Cruise Ship Crew Member Reflects: The Biggest Health Threat Isn’t the Virus, It’s Arrogance

• Barrie Kealoha

I spent the better part of 2010-2018 working as a cast member aboard two different cruise lines, and in that time, I went through about five different serious onboard health crises. It’s no great secret that cruise ships are a hotbed for communicable diseases, the most common of which are gastrointestinal bugs (you’ve probably heard the term “Norovirus” or “Noro” tossed about).

In the event of an outbreak, the ship goes into various degrees of lockdown, known on my ships as “Code Orange” or “Code Red”, wherein buffet services are limited or suspended, guests are implored by the captain over the PA system to please please please wash their hands/sneeze into their elbows/use sanitizing stations available throughout the ship, and crew members take on the arduous task of “super-sanitizing” every surface of the ship. I myself have Virox’d down an entire theater on more than one occasion, accompanied by my fellow entertainment staff kitted out in masks, gloves.

It sucked. A lot.  

But on top of the extra work for crew, there was another threat: you could be fired for failing to report an illness. It seems cruel (it is), but that rule existed for a very good reason: sick people can infect more people, and in a closed environment like a ship, illness spreads very quickly. So, crew members have two things drilled into them from Day 1: washing your hands thoroughly/sanitizing is of the utmost importance, and you are personally responsible for the health and safety of everyone around you. OR ELSE.

So, it was invariably the guests (and a few careless crew) who made the situation worse by believing that they were not a part of the problem. Many people took Code Red in stride and adjusted accordingly, but there were always people who made no adjustments to their behavior and not only often got sick themselves (#karma), but also put thousands of people on board in danger and prolonged the lockdown. These people were easy to spot: sneezing into their hands, then trying to reach for the salad tongs, angrily rebuking the sweet food service worker for snatching them out of their grasp at the last second, coming back from port and shaking the cruise director’s hand without sanitizing first, loudly bemoaning how their cruise was “ruined” because of these “overkill” measures.  

Most of the people who behaved this way are in the age bracket that is currently the most at risk during this COVID-19 crisis, and that is what worries me the most. The unmitigated arrogance, that any mild inconvenience to their routines is more important than public health, is the real terror here.

So, listen.

I personally got Noro once (tainted ice in Myanmar. What was I thinking?!), and I was quarantined in my cabin for 24 hours, with only limited TV and wildly expensive ship internet to entertain me. I relied on room service for food, and when (if) it came, it was boiled chicken and a green apple.  

You have streaming, on-demand everything, and UberEats.  

YOU CAN DO THIS.