Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/06/highly-contagious-norovirus-outbreak-hits-73-people-on-a-celebrity-cruise-to-alaska.html
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Gosh, can’t imagine why I avoid cruise ships like the plague you will get while on one. 
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One datapoint is my kid catching norovirus in mid-May in Vancouver when he went out to a club about 4 blocks from the cruise ship dock.
I’ve worked on ships, and I can say with 100% absolute certainty that a cruise is not a holiday I would pay to take. If some relative decides to foot the bill (unlikely) then I guess I’d go because I’m a sucker though.
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Why the hell are cruises still considered viable leisure time fun? Gaaahhh! Get thee behind me, Satan!
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Once upon a time, long before my kid was grown:
I had this fantasy of treating myself to a tropical cruise once she went off to college, as a reward for successfully getting her to adulthood.
Then Covid happened at the end of her sophomore year in high school; and I was completely disabused of that ridiculous notion.
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Couldn’t pay me to get on a cruise ship. A floating petrie dish. 
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In early March 2020, I was talking to a friend who was thinking she’d still like to take that cruise she had booked, leaving in three weeks. I wasn’t so sure, but felt more “unsure” than “oh hell no”. Then everything changed really quickly, and the decision was taken out of everyone’s hands. Quite lucky.
In my head, cruises still haven’t redeemed themselves.
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Even before we’d begun hearing about all those awful cruise-borne viruses, mom had said she’d never, eVAR take a cruise. She was a boater, too, and loved it!
She figured she’d wind up walking the decks, over and over like a caged animal. She loathed the idea of meeting some jerk, and then being unable to avoid them because trapped on a big boat. Being stuck on a boat with a buncha other Yankistanis didn’t appeal either.
We found a wonderful bakery in Ocho Rios the first day of my first-ever trip to Jamaica. The owner waited on us, and she was as sweet as any cake and so friendly. Cruise ships were docking in Ochi a couple times a week at the time, and she asked, “Yu come off da boat den?” (then) and we looked at each other w/a bit of shock. We told her, “No. We wouldn’t want to be stuck on a boat with a bunch of Americans!” She said, in all seriousness, “Oh, so yu Canadian, den?” and we laughed. “No, we’re American!” She was confused for a split second, then she beamed like the Sun and all three of us laughed.
Whenever we visited JA, we went to her bakery every time we were in Ocho Rios, and she’d run around the counter and hug us.
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Blockquote
Once the cruise ended, which was last Friday, the ship was rigorously scrubbed and sanitized before it departed with a new batch of passengers, who are currently at sea.
Hmmm…I wonder which definition of ‘at sea’ is the most accurate and applicable here…
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Despite rigorous health and safety measures, cruise lines continue to face challenges in preventing such outbreaks.
And why don’t other high-density, semi-closed environments suffer the same? Prisons? And why not outbreaks of other contagious things?
There must be something very ‘special’ about the way cruise ships operate that mean this keeps happening and that it is nearly always norovirus.
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I’m guessing they do and it doesn’t make the news or zeitgeist.
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