loitered nearby. Among the Zandam passengers were two Americans from Missouri.

Sitting in their cabin looking out their sealed porthole at Panama City's palisade of skyscrapers, Clive and Sharon Hutton found themselves veering from hope to dread and then regret. A few hundred yards away, the Huttons could see the MS Rotterdam, which had arrived two days earlier. It was a foot shorter than the zan Dam at seven eighty feet, but otherwise almost identical. Both vessels had the navy blue hull, teak decks, and white superstructure of a Holland America Line ship.

The Hutton's watched as two orange and white tenders shuttled between the ship. The covered boats were bringing over much needed protective gear and COVID tests along with doctors, nurses and crew members who had volunteered to reinforce their colleagues on the Zandam, and they were carrying away passengers deemed COVID free. With each trip they were separating more of

the healthy from the unwell. That morning, medical personnel in masks, gloves and gowns had appeared at the Hutton's cabin on the Dolphin deck to take their temperatures and have them fill out a questionnaire. Passengers who passed this cursory check were eligible to transfer to the Rotterdam. As far as the couple knew they'd passed, both were fever free and felt fine, and people over age seventy as they were were being given priority. Then hours later, the medical staff

came back and told them to unpack. Lance as everyone called him, had divulged on his questionnaire that he used a c PAP machine, a device to treat sleep apnea, for reasons he couldn't understand. That was disqualifying. They had to remain on the six ship, as Lance had started calling it. The Huttons, from the small town of Forest Dell,

had bought their tickets many months in advance. They'd fly to Buenos Aires, spend a couple of days in the city, then set sail down the east coast of South America around Cape Horn and back up the other side. And because they had sprung for the extended thirty one day option. They'd continue after the first leg, ended in San Antonio, Chile, all the way up to the Panama Canal and on

to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The capstone for Lance would be an excursion to Machu Picchu, the fifteenth century Incan ruined in the Peruvian Andes. In the weeks before their departure, Lance had monitored the spread of the coronavirus and begun to worry about the trip. He'd followed the cruise ship outbreaks, first on the Diamond Princess in February and then on the Grand Princess days before his own voyage. Princess cruizes, like Holland America, is part of

the giant cruise operator Carnival. At eighty and seventy nine years old, respectively, he and Sharon were squarely in the at risk population for COVID nineteen. Lance had wanted to cancel, but Holland America sent him an email on February specifying that refunds were limited to customers who could prove they had had contact with someone who had the virus or had recently traveled to China. On March five, he checked again,

but the policy hadn't changed. On March sixth, the day before the Zendaims passengers began boarding, Holland America did loosen its cancelation policy. Lance never learned of it, and so the couple had gone ahead with the trip. Throwing away twenty thousand dollars just felt too extravagant to a retired school superintendent. I'm sure many people on board felt the same, he said, speaking by phone as the ship sat in Panama Bay. If they'd had a chance, they would have

gotten out of it. Now, the Hunton's just wanted to get home. Word of the deaths had rattled the couple. Lance was particularly worried about Sharon, his wife of fifty six years. She had bronchiac TASiS, a chronic condition that made her susceptible to airway infections, and he'd lost faith in the company that he now painfully realized he'd trusted with their lives. I just don't think they thought about this very well, he said. That's the only complaint I have.

By the time the Zandam made it to port on April two, its passengers would be some of the only cruisers left on Earth. Some would still be very sick and not all of them would survive. Two months later,

the cruise industry remains shut down and economically staggered. A no sale order issued by the c d C six days after the Zandam's departure has since been renewed through the end of July, but Carnival and Royal Caribbean International, the industries two dominant players, tentatively planned to start cruising again on August one. If the industry keeps to this timeline, ships will be departing and moving thousands from port to port while COVID clusters still burn around the world and

a vaccine remains notional. To help customers swallow any misgivings, Carnival has offered rates as low as twenty eight dollars a day, including food. The company says it's learned from its first deadly wave of COVID nineteen outbreaks. In announcing its plans, Carnival promised to use this additional time to continue to engage experts, government officials, and stakeholders on additional protocols and procedures to protect the health and safety of

our guests, crew and the communities we serve. Of course, the company had time to do all of that before the Zandam departed two. The Diamond Princess outbreak, which sickened more than seven hundred and killed at least thirteen on an East Asian cruise, happened a full month before, and yet the accounts of those on the Zandam and those outside Holland America and Carnival who stepped in to help get the vessel home suggest that the company squandered that time.

Its executives badly underestimated the virus. They assumed the Zandam was safe because it was traveling through a part of the world with relatively few COVID nineteen cases, and they assumed protocols created for past on board disease outbreaks could contain the new one too. When neither of those things turned out to be true, they assumed someone would help them. At the end of the day, those issues had to resolve.

That ship couldn't sit off the coast of any of those countries indefinitely, says Orlando Ashford, who resigned as president of Holland America on June one. We had to end up someplace. So it was just a function of who was going to go and step up in a sense. The Zandam's odyssey is a dark parable of what economists call socializing losses. A company takes on risks it cannot handle itself, knowing that if things go awry, the public

will be forced to rescue it. In the zan Dam's case, the rescue was literal and the losses measured in more than money. Claudia Osiani and her husband Won Henning, who reached the zen Dam on the afternoon of March seven, were only a five hour car ride from their home in the Argentine resort city of Mar del Plata. The cruise was Henning's gift to his wife for her sixty

fourth birthday. One of the zan Dam's first ports of call was the Falkland Islands, whose penguin rockeries and quaint, incongruously British towns are the prime attraction for most visitors. Argentines have a different relationship to the ease Las Malvinas, as they call them, shaped by a disastrous N two

war with the UK over the remote colonial outpost. Oceani, a psychologist, had treated veterans of the Falklands War for post traumatic stress disorder as a young resident at a naval hospital and Since then, she'd dreamed of seeing where they had fought. As experienced cruisers. Oceani and Henning new Holland America's reputation for luxury at prices below those of the top end lines. With berths for fourteen hundred and thirty two passengers and six hundred and fifteen crew, the

Zandam is mid size. Some newer ships accommodate four times that number, with the sedate vibe of an ocean liner rather than a cancoon bachanal a Rococo pipe organ dominates the atrium, and music themed memorabilia throughout the ship. Guitars autographed by the members of the Rolling Stones and Queen a saxophone signed by Bill Clinton evoked the bygone rock and roll youth of the mostly older passengers. Oceani didn't want to seem ungrateful for her husband's lavish gift, but

like Lance Hutton, she was uneasy. On the drive to Buenos Aires, the couple assured each other that the crews would probably be mostly locals. Argentina had just seventeen confirmed COVID nineteen cases and one death. At the time. We said, no, we're going so far south, she recalls, it's just going to be a bunch of Argentines and maybe some Chileans. When they got to the ship terminal, though, they found themselves in a sea of Europeans and Americans, all those

people from where the pandemic was. The next day, passengers settled into their cabins or explored Buenos Aires at four or forty four pm local time, with the crew making final preparations to embark. The U S Department of States Bureau of Consular Affairs announced a travel advisory via Twitter. U S citizens, especially with lying conditions, should not travel by cruise ship. The tweet warned hashtag c d C

notes increased risk of hashtag COVID nineteen on cruises. Many countries have implemented screening procedures, denied port entry rights to ships, and prevented disembarking. A little more than an hour later, the Zandam cast off into the broad mouth of the Rio de la Plata and headed east. Montevideo, Uruguay, was to be its first port of call. According to Ashford, the State Department advisory didn't warrant canceling the Zandam's trip.

These things ebbed and flowed. He says, it was not clear there were a lot of statements at that point. The priority was making sure passengers who had paid for a premium cruise got their money's worth. We're trying to protect and deliver a wonderful guest experience, a wonderful vacation experience, Ashford says, and that's what this business is engineered to do. Protecting the guests from the accelerating epidemic was not something he thought he would have to worry about. It was

on the other side of the world, he says. As the zan Dam set sail, Ashford's own wife and teenage son were in the middle of a four month world cruise on the m S Amsterdam. Ashford wasn't frightened for his family. I had a conversation with my wife, he recalls, Will I take you off a ship where no one has COVID and fly you to Seattle, which was a hot spot at the time. No, he told her, you

are on the safest place. According to Holland America spokesman Eric Elviord, the cruise line made sure to follow the CDC's recommendations at that time, adding cleaning procedures and giving health surveys to embarking passengers on the zan Dam, Oceani did feel relatively safe. For the first few days of the journey, she and Henning befriended a few Argentine and Uruguayan couples, and after Montevideo and two days in the

South Atlantic, the ship arrived at the Falklands. An old friend who lived there met the couple and guided them around the four decade old battlefields. It was wonderful being there, finally, Oceani said, is but if visiting the end of the world made the pandemic feel distant to the ship's passengers, their hosts saw things differently. The World Health Organization had

just declared COVID nineteen a pandemic. Kim Doutois, a twenty six year old South African who worked on the Zandam as an assistant shore excursion manager, says that as she was loading the vans for a penguin tour, she noticed the local drivers were fearful. At that time, there were no known cases on the Falklands. They would tell us, if you want to blow your nose, throw it in this packet right away, and we'll seal it up and throw it away. Dotoa says they were nervous about ships

coming in. They had reason to be. The Zandam's next stop was Punta Arenas, Chile, a city as close to Antarctica as it is to the Chilean capital of Santiago. Each year during the austral summer, cruises visited more than one hundred times, disgorging tourists who spend money in local shops and restaurants, and gaze across the Strait of Magellan at Tierra del Fuego, the Archipela Ago where South America ends.

On March seven and eight, three year old Britain on a small luxury cruise ship called the Silver Explorer, had gotten off in town for a half day tour of the area. Five days later, the ship stopped at Khalta Tortell, an isolated coastal village of stilt houses and wooden walkways, and the passenger began showing symptoms of COVID nineteen. He was taken to a hospital where he tested positive for

the disease, then airlifted to Santiago. Punta Arenuss Mayor Claudio Radonitch is convinced the man was patient zero for the region. We believe this came with tourists. He says, when news of the diagnosis got out, Kaleta Tortell barricaded the single road into town, and Radonitch begged the Punta Arrenus Port director to ban cruise ships. When the Zandam arrived on March fourteenth, the port was still open and residents were

starting to get sick. Chilean authorities required temperature checks for everyone getting off the ship to explore the town. It was very ugly. Could feel people staring, just wanting us out, Osani recalls. The sense of foreboding was heightened by the news that the extended leg of the voyage had been canceled. Everyone would disembark a week later in San Antonio. Countries were closing their borders, and Holland America wanted to ensure

that passengers could get home that day. March was also when the CDC ordered all cruise ship departures to stop. In justifying the measure, the no sale order laid out some of the characteristics that made the vessels particularly vulnerable to the new disease. The dynamics of passenger to passenger, passenger to crew, crew to passenger, and crew to crew intermingling in a semi closed setting are particularly conducive to

stars covey to spread, resulting in high transmission rates. Packed theater or a crowded excursion van is an ideal environment for a virus that spreads through respiratory droplets. Confined quarters increase the odds it will spread between cabin mats, especially among crew sleeping several to a room and eating impacked mess halls. The older demographic of the clientele makes them more likely to get severe cases of the disease, and with each port it visits, a cruise ship releases its

passengers into a new community. The CDC began working with global cruise companies to harden their fleets against disease in the early two thousands after a series of high profile gastro intestinal outbreaks on ships. The zen Dam is flagged in the Netherlands, but like the rest of the one hundred or so cruise ships calling on American ports, it's subject to two surprise inspections a year by US authorities.

Since it's christening in two thousand, the zan Dam's inspection scores and the CDC's vessel sanitation program have averaged nine point five out of a hundred in it got a perfect hundred. This hasn't, however, translated into actual perfection. According to the VSP database, the ZENDAM has reported five disease outbreaks, four norovirus and one unknown since two thousand, an unusually high rate. Holland America has more reported disease outbreaks than

any other cruise line. VSP data show, as indicated by the VSP scores, Zanda maintains a high level of attention to guest health and sanitation. Holland America's Elviord wrote in an email, Nora virus is very common shore side and can be brought to a ship easily and is easily

transmitted from person to person. The day before the CDC no Sale order, the member companies of the Cruise Lines International Association, including Holland America and the other major lines, had announced the voluntary suspension of all departures from US ports. Before that, however, they'd lobbied heavily against restrictions on cruising. On March six, the c l i A issued a statement saying any action to restrict cruising is unwarranted and

at odds with the World Health Organization. The group warned of possibly irreversible effects on the national and local economies depending on cruise tourism. On March seven, the chief executive officers of Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian met with Vice President Mike Pence at Port Everglades, after which Pence touted their new plans for quarantining passengers who became ill at sea.

Weeks later, the CEO of Carnival Holland America's parent company was still assuring the public that it could protect those already aboard its ships. We do things you don't see in the general public, Arnold Donald said in a Bloomberg Business Week interview on April one, the day before the zan Dam was finally able to dock in Florida. We do temperature scans, we do medical records, we have a medical on board. We do deep cleanings. Because you have to keep in mind, we sail around the world all

the time. There's been ebola, Zica, stars, merse, so we have to deal with this stuff all the time. CDC officials say the cruise industry ignored recommendations to act sooner. We have told them time and again to stop sailing, said Cindy Friedman, an epidemiologist who leads the CDC's cruise ship Coronavirus Responds task Force in an April tenth interview, dealing with the outbreaks on the Princess ships had been costly and complex, involving doctors, health officials, diplomats, and military

legisticians on multiple continents. The sooner these ships stopped sailing, the better for protection of public health and to preserve resources that could be used elsewhere, Friedman said. After leaving Punta Arenas, the Zandam steamed towards Ushawaya, Argentina, three hundred and eighty miles to the southeast. Some passengers went to bed early to make sure they were up the next morning to savor the passage down Glacier Alley in the Beagle Channel, named for the ship that first mapped it,

with Charles Darwin aboard. Amanda Bogan was up late. The twenty seven year old worked on the cruise as an entertainment host, organizing and m seeing trivia nights, magic shows, scavenger hunts, and on this particular night, the Orange Party, a celebration of the cruise lines home country circular aiding Among the Orange clann guests, Bogan wasn't thinking about the pandemic, and none of her supervisors had told her she should be.

We were at the very bottom of South America, so far away from everything that was happening, she says, the idea that the coronavirus would reach the ship just seemed impossible. During the party, Bogan felt the floor tilting. It was unusual to be so aware of the ship turning. Later, she made her way down to the officer's bar and met some friends, and they explained that the ship had turned around. Argentina was shutting its ports against the pandemic.

Chile too, was preparing to close its borders, banning cruise ships as of eight the next morning, so the ship was racing back to Punta Arenas. The Gandam arrived well before dawn, and guests received a note from Ashford under their doors. Our current sailing will now terminate in Punta Arenas, Chile, where we have arrived today. It read, we are sincerely sorry that your voyage has come to such an abrupt end. There were instructions about rebooking lights and a section on refunds,

but the note was wrong. Chile, it turned out, had closed the port early, and when the sun came up passenger saw a navy cutter between the Xan Dame and shore. At nightfall, with the ship anchored in the harbor, residents gathered for impromptu protests, blaring their car horns and screaming angrily across the water. The next evening, March sixteenth, Captain Smit announced that negotiations between Holland America until in health officials had broken down. The Zandam was headed back to sea.

The only thing that captain could tell us is we're going north, says Rick de Pino, a New Jersey patent attorney who was on board with his wife Wendy. In the absence of a sure thing, the navigation officer plotted courses to three possible ports, San Diego, Fort Lauderdale, and Puerto Vayar to Mexico. On the night of March twenty first, De Pino, says, the cruise director addressed the audience at

a comedy show. I really don't know where we are going, he remembers the man, saying, it's the voyage to Nowhere. A cruise to nowhere was still a cruise. We tried to pack every day with as many fun activities as we could, says Bogan. Corporate had given them the go ahead to do anything they could, anything to keep them I guess just happy and distracted. There were extra trivia contests and a twist Off dance party. The casino bars

and hot tubs were full. An English tenor sang to a crowded theater, joking between numbers about how the ship felt like a hostage situation. At one point, Osiani, convinced that more people were coughing as each day passed, went to the reception desk and asked the attendant why the ship wasn't prohibiting large gatherings. He looked at me and asked, why should we do that when the boat is safe, She says, there were some precautions. Cruisers are typically passionate

about the self service buffets. Now, larger plastic shields had appeared along the food stations, and attendants were ladling out the portions. Osiani made a point of asking them why they weren't wearing masks or gloves, and was told repeatedly that there weren't enough to go around. A member of the cleaning staff interviewed for this story who didn't want his name used for fear of losing his job gave a different reason. His supervisor discouraged masks, saying they would

spook the passengers. On March seventeenth, the ship heard from a Swedish travel agency one of its customers, a seventy nine year old widower named Banked Vernerson, was on board alone and his daughter in Stockholm shanty. At Vernerson, Doll hadn't heard from him in two days. The crew found him in his cabin, not feeling well, with a fever

and a slight cough. Doll was worried enough to make arrangements through a company called International s o S for an ambulance to be waiting to take her father to a hospital. When the Zandam, having been refused entry at San Antonio, arrived at nearby Valparaiso, Doll's arrangements were in vain. Chile refused to let the Zandam dock at Valparaiso either. On March twenty one, a fifty one year old housekeeping supervisor named we wat We Darto spoke by phone with

his wife Annidoco, back in Batam, Indonesia. He complained of a headache, a bitter taste in his mouth, and a sore tongue. We Darto didn't think he had COVID nineteen, but even if he did, he wouldn't have been able to confirm it. Holland America hadn't supplied the Zandam with COVID tests. Asked why, Ashford says the tests were in short supply and he thought they were unreliable. So we just assumed if you had flu like symptoms, we in an over abundance of caution, we assumed COVID to be safer.

The next day, the ship went into lockdown. Captain Smit announced that multiple passengers and crew with influenza like respiratory illness symptoms had reported to the medical center. Out of an abundance of caution, we must ask at this time that everyone returned to your staterooms as soon as you were done with lunch, he continued, where regrettably, we are going to have to ask you to remain. The ship moved north past Peru and Equity Or toward Columbia. All

three had closed their ports. The Huttons were allowedly their cabin once in six days for a thirty minute walk on deck, chaperoned by crew members dressed in what Lance thought looked like has mat suits. Around nine o'clock the night of the twenty five, de Pino, tracking the ship's progress on Marine Traffic dot Com, noticed it suddenly head east. As Captain Smith announced the next morning, they had made an unannounced stop off Manta, Ecuador to meet a boat

carrying supplies. The nighttime resupply had been kept secret from the passengers for fear of protests in the port and for fear of jeopardizing this operation. The captain apologetically explained, you all know how fast things can go by social media. Along with other medical supplies, the boxes loaded onto the ship contained masks, which were distributed to passengers along with breakfast. All that time until the twenty six, they obviously didn't

have masks for everybody on the ship. Dupino says, we went to great length to acquire masks for guests and crew. Mid Voyage. Holland America's Elvior wrote a few days earlier, shortly before passengers were confined to their cabins, Duti, the South African shore excursion manager, had been asked to start performing crew temperature checks. A member of the medical staff had explained how she and a few colleagues were to work their way down lists of everyone in food and

beverage and housekeeping. Anyone with the fever was sent back to their cabin to self isolate, along with anyone sharing their room. The first morning, Dutois reported to the medical center to get her files and protective gear. She was alarmed at what she saw. There's a reception area, she recalls, there were probably at least ten guests in there, then about six to eight crew lining the wall. That was just in the beginning already. The next day we had

one of the guests. They're so sick that he was getting oxygen and on a ventilator. The protective gear kept proliferating. First she was given masks and gloves, then scrubs, plastic friends and goggles like others. She recalls being told at first not to wear the gear in the guest areas. It's likely that one of the passengers Dutoi saw in the medical center was Vernerson on March. He was on oxygen when he spoke with his daughter in Stockholm. He had a dry kind of voice. She recalls, I knew

what was going to happen on March. He died the day before. Doll had called Holland America and asked that a note be relayed to him. WE miss you, we love you lots. We hope to get you back home soon. It read I just hope that someone read that to him, Doll says, because I know he was alone. After his death, testing revealed that Vernerson had COVID nineteen. Crew members began

to get sick in alarming numbers. The stepped up sanitation regime was grueling for Widarto and the rest of the dwindling staff, as was the sudden shift to delivering meals to seven cabins. Bogan recalls a dinner companion and in the crew dining area one night breaking down in tears. He was crying from exhaustion. She recalls the next morning, the man went into isolation as a suspected COVID nineteen case. On March, Doutoi's boyfriend, who also worked on the ship,

spiked a fever. The pair began to self isolate in their cabin, and soon Dutois had a fever too. The tally of COVID cases on the Zandam and the Rotterdam may never be known. There are thirteen known cases. Based on an analysis by the Miami Herald According to the c d C, more than two d and fifty people reported illness consistent with COVID nineteen, but Holland America hasn't revealed how many of those people were actually tested for

the disease. Several passengers interviewed by a Business Week who tested positive for COVID did so only after leaving the ship. By this point in the voyage, various governments had become involved. Eventually, Port Everglades was identified as the best port for the ship if it could somehow make it through the Panama Canal.

The issue wasn't just transitting the canal. Holland America was also hoping to fly medical supplies and personnel into the country, load them on to the stricken ship, and fly out the very ill. Panama was intransigent, and officials at the U. S. Embassy there urged the company to explore other options. One was to replace the airlift with a ship. The fastest in the fleet, the Rotterdam, was docked at Puerto Vallarta with no passengers and could reach the canal in less

than four days. On March twenty second, Holland America decided to dispatch it. The Rotterdam came within sight of the Zandam on the evening of March twenty sixth, after a tumultuous voyage. It was only after it had departed that much of the crew learned of plans to bring aboard passengers from the Zandam, and many threatened to barricade themselves in their cabins rather than interact with the potentially ill guests.

Ashford and Carnivals chief medical officer Grant Tarling had to call in to a ninety minute all hands meeting in the ship's theater to try to quell the unrest. Ashford says he gave crew members the option to stay in their cabins, but appealed for their help. I said, if the tides were turned and the situations were reversed, I'm sure you would want the zan Dam to come to your aid, he says. Most agreed to work. On March seven, with negotiations over the canal still going on, the transfer

of passengers began. Oceani and Henning were among the eight hundred eight Zandam passengers cleared to go across. A crew member in a mask, gloves and protective gown led the couple down to a hatchway in the side of the ship, where one of the orange and white tenders bobbed on the waves. As they climbed aboard the Rotterdam, they and

their luggage were fogged down with disinfectant. The couple were assigned the cabin corresponding exactly to the one they had left late on The u S State Department led diplomatic effort bore Fruit and Panama agreed to let the Zandam and the Rotterdam through the canal. The next evening, the passenger transfer complete. Crews disinfected the bridges of the ships

so the authorities, specially trained pilots could come aboard. A single pilot in full body protective gear boarded each vessel and over the next seven hours, maneuvered it through the canals tricky series of locks and waterways. Passengers were told to turn down their lights and draw their curtains. If they had a balcony, they were to stay inside. In some stretches of the canal, Panamanian soil was just a few feet away the pilots. As soon as they left

the ships went into quarantine. As the two ships headed up through the Caribbean toward Florida, new cases appeared on the Rotterdam as well as the zan Dam. On March twenty nine, with Darto, the housekeeping supervisor, told his wife that he still had a headache and a cough was coming on. She remembers trying to switch their call to a video chat so she could have a look at him, but he quickly switched it back. He was still at work, he told her, and very busy. The Hutton's too began

to get sick. Their symptoms diarrhea, nausea, lack of appetite didn't match with medical authorities were attributing to COVID nineteen at the time, but Sharon was alarmed enough to call the Zandam's guest services line. Even after multiple tries, no one came to the room or called back, so the couple took commodium and waited. Their symptoms worsened. Sharon developed a cough, then Lance did too. Even as they headed for Florida, it was still far from certain the two

ships would be able to dock when they arrived. The state's governor, Rhonda Santis, among others, had come out against it. We cannot afford to have people who are not even Floridians dumped into South Florida, using up those valuable resources,

he said in a Fox News interview. Officials in Broward County, where Port Everglades is located, were inundated with emails, many from residents horrified by the prospect of an influx of sick passengers, many others from people with friends or relatives on the ships, equally horrified by the prospect of leaving them at sea. On March thirty, a plaintive op ed by Ashford was published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The international community, consistently generous and helpful in the face of human suffering, shut itself off to Zandam, leaving her defend for herself. He wrote, his company had done nothing wrong. He insisted the ship had been the victim of unforeseen circumstances and uncarrying governments. It's tempting, He went on to speculate about the illnesses that may have been avoided or lives saved if we'd gotten the assistance we saw it.

Weeks ago, as the piece was being published, Glenn Wiltshire, the Port Everglades Director, along with representatives from the c d C, the U S Coast Guard, the Florida Department of Health, and the Broward County Sheriff's Office had to come up with a planned for Holland America and Carnival to offload the passengers without spreading disease or panic throughout

South Florida. Even after the princess outbreaks, Carnival didn't have protocols ready to unload a coronavirus infected ship at Port Everglades. Government officials repeatedly pressed Carnival and Holland America executives for more detail on how the company planned to get people off the ship and out of Florida and at its own expense. On April two, the parties reached a deal

allowing the two ships to dock. The majority of passengers, those judged to be healthy and sixty four in all, would board buses at the port and be taken directly to the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale Airport to be flown out on five chartered flights across the US, Canada, and Europe. Thirteen passengers would be cared for in local hospitals. It's the humanitarian thing to do, the governor told Fox News late that afternoon. Greeted by a line of thirteen ambulances.

The Zandam docked for the first time since Punta Arenas, followed by the Rotterdam. Teams of doctors and nurses came aboard to see which passengers were fit to travel home on their own. Still unable to get through to the medical center by phone, the Hutton's made their way to the examination area. A week before, they'd felt fine but were kept aboard the Zendam, this time, weak and in pain,

they were cleared to travel. Their temperatures were normal by the next morning, though Sharon was unable to leave their cabin this time. When Lance called for help, a nurse came alarmed at Charon's condition. She asked why they hadn't called sooner than rushed Charon to the medical center to be put on oxygen and antibiotics. Lance was at first deemed well enough to fly home later that day, but within hours he deteriorated enough that he was kept aboard

the emptying ship in his cabin alone. He is still not feeling well and is stuck in his same room for an indefinite period of time. Amy Hutton, their daughter, posted on Facebook that day again, I am helpless and so are they please continue to pray. The ship's medical personnel finally gave Sharon a COVID nineteen test, which came back positive. Her coughing fits were driving her blood oxygen

to dangerously low levels. An increasingly desperate Amy was finally able to reach someone at a Holland America emergency hotline who got a doctor to check on Lance. On April five, Sharon was flown to Orlando, where she was placed in a special COVID nineteen ward in an intensive care unit. Lance, whose COVID test had also come back positive, soon followed her. The couple were placed on ventilators for days. The couple lay across the hall from each other. Slowly, Lance began

to improve Sharon's body, though was shutting down. The following weekend, she seemed a little better and Amy arranged a video call, but a few hours later Sharon went into shock. A nurse put a cell phone to her ear with Amy on the line. I was at least able to tell her goodbye, Amy says, and tell her it was okay to go. She died at eleven o one p m. On April eleven of acute respiratory distress caused by COVID nineteen and pneumonia. According to the Medical Examiner. A few

days earlier, Widarto had also died. The day before the Zandam docked, Holland America had informed his wife that he had been admitted to the ship's medical center with shortness of breath. The next day, she heard that one crew member had been admitted to a Florida hospital, and she soon learned that it was her husband. Because he was in isolation, sedated, and on a ventilator, it was hard for her to speak to him, but in video calls with hospital staff she was able to at least see him.

She plans to place his ashes in his parents tomb in Jakarta. The majority of the sick passengers were deemed recovered and fit to travel by company medical staff. When the ship stocked in Florida, Carnival and Holland America, as promised, flew almost all of them out of the state within a day, though for a few the journey stretched on much longer. Osiani and Henning would languish on the Rotterdam for another three and a half weeks, waiting for approval

from the Argentine government for their charter flight. The ship sat at port, then cruised around the Caribbean with a skeleton crew of similarly marooned employees and passengers before the couple was moved to another cruise ship and finally put on a flight home. The depinios were among the passengers who disembarked on April third at nine forty five a m. In their masks, they walked down the Rotterdam's gangway and onto specially sealed buses. Police cars and motorcycles were waiting

to escort them to the airport. As the couple were boarding the crowded coach, they met a woman who was also headed back to their hometown of Warren Township, New Jersey. The three were all on the same twelve fifteen p m charter flight to Atlanta, and when it landed, they found themselves not in a sealed bus but a bustling international airport. They were starving and had a few hours before their commercial flight to New York City in a days.

Wearing their masks and cheap surgical gloves, they sat at a bar and ordered burghers. Rick made sure to warn their waiter Tony where they'd come from. We're in the general population. No one's wearing masks. Rick remembers, as far as Holland America was concerned, it was as if we somehow got cleansed of the virus when we were up in the air. Ashford defends the use of commercial flights, not just because the cruise line followed c DC guidelines. In contrast to random people on a flight, who do

you think is safer? They were in their room for two weeks, checked with all the protocols we had, He says, That's about the safest group on the plane in my opinion. To Rick Depino, though it felt jarring and irresponsible in the morning, they were treating us with hazmat suits. He remembers thinking, and now we're sitting at a bar eating burgers. The CDC would change its guidance the next day forbidding the use of commercial flights or public transportation to get

passengers home. Cruise lines have yet to find a way to repatriate the tens of thousands of crew members still languishing on its ships. Over the next few weeks, Rick would wonder whether he'd gotten COVID nineteen on the cruise. He hadn't felt ill at any point, but he knew cases could be asymptomatic, and five of the six friends he had kept in touch with from the Zendam ended up testing positive. He wondered about the people who sat

near him on the flight to New York. He tried, unsuccessfully to contact Tony at the airport bar to make sure he hadn't since gotten sick. In late April, he and Wendy got COVID nineteen antibody tests to see if they'd had the disease. Both came back positive. With Austin Carr, Jonathan Levin, and Tasia Sipahutar. Check out this story and more. It's in this week's edition of the Bloomberg Business Week magazine, on newsstands, online, and on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Carol

Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Check us out every day on the radio Bloomberg business Week. It's live two pm to six pm Wall Street Time. This is Bloomberg