Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. We're bringing you
Speaker 1: one of the stories You've gotta here in this week's
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. On the afternoon of March eighth,
Speaker 1: Holland America's MS ZANDAM cast off from Buenos Aires and
Speaker 1: headed east on what some passengers hope would be a
Speaker 1: multi week journey around South America and Jason. Yet, just
Speaker 1: an hour earlier, the CDC had tweeted quote U s citizens,
Speaker 1: especially with underlying conditions, should not travel by cruise ship
Speaker 1: hashtag CDC notes increased risk of hashtag COVID nineteen on cruises.
Speaker 1: Zend M is a midsized cruise ship. It's got births,
Speaker 1: with one thousand, four hundred thirty two passengers and crew
Speaker 1: and the sedate vibe of an ocean liner. But within
Speaker 1: days of its departure, the coronavirus had stricken the ship's population. Eventually,
Speaker 1: dozens would fall sick and three would die from the virus,
Speaker 1: and with passengers falling ill, the ship was denied a
Speaker 1: port by country after country. The full tally of COVID
Speaker 1: cases on the Zendem well that may never be known.
Speaker 1: And what's more, certain is that the company's executives badly
Speaker 1: underestimated the virus. Passengers finally disembarked in Florida on April second,
Speaker 1: and yet Jason two months later, the cruise industry remains
Speaker 1: shut down and economically staggered. A no sale order issued
Speaker 1: by the CDC six days after the Zandam's departure has
Speaker 1: since been renewed through the end of July. In a sense,
Speaker 1: the Zandam's odyssey is a dark parable of what economists
Speaker 1: calls socializing losses. A company takes on risks it cannot
Speaker 1: handle itself, knowing that if things go awry, the public
Speaker 1: will be forced to rescue it. The pariah ship. The
Speaker 1: cruise industry was already in a COVID nineteen crisis when
Speaker 1: the MS zan Dam set sail, Yet Holland America was
Speaker 1: unprepared when people began to fall sick, and country after
Speaker 1: country turned the ship away. By Michael Smith, Drake Bennett,
Speaker 1: and k Uan Ha on March, the MS Zandam sat
Speaker 1: at Anchor off the coast of Panama, its sun decks
Speaker 1: and swimming pools deserted, the lounges and casino quiet for
Speaker 1: the seventh straight day. Passengers were confined to their cabins,
Speaker 1: with one of the few things cruises endeavor not to
Speaker 1: abundantly provide time alone with dark thoughts. Crew members moved
Speaker 1: through the narrow hallways, delivering meals and medication. Periodically, a
Speaker 1: doctor or nurse brought another passenger to the Zandam's small
Speaker 1: medical center as its receptionaria filled coughing patients stood in
Speaker 1: the corridor. The previous day, Captain Anni Smitt had come
Speaker 1: over the intercom and announced what most of his listeners
Speaker 1: already suspected, COVID nineteen was on the ship. Two people
Speaker 1: had tested positive so far, and four passengers had died.
Speaker 1: One of those deaths, according to the u S Centers
Speaker 1: for Disease Control and Prevention, would turn out not to
Speaker 1: be from the coronavirus. In addition, because the ship was
Speaker 1: carrying the disease, its request to pass through the Panama
Speaker 1: Canal into the Caribbean had been denied. As Smitt made
Speaker 1: his announcement, fifty three passengers and eighty five crew members
Speaker 1: were sick. The ship had been in limbo for almost
Speaker 1: two weeks, but until now it had at least been
Speaker 1: moving up the entire Pacific coast of South America, as
Speaker 1: nation after nation refused to let the passengers ashore. Now
Speaker 1: it had come to rest. A small Panamamian patrol boat
Speaker 1: loitered nearby. Among the Zandam passengers were two Americans from Missouri.
Speaker 1: Sitting in their cabin looking out their sealed porthole at
Speaker 1: Panama City's palisade of skyscrapers, Clive and Sharon Hutton found
Speaker 1: themselves veering from hope to dread and then regret. A
Speaker 1: few hundred yards away, the Huttons could see the MS Rotterdam,
Speaker 1: which had arrived two days earlier. It was a foot
Speaker 1: shorter than the zan Dam at seven eighty feet, but
Speaker 1: otherwise almost identical. Both vessels had the navy blue hull,
Speaker 1: teak decks, and white superstructure of a Holland America Line ship.
Speaker 1: The Hutton's watched as two orange and white tenders shuttled
Speaker 1: between the ship. The covered boats were bringing over much
Speaker 1: needed protective gear and COVID tests along with doctors, nurses
Speaker 1: and crew members who had volunteered to reinforce their colleagues
Speaker 1: on the Zandam, and they were carrying away passengers deemed
Speaker 1: COVID free. With each trip they were separating more of
Speaker 1: the healthy from the unwell. That morning, medical personnel in masks,
Speaker 1: gloves and gowns had appeared at the Hutton's cabin on
Speaker 1: the Dolphin deck to take their temperatures and have them
Speaker 1: fill out a questionnaire. Passengers who passed this cursory check
Speaker 1: were eligible to transfer to the Rotterdam. As far as
Speaker 1: the couple knew they'd passed, both were fever free and
Speaker 1: felt fine, and people over age seventy as they were
Speaker 1: were being given priority. Then hours later, the medical staff
Speaker 1: came back and told them to unpack. Lance as everyone
Speaker 1: called him, had divulged on his questionnaire that he used
Speaker 1: a c PAP machine, a device to treat sleep apnea,
Speaker 1: for reasons he couldn't understand. That was disqualifying. They had
Speaker 1: to remain on the six ship, as Lance had started
Speaker 1: calling it. The Huttons, from the small town of Forest Dell,
Speaker 1: had bought their tickets many months in advance. They'd fly
Speaker 1: to Buenos Aires, spend a couple of days in the city,
Speaker 1: then set sail down the east coast of South America
Speaker 1: around Cape Horn and back up the other side. And
Speaker 1: because they had sprung for the extended thirty one day option.
Speaker 1: They'd continue after the first leg, ended in San Antonio, Chile,
Speaker 1: all the way up to the Panama Canal and on
Speaker 1: to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The capstone for
Speaker 1: Lance would be an excursion to Machu Picchu, the fifteenth
Speaker 1: century Incan ruined in the Peruvian Andes. In the weeks
Speaker 1: before their departure, Lance had monitored the spread of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus and begun to worry about the trip. He'd followed
Speaker 1: the cruise ship outbreaks, first on the Diamond Princess in
Speaker 1: February and then on the Grand Princess days before his
Speaker 1: own voyage. Princess cruizes, like Holland America, is part of
Speaker 1: the giant cruise operator Carnival. At eighty and seventy nine
Speaker 1: years old, respectively, he and Sharon were squarely in the
Speaker 1: at risk population for COVID nineteen. Lance had wanted to cancel,
Speaker 1: but Holland America sent him an email on February specifying
Speaker 1: that refunds were limited to customers who could prove they
Speaker 1: had had contact with someone who had the virus or
Speaker 1: had recently traveled to China. On March five, he checked again,
Speaker 1: but the policy hadn't changed. On March sixth, the day
Speaker 1: before the Zendaims passengers began boarding, Holland America did loosen
Speaker 1: its cancelation policy. Lance never learned of it, and so
Speaker 1: the couple had gone ahead with the trip. Throwing away
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars just felt too extravagant to a retired
Speaker 1: school superintendent. I'm sure many people on board felt the same,
Speaker 1: he said, speaking by phone as the ship sat in
Speaker 1: Panama Bay. If they'd had a chance, they would have
Speaker 1: gotten out of it. Now, the Hunton's just wanted to
Speaker 1: get home. Word of the deaths had rattled the couple.
Speaker 1: Lance was particularly worried about Sharon, his wife of fifty
Speaker 1: six years. She had bronchiac TASiS, a chronic condition that
Speaker 1: made her susceptible to airway infections, and he'd lost faith
Speaker 1: in the company that he now painfully realized he'd trusted
Speaker 1: with their lives. I just don't think they thought about
Speaker 1: this very well, he said. That's the only complaint I have.
Speaker 1: By the time the Zandam made it to port on
Speaker 1: April two, its passengers would be some of the only
Speaker 1: cruisers left on Earth. Some would still be very sick
Speaker 1: and not all of them would survive. Two months later,
Speaker 1: the cruise industry remains shut down and economically staggered. A
Speaker 1: no sale order issued by the c d C six
Speaker 1: days after the Zandam's departure has since been renewed through
Speaker 1: the end of July, but Carnival and Royal Caribbean International,
Speaker 1: the industries two dominant players, tentatively planned to start cruising
Speaker 1: again on August one. If the industry keeps to this timeline,
Speaker 1: ships will be departing and moving thousands from port to
Speaker 1: port while COVID clusters still burn around the world and
Speaker 1: a vaccine remains notional. To help customers swallow any misgivings,
Speaker 1: Carnival has offered rates as low as twenty eight dollars
Speaker 1: a day, including food. The company says it's learned from
Speaker 1: its first deadly wave of COVID nineteen outbreaks. In announcing
Speaker 1: its plans, Carnival promised to use this additional time to
Speaker 1: continue to engage experts, government officials, and stakeholders on additional
Speaker 1: protocols and procedures to protect the health and safety of
Speaker 1: our guests, crew and the communities we serve. Of course,
Speaker 1: the company had time to do all of that before
Speaker 1: the Zandam departed two. The Diamond Princess outbreak, which sickened
Speaker 1: more than seven hundred and killed at least thirteen on
Speaker 1: an East Asian cruise, happened a full month before, and
Speaker 1: yet the accounts of those on the Zandam and those
Speaker 1: outside Holland America and Carnival who stepped in to help
Speaker 1: get the vessel home suggest that the company squandered that time.
Speaker 1: Its executives badly underestimated the virus. They assumed the Zandam
Speaker 1: was safe because it was traveling through a part of
Speaker 1: the world with relatively few COVID nineteen cases, and they
Speaker 1: assumed protocols created for past on board disease outbreaks could
Speaker 1: contain the new one too. When neither of those things
Speaker 1: turned out to be true, they assumed someone would help them.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, those issues had to resolve.
Speaker 1: That ship couldn't sit off the coast of any of
Speaker 1: those countries indefinitely, says Orlando Ashford, who resigned as president
Speaker 1: of Holland America on June one. We had to end
Speaker 1: up someplace. So it was just a function of who
Speaker 1: was going to go and step up in a sense.
Speaker 1: The Zandam's odyssey is a dark parable of what economists
Speaker 1: call socializing losses. A company takes on risks it cannot
Speaker 1: handle itself, knowing that if things go awry, the public
Speaker 1: will be forced to rescue it. In the zan Dam's case,
Speaker 1: the rescue was literal and the losses measured in more
Speaker 1: than money. Claudia Osiani and her husband Won Henning, who
Speaker 1: reached the zen Dam on the afternoon of March seven,
Speaker 1: were only a five hour car ride from their home
Speaker 1: in the Argentine resort city of Mar del Plata. The
Speaker 1: cruise was Henning's gift to his wife for her sixty
Speaker 1: fourth birthday. One of the zan Dam's first ports of
Speaker 1: call was the Falkland Islands, whose penguin rockeries and quaint,
Speaker 1: incongruously British towns are the prime attraction for most visitors.
Speaker 1: Argentines have a different relationship to the ease Las Malvinas,
Speaker 1: as they call them, shaped by a disastrous N two
Speaker 1: war with the UK over the remote colonial outpost. Oceani,
Speaker 1: a psychologist, had treated veterans of the Falklands War for
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress disorder as a young resident at a
Speaker 1: naval hospital and Since then, she'd dreamed of seeing where
Speaker 1: they had fought. As experienced cruisers. Oceani and Henning new
Speaker 1: Holland America's reputation for luxury at prices below those of
Speaker 1: the top end lines. With berths for fourteen hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty two passengers and six hundred and fifteen crew, the
Speaker 1: Zandam is mid size. Some newer ships accommodate four times
Speaker 1: that number, with the sedate vibe of an ocean liner
Speaker 1: rather than a cancoon bachanal a Rococo pipe organ dominates
Speaker 1: the atrium, and music themed memorabilia throughout the ship. Guitars
Speaker 1: autographed by the members of the Rolling Stones and Queen
Speaker 1: a saxophone signed by Bill Clinton evoked the bygone rock
Speaker 1: and roll youth of the mostly older passengers. Oceani didn't
Speaker 1: want to seem ungrateful for her husband's lavish gift, but
Speaker 1: like Lance Hutton, she was uneasy. On the drive to
Speaker 1: Buenos Aires, the couple assured each other that the crews
Speaker 1: would probably be mostly locals. Argentina had just seventeen confirmed
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen cases and one death. At the time. We said, no,
Speaker 1: we're going so far south, she recalls, it's just going
Speaker 1: to be a bunch of Argentines and maybe some Chileans.
Speaker 1: When they got to the ship terminal, though, they found
Speaker 1: themselves in a sea of Europeans and Americans, all those
Speaker 1: people from where the pandemic was. The next day, passengers
Speaker 1: settled into their cabins or explored Buenos Aires at four
Speaker 1: or forty four pm local time, with the crew making
Speaker 1: final preparations to embark. The U S Department of States
Speaker 1: Bureau of Consular Affairs announced a travel advisory via Twitter.
Speaker 1: U S citizens, especially with lying conditions, should not travel
Speaker 1: by cruise ship. The tweet warned hashtag c d C
Speaker 1: notes increased risk of hashtag COVID nineteen on cruises. Many
Speaker 1: countries have implemented screening procedures, denied port entry rights to ships,
Speaker 1: and prevented disembarking. A little more than an hour later,
Speaker 1: the Zandam cast off into the broad mouth of the
Speaker 1: Rio de la Plata and headed east. Montevideo, Uruguay, was
Speaker 1: to be its first port of call. According to Ashford,
Speaker 1: the State Department advisory didn't warrant canceling the Zandam's trip.
Speaker 1: These things ebbed and flowed. He says, it was not
Speaker 1: clear there were a lot of statements at that point.
Speaker 1: The priority was making sure passengers who had paid for
Speaker 1: a premium cruise got their money's worth. We're trying to
Speaker 1: protect and deliver a wonderful guest experience, a wonderful vacation experience,
Speaker 1: Ashford says, and that's what this business is engineered to do.
Speaker 1: Protecting the guests from the accelerating epidemic was not something
Speaker 1: he thought he would have to worry about. It was
Speaker 1: on the other side of the world, he says. As
Speaker 1: the zan Dam set sail, Ashford's own wife and teenage
Speaker 1: son were in the middle of a four month world
Speaker 1: cruise on the m S Amsterdam. Ashford wasn't frightened for
Speaker 1: his family. I had a conversation with my wife, he recalls,
Speaker 1: Will I take you off a ship where no one
Speaker 1: has COVID and fly you to Seattle, which was a
Speaker 1: hot spot at the time. No, he told her, you
Speaker 1: are on the safest place. According to Holland America spokesman
Speaker 1: Eric Elviord, the cruise line made sure to follow the
Speaker 1: CDC's recommendations at that time, adding cleaning procedures and giving
Speaker 1: health surveys to embarking passengers on the zan Dam, Oceani
Speaker 1: did feel relatively safe. For the first few days of
Speaker 1: the journey, she and Henning befriended a few Argentine and
Speaker 1: Uruguayan couples, and after Montevideo and two days in the
Speaker 1: South Atlantic, the ship arrived at the Falklands. An old
Speaker 1: friend who lived there met the couple and guided them
Speaker 1: around the four decade old battlefields. It was wonderful being there, finally,
Speaker 1: Oceani said, is but if visiting the end of the
Speaker 1: world made the pandemic feel distant to the ship's passengers,
Speaker 1: their hosts saw things differently. The World Health Organization had
Speaker 1: just declared COVID nineteen a pandemic. Kim Doutois, a twenty
Speaker 1: six year old South African who worked on the Zandam
Speaker 1: as an assistant shore excursion manager, says that as she
Speaker 1: was loading the vans for a penguin tour, she noticed
Speaker 1: the local drivers were fearful. At that time, there were
Speaker 1: no known cases on the Falklands. They would tell us,
Speaker 1: if you want to blow your nose, throw it in
Speaker 1: this packet right away, and we'll seal it up and
Speaker 1: throw it away. Dotoa says they were nervous about ships
Speaker 1: coming in. They had reason to be. The Zandam's next
Speaker 1: stop was Punta Arenas, Chile, a city as close to
Speaker 1: Antarctica as it is to the Chilean capital of Santiago.
Speaker 1: Each year during the austral summer, cruises visited more than
Speaker 1: one hundred times, disgorging tourists who spend money in local
Speaker 1: shops and restaurants, and gaze across the Strait of Magellan
Speaker 1: at Tierra del Fuego, the Archipela Ago where South America ends.
Speaker 1: On March seven and eight, three year old Britain on
Speaker 1: a small luxury cruise ship called the Silver Explorer, had
Speaker 1: gotten off in town for a half day tour of
Speaker 1: the area. Five days later, the ship stopped at Khalta Tortell,
Speaker 1: an isolated coastal village of stilt houses and wooden walkways,
Speaker 1: and the passenger began showing symptoms of COVID nineteen. He
Speaker 1: was taken to a hospital where he tested positive for
Speaker 1: the disease, then airlifted to Santiago. Punta Arenuss Mayor Claudio
Speaker 1: Radonitch is convinced the man was patient zero for the region.
Speaker 1: We believe this came with tourists. He says, when news
Speaker 1: of the diagnosis got out, Kaleta Tortell barricaded the single
Speaker 1: road into town, and Radonitch begged the Punta Arrenus Port
Speaker 1: director to ban cruise ships. When the Zandam arrived on
Speaker 1: March fourteenth, the port was still open and residents were
Speaker 1: starting to get sick. Chilean authorities required temperature checks for
Speaker 1: everyone getting off the ship to explore the town. It
Speaker 1: was very ugly. Could feel people staring, just wanting us out,
Speaker 1: Osani recalls. The sense of foreboding was heightened by the
Speaker 1: news that the extended leg of the voyage had been canceled.
Speaker 1: Everyone would disembark a week later in San Antonio. Countries
Speaker 1: were closing their borders, and Holland America wanted to ensure
Speaker 1: that passengers could get home that day. March was also
Speaker 1: when the CDC ordered all cruise ship departures to stop.
Speaker 1: In justifying the measure, the no sale order laid out
Speaker 1: some of the characteristics that made the vessels particularly vulnerable
Speaker 1: to the new disease. The dynamics of passenger to passenger,
Speaker 1: passenger to crew, crew to passenger, and crew to crew
Speaker 1: intermingling in a semi closed setting are particularly conducive to
Speaker 1: stars covey to spread, resulting in high transmission rates. Packed
Speaker 1: theater or a crowded excursion van is an ideal environment
Speaker 1: for a virus that spreads through respiratory droplets. Confined quarters
Speaker 1: increase the odds it will spread between cabin mats, especially
Speaker 1: among crew sleeping several to a room and eating impacked
Speaker 1: mess halls. The older demographic of the clientele makes them
Speaker 1: more likely to get severe cases of the disease, and
Speaker 1: with each port it visits, a cruise ship releases its
Speaker 1: passengers into a new community. The CDC began working with
Speaker 1: global cruise companies to harden their fleets against disease in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands after a series of high profile
Speaker 1: gastro intestinal outbreaks on ships. The zen Dam is flagged
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands, but like the rest of the one
Speaker 1: hundred or so cruise ships calling on American ports, it's
Speaker 1: subject to two surprise inspections a year by US authorities.
Speaker 1: Since it's christening in two thousand, the zan Dam's inspection
Speaker 1: scores and the CDC's vessel sanitation program have averaged nine
Speaker 1: point five out of a hundred in it got a
Speaker 1: perfect hundred. This hasn't, however, translated into actual perfection. According
Speaker 1: to the VSP database, the ZENDAM has reported five disease outbreaks,
Speaker 1: four norovirus and one unknown since two thousand, an unusually
Speaker 1: high rate. Holland America has more reported disease outbreaks than
Speaker 1: any other cruise line. VSP data show, as indicated by
Speaker 1: the VSP scores, Zanda maintains a high level of attention
Speaker 1: to guest health and sanitation. Holland America's Elviord wrote in
Speaker 1: an email, Nora virus is very common shore side and
Speaker 1: can be brought to a ship easily and is easily
Speaker 1: transmitted from person to person. The day before the CDC
Speaker 1: no Sale order, the member companies of the Cruise Lines
Speaker 1: International Association, including Holland America and the other major lines,
Speaker 1: had announced the voluntary suspension of all departures from US ports.
Speaker 1: Before that, however, they'd lobbied heavily against restrictions on cruising.
Speaker 1: On March six, the c l i A issued a
Speaker 1: statement saying any action to restrict cruising is unwarranted and
Speaker 1: at odds with the World Health Organization. The group warned
Speaker 1: of possibly irreversible effects on the national and local economies
Speaker 1: depending on cruise tourism. On March seven, the chief executive
Speaker 1: officers of Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian met with Vice
Speaker 1: President Mike Pence at Port Everglades, after which Pence touted
Speaker 1: their new plans for quarantining passengers who became ill at sea.
Speaker 1: Weeks later, the CEO of Carnival Holland America's parent company
Speaker 1: was still assuring the public that it could protect those
Speaker 1: already aboard its ships. We do things you don't see
Speaker 1: in the general public, Arnold Donald said in a Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week interview on April one, the day before the
Speaker 1: zan Dam was finally able to dock in Florida. We
Speaker 1: do temperature scans, we do medical records, we have a
Speaker 1: medical on board. We do deep cleanings. Because you have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind, we sail around the world all
Speaker 1: the time. There's been ebola, Zica, stars, merse, so we
Speaker 1: have to deal with this stuff all the time. CDC
Speaker 1: officials say the cruise industry ignored recommendations to act sooner.
Speaker 1: We have told them time and again to stop sailing,
Speaker 1: said Cindy Friedman, an epidemiologist who leads the CDC's cruise
Speaker 1: ship Coronavirus Responds task Force in an April tenth interview,
Speaker 1: dealing with the outbreaks on the Princess ships had been
Speaker 1: costly and complex, involving doctors, health officials, diplomats, and military
Speaker 1: legisticians on multiple continents. The sooner these ships stopped sailing,
Speaker 1: the better for protection of public health and to preserve
Speaker 1: resources that could be used elsewhere, Friedman said. After leaving
Speaker 1: Punta Arenas, the Zandam steamed towards Ushawaya, Argentina, three hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty miles to the southeast. Some passengers went to
Speaker 1: bed early to make sure they were up the next
Speaker 1: morning to savor the passage down Glacier Alley in the
Speaker 1: Beagle Channel, named for the ship that first mapped it,
Speaker 1: with Charles Darwin aboard. Amanda Bogan was up late. The
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old worked on the cruise as an
Speaker 1: entertainment host, organizing and m seeing trivia nights, magic shows,
Speaker 1: scavenger hunts, and on this particular night, the Orange Party,
Speaker 1: a celebration of the cruise lines home country circular aiding
Speaker 1: Among the Orange clann guests, Bogan wasn't thinking about the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and none of her supervisors had told her she should be.
Speaker 1: We were at the very bottom of South America, so
Speaker 1: far away from everything that was happening, she says, the
Speaker 1: idea that the coronavirus would reach the ship just seemed impossible.
Speaker 1: During the party, Bogan felt the floor tilting. It was
Speaker 1: unusual to be so aware of the ship turning. Later,
Speaker 1: she made her way down to the officer's bar and
Speaker 1: met some friends, and they explained that the ship had
Speaker 1: turned around. Argentina was shutting its ports against the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Chile too, was preparing to close its borders, banning cruise
Speaker 1: ships as of eight the next morning, so the ship
Speaker 1: was racing back to Punta Arenas. The Gandam arrived well
Speaker 1: before dawn, and guests received a note from Ashford under
Speaker 1: their doors. Our current sailing will now terminate in Punta Arenas, Chile,
Speaker 1: where we have arrived today. It read, we are sincerely
Speaker 1: sorry that your voyage has come to such an abrupt end.
Speaker 1: There were instructions about rebooking lights and a section on refunds,
Speaker 1: but the note was wrong. Chile, it turned out, had
Speaker 1: closed the port early, and when the sun came up
Speaker 1: passenger saw a navy cutter between the Xan Dame and shore.
Speaker 1: At nightfall, with the ship anchored in the harbor, residents
Speaker 1: gathered for impromptu protests, blaring their car horns and screaming
Speaker 1: angrily across the water. The next evening, March sixteenth, Captain
Speaker 1: Smit announced that negotiations between Holland America until in health
Speaker 1: officials had broken down. The Zandam was headed back to sea.
Speaker 1: The only thing that captain could tell us is we're
Speaker 1: going north, says Rick de Pino, a New Jersey patent
Speaker 1: attorney who was on board with his wife Wendy. In
Speaker 1: the absence of a sure thing, the navigation officer plotted
Speaker 1: courses to three possible ports, San Diego, Fort Lauderdale, and
Speaker 1: Puerto Vayar to Mexico. On the night of March twenty first,
Speaker 1: De Pino, says, the cruise director addressed the audience at
Speaker 1: a comedy show. I really don't know where we are going,
Speaker 1: he remembers the man, saying, it's the voyage to Nowhere.
Speaker 1: A cruise to nowhere was still a cruise. We tried
Speaker 1: to pack every day with as many fun activities as
Speaker 1: we could, says Bogan. Corporate had given them the go
Speaker 1: ahead to do anything they could, anything to keep them
Speaker 1: I guess just happy and distracted. There were extra trivia
Speaker 1: contests and a twist Off dance party. The casino bars
Speaker 1: and hot tubs were full. An English tenor sang to
Speaker 1: a crowded theater, joking between numbers about how the ship
Speaker 1: felt like a hostage situation. At one point, Osiani, convinced
Speaker 1: that more people were coughing as each day passed, went
Speaker 1: to the reception desk and asked the attendant why the
Speaker 1: ship wasn't prohibiting large gatherings. He looked at me and asked,
Speaker 1: why should we do that when the boat is safe,
Speaker 1: She says, there were some precautions. Cruisers are typically passionate
Speaker 1: about the self service buffets. Now, larger plastic shields had
Speaker 1: appeared along the food stations, and attendants were ladling out
Speaker 1: the portions. Osiani made a point of asking them why
Speaker 1: they weren't wearing masks or gloves, and was told repeatedly
Speaker 1: that there weren't enough to go around. A member of
Speaker 1: the cleaning staff interviewed for this story who didn't want
Speaker 1: his name used for fear of losing his job gave
Speaker 1: a different reason. His supervisor discouraged masks, saying they would
Speaker 1: spook the passengers. On March seventeenth, the ship heard from
Speaker 1: a Swedish travel agency one of its customers, a seventy
Speaker 1: nine year old widower named Banked Vernerson, was on board
Speaker 1: alone and his daughter in Stockholm shanty. At Vernerson, Doll
Speaker 1: hadn't heard from him in two days. The crew found
Speaker 1: him in his cabin, not feeling well, with a fever
Speaker 1: and a slight cough. Doll was worried enough to make
Speaker 1: arrangements through a company called International s o S for
Speaker 1: an ambulance to be waiting to take her father to
Speaker 1: a hospital. When the Zandam, having been refused entry at
Speaker 1: San Antonio, arrived at nearby Valparaiso, Doll's arrangements were in vain.
Speaker 1: Chile refused to let the Zandam dock at Valparaiso either.
Speaker 1: On March twenty one, a fifty one year old housekeeping
Speaker 1: supervisor named we wat We Darto spoke by phone with
Speaker 1: his wife Annidoco, back in Batam, Indonesia. He complained of
Speaker 1: a headache, a bitter taste in his mouth, and a
Speaker 1: sore tongue. We Darto didn't think he had COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: but even if he did, he wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to confirm it. Holland America hadn't supplied the Zandam with
Speaker 1: COVID tests. Asked why, Ashford says the tests were in
Speaker 1: short supply and he thought they were unreliable. So we
Speaker 1: just assumed if you had flu like symptoms, we in
Speaker 1: an over abundance of caution, we assumed COVID to be safer.
Speaker 1: The next day, the ship went into lockdown. Captain Smit
Speaker 1: announced that multiple passengers and crew with influenza like respiratory
Speaker 1: illness symptoms had reported to the medical center. Out of
Speaker 1: an abundance of caution, we must ask at this time
Speaker 1: that everyone returned to your staterooms as soon as you
Speaker 1: were done with lunch, he continued, where regrettably, we are
Speaker 1: going to have to ask you to remain. The ship
Speaker 1: moved north past Peru and Equity Or toward Columbia. All
Speaker 1: three had closed their ports. The Huttons were allowedly their
Speaker 1: cabin once in six days for a thirty minute walk
Speaker 1: on deck, chaperoned by crew members dressed in what Lance
Speaker 1: thought looked like has mat suits. Around nine o'clock the
Speaker 1: night of the twenty five, de Pino, tracking the ship's
Speaker 1: progress on Marine Traffic dot Com, noticed it suddenly head east.
Speaker 1: As Captain Smith announced the next morning, they had made
Speaker 1: an unannounced stop off Manta, Ecuador to meet a boat
Speaker 1: carrying supplies. The nighttime resupply had been kept secret from
Speaker 1: the passengers for fear of protests in the port and
Speaker 1: for fear of jeopardizing this operation. The captain apologetically explained,
Speaker 1: you all know how fast things can go by social media.
Speaker 1: Along with other medical supplies, the boxes loaded onto the
Speaker 1: ship contained masks, which were distributed to passengers along with breakfast.
Speaker 1: All that time until the twenty six, they obviously didn't
Speaker 1: have masks for everybody on the ship. Dupino says, we
Speaker 1: went to great length to acquire masks for guests and crew.
Speaker 1: Mid Voyage. Holland America's Elvior wrote a few days earlier,
Speaker 1: shortly before passengers were confined to their cabins, Duti, the
Speaker 1: South African shore excursion manager, had been asked to start
Speaker 1: performing crew temperature checks. A member of the medical staff
Speaker 1: had explained how she and a few colleagues were to
Speaker 1: work their way down lists of everyone in food and
Speaker 1: beverage and housekeeping. Anyone with the fever was sent back
Speaker 1: to their cabin to self isolate, along with anyone sharing
Speaker 1: their room. The first morning, Dutois reported to the medical
Speaker 1: center to get her files and protective gear. She was
Speaker 1: alarmed at what she saw. There's a reception area, she recalls,
Speaker 1: there were probably at least ten guests in there, then
Speaker 1: about six to eight crew lining the wall. That was
Speaker 1: just in the beginning already. The next day we had
Speaker 1: one of the guests. They're so sick that he was
Speaker 1: getting oxygen and on a ventilator. The protective gear kept proliferating.
Speaker 1: First she was given masks and gloves, then scrubs, plastic
Speaker 1: friends and goggles like others. She recalls being told at
Speaker 1: first not to wear the gear in the guest areas.
Speaker 1: It's likely that one of the passengers Dutoi saw in
Speaker 1: the medical center was Vernerson on March. He was on
Speaker 1: oxygen when he spoke with his daughter in Stockholm. He
Speaker 1: had a dry kind of voice. She recalls, I knew
Speaker 1: what was going to happen on March. He died the
Speaker 1: day before. Doll had called Holland America and asked that
Speaker 1: a note be relayed to him. WE miss you, we
Speaker 1: love you lots. We hope to get you back home soon.
Speaker 1: It read I just hope that someone read that to him,
Speaker 1: Doll says, because I know he was alone. After his death,
Speaker 1: testing revealed that Vernerson had COVID nineteen. Crew members began
Speaker 1: to get sick in alarming numbers. The stepped up sanitation
Speaker 1: regime was grueling for Widarto and the rest of the
Speaker 1: dwindling staff, as was the sudden shift to delivering meals
Speaker 1: to seven cabins. Bogan recalls a dinner companion and in
Speaker 1: the crew dining area one night breaking down in tears.
Speaker 1: He was crying from exhaustion. She recalls the next morning,
Speaker 1: the man went into isolation as a suspected COVID nineteen case.
Speaker 1: On March, Doutoi's boyfriend, who also worked on the ship,
Speaker 1: spiked a fever. The pair began to self isolate in
Speaker 1: their cabin, and soon Dutois had a fever too. The
Speaker 1: tally of COVID cases on the Zandam and the Rotterdam
Speaker 1: may never be known. There are thirteen known cases. Based
Speaker 1: on an analysis by the Miami Herald According to the
Speaker 1: c d C, more than two d and fifty people
Speaker 1: reported illness consistent with COVID nineteen, but Holland America hasn't
Speaker 1: revealed how many of those people were actually tested for
Speaker 1: the disease. Several passengers interviewed by a Business Week who
Speaker 1: tested positive for COVID did so only after leaving the ship.
Speaker 1: By this point in the voyage, various governments had become involved. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Port Everglades was identified as the best port for the
Speaker 1: ship if it could somehow make it through the Panama Canal.
Speaker 1: The issue wasn't just transitting the canal. Holland America was
Speaker 1: also hoping to fly medical supplies and personnel into the country,
Speaker 1: load them on to the stricken ship, and fly out
Speaker 1: the very ill. Panama was intransigent, and officials at the U. S.
Speaker 1: Embassy there urged the company to explore other options. One
Speaker 1: was to replace the airlift with a ship. The fastest
Speaker 1: in the fleet, the Rotterdam, was docked at Puerto Vallarta
Speaker 1: with no passengers and could reach the canal in less
Speaker 1: than four days. On March twenty second, Holland America decided
Speaker 1: to dispatch it. The Rotterdam came within sight of the
Speaker 1: Zandam on the evening of March twenty sixth, after a
Speaker 1: tumultuous voyage. It was only after it had departed that
Speaker 1: much of the crew learned of plans to bring aboard
Speaker 1: passengers from the Zandam, and many threatened to barricade themselves
Speaker 1: in their cabins rather than interact with the potentially ill guests.
Speaker 1: Ashford and Carnivals chief medical officer Grant Tarling had to
Speaker 1: call in to a ninety minute all hands meeting in
Speaker 1: the ship's theater to try to quell the unrest. Ashford
Speaker 1: says he gave crew members the option to stay in
Speaker 1: their cabins, but appealed for their help. I said, if
Speaker 1: the tides were turned and the situations were reversed, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you would want the zan Dam to come to
Speaker 1: your aid, he says. Most agreed to work. On March seven,
Speaker 1: with negotiations over the canal still going on, the transfer
Speaker 1: of passengers began. Oceani and Henning were among the eight
Speaker 1: hundred eight Zandam passengers cleared to go across. A crew
Speaker 1: member in a mask, gloves and protective gown led the
Speaker 1: couple down to a hatchway in the side of the ship,
Speaker 1: where one of the orange and white tenders bobbed on
Speaker 1: the waves. As they climbed aboard the Rotterdam, they and
Speaker 1: their luggage were fogged down with disinfectant. The couple were
Speaker 1: assigned the cabin corresponding exactly to the one they had
Speaker 1: left late on The u S State Department led diplomatic
Speaker 1: effort bore Fruit and Panama agreed to let the Zandam
Speaker 1: and the Rotterdam through the canal. The next evening, the
Speaker 1: passenger transfer complete. Crews disinfected the bridges of the ships
Speaker 1: so the authorities, specially trained pilots could come aboard. A
Speaker 1: single pilot in full body protective gear boarded each vessel
Speaker 1: and over the next seven hours, maneuvered it through the
Speaker 1: canals tricky series of locks and waterways. Passengers were told
Speaker 1: to turn down their lights and draw their curtains. If
Speaker 1: they had a balcony, they were to stay inside. In
Speaker 1: some stretches of the canal, Panamanian soil was just a
Speaker 1: few feet away the pilots. As soon as they left
Speaker 1: the ships went into quarantine. As the two ships headed
Speaker 1: up through the Caribbean toward Florida, new cases appeared on
Speaker 1: the Rotterdam as well as the zan Dam. On March
Speaker 1: twenty nine, with Darto, the housekeeping supervisor, told his wife
Speaker 1: that he still had a headache and a cough was
Speaker 1: coming on. She remembers trying to switch their call to
Speaker 1: a video chat so she could have a look at him,
Speaker 1: but he quickly switched it back. He was still at work,
Speaker 1: he told her, and very busy. The Hutton's too began
Speaker 1: to get sick. Their symptoms diarrhea, nausea, lack of appetite
Speaker 1: didn't match with medical authorities were attributing to COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: at the time, but Sharon was alarmed enough to call
Speaker 1: the Zandam's guest services line. Even after multiple tries, no
Speaker 1: one came to the room or called back, so the
Speaker 1: couple took commodium and waited. Their symptoms worsened. Sharon developed
Speaker 1: a cough, then Lance did too. Even as they headed
Speaker 1: for Florida, it was still far from certain the two
Speaker 1: ships would be able to dock when they arrived. The
Speaker 1: state's governor, Rhonda Santis, among others, had come out against it.
Speaker 1: We cannot afford to have people who are not even
Speaker 1: Floridians dumped into South Florida, using up those valuable resources,
Speaker 1: he said in a Fox News interview. Officials in Broward County,
Speaker 1: where Port Everglades is located, were inundated with emails, many
Speaker 1: from residents horrified by the prospect of an influx of
Speaker 1: sick passengers, many others from people with friends or relatives
Speaker 1: on the ships, equally horrified by the prospect of leaving
Speaker 1: them at sea. On March thirty, a plaintive op ed
Speaker 1: by Ashford was published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Speaker 1: The international community, consistently generous and helpful in the face
Speaker 1: of human suffering, shut itself off to Zandam, leaving her
Speaker 1: defend for herself. He wrote, his company had done nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: He insisted the ship had been the victim of unforeseen
Speaker 1: circumstances and uncarrying governments. It's tempting, He went on to
Speaker 1: speculate about the illnesses that may have been avoided or
Speaker 1: lives saved if we'd gotten the assistance we saw it.
Speaker 1: Weeks ago, as the piece was being published, Glenn Wiltshire,
Speaker 1: the Port Everglades Director, along with representatives from the c
Speaker 1: d C, the U S Coast Guard, the Florida Department
Speaker 1: of Health, and the Broward County Sheriff's Office had to
Speaker 1: come up with a planned for Holland America and Carnival
Speaker 1: to offload the passengers without spreading disease or panic throughout
Speaker 1: South Florida. Even after the princess outbreaks, Carnival didn't have
Speaker 1: protocols ready to unload a coronavirus infected ship at Port Everglades.
Speaker 1: Government officials repeatedly pressed Carnival and Holland America executives for
Speaker 1: more detail on how the company planned to get people
Speaker 1: off the ship and out of Florida and at its
Speaker 1: own expense. On April two, the parties reached a deal
Speaker 1: allowing the two ships to dock. The majority of passengers,
Speaker 1: those judged to be healthy and sixty four in all,
Speaker 1: would board buses at the port and be taken directly
Speaker 1: to the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale Airport to be
Speaker 1: flown out on five chartered flights across the US, Canada,
Speaker 1: and Europe. Thirteen passengers would be cared for in local hospitals.
Speaker 1: It's the humanitarian thing to do, the governor told Fox
Speaker 1: News late that afternoon. Greeted by a line of thirteen ambulances.
Speaker 1: The Zandam docked for the first time since Punta Arenas,
Speaker 1: followed by the Rotterdam. Teams of doctors and nurses came
Speaker 1: aboard to see which passengers were fit to travel home
Speaker 1: on their own. Still unable to get through to the
Speaker 1: medical center by phone, the Hutton's made their way to
Speaker 1: the examination area. A week before, they'd felt fine but
Speaker 1: were kept aboard the Zendam, this time, weak and in pain,
Speaker 1: they were cleared to travel. Their temperatures were normal by
Speaker 1: the next morning, though Sharon was unable to leave their
Speaker 1: cabin this time. When Lance called for help, a nurse
Speaker 1: came alarmed at Charon's condition. She asked why they hadn't
Speaker 1: called sooner than rushed Charon to the medical center to
Speaker 1: be put on oxygen and antibiotics. Lance was at first
Speaker 1: deemed well enough to fly home later that day, but
Speaker 1: within hours he deteriorated enough that he was kept aboard
Speaker 1: the emptying ship in his cabin alone. He is still
Speaker 1: not feeling well and is stuck in his same room
Speaker 1: for an indefinite period of time. Amy Hutton, their daughter,
Speaker 1: posted on Facebook that day again, I am helpless and
Speaker 1: so are they please continue to pray. The ship's medical
Speaker 1: personnel finally gave Sharon a COVID nineteen test, which came
Speaker 1: back positive. Her coughing fits were driving her blood oxygen
Speaker 1: to dangerously low levels. An increasingly desperate Amy was finally
Speaker 1: able to reach someone at a Holland America emergency hotline
Speaker 1: who got a doctor to check on Lance. On April five,
Speaker 1: Sharon was flown to Orlando, where she was placed in
Speaker 1: a special COVID nineteen ward in an intensive care unit. Lance,
Speaker 1: whose COVID test had also come back positive, soon followed her.
Speaker 1: The couple were placed on ventilators for days. The couple
Speaker 1: lay across the hall from each other. Slowly, Lance began
Speaker 1: to improve Sharon's body, though was shutting down. The following weekend,
Speaker 1: she seemed a little better and Amy arranged a video call,
Speaker 1: but a few hours later Sharon went into shock. A
Speaker 1: nurse put a cell phone to her ear with Amy
Speaker 1: on the line. I was at least able to tell
Speaker 1: her goodbye, Amy says, and tell her it was okay
Speaker 1: to go. She died at eleven o one p m.
Speaker 1: On April eleven of acute respiratory distress caused by COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen and pneumonia. According to the Medical Examiner. A few
Speaker 1: days earlier, Widarto had also died. The day before the
Speaker 1: Zandam docked, Holland America had informed his wife that he
Speaker 1: had been admitted to the ship's medical center with shortness
Speaker 1: of breath. The next day, she heard that one crew
Speaker 1: member had been admitted to a Florida hospital, and she
Speaker 1: soon learned that it was her husband. Because he was
Speaker 1: in isolation, sedated, and on a ventilator, it was hard
Speaker 1: for her to speak to him, but in video calls
Speaker 1: with hospital staff she was able to at least see him.
Speaker 1: She plans to place his ashes in his parents tomb
Speaker 1: in Jakarta. The majority of the sick passengers were deemed
Speaker 1: recovered and fit to travel by company medical staff. When
Speaker 1: the ship stocked in Florida, Carnival and Holland America, as promised,
Speaker 1: flew almost all of them out of the state within
Speaker 1: a day, though for a few the journey stretched on
Speaker 1: much longer. Osiani and Henning would languish on the Rotterdam
Speaker 1: for another three and a half weeks, waiting for approval
Speaker 1: from the Argentine government for their charter flight. The ship
Speaker 1: sat at port, then cruised around the Caribbean with a
Speaker 1: skeleton crew of similarly marooned employees and passengers before the
Speaker 1: couple was moved to another cruise ship and finally put
Speaker 1: on a flight home. The depinios were among the passengers
Speaker 1: who disembarked on April third at nine forty five a m.
Speaker 1: In their masks, they walked down the Rotterdam's gangway and
Speaker 1: onto specially sealed buses. Police cars and motorcycles were waiting
Speaker 1: to escort them to the airport. As the couple were
Speaker 1: boarding the crowded coach, they met a woman who was
Speaker 1: also headed back to their hometown of Warren Township, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: The three were all on the same twelve fifteen p
Speaker 1: m charter flight to Atlanta, and when it landed, they
Speaker 1: found themselves not in a sealed bus but a bustling
Speaker 1: international airport. They were starving and had a few hours
Speaker 1: before their commercial flight to New York City in a days.
Speaker 1: Wearing their masks and cheap surgical gloves, they sat at
Speaker 1: a bar and ordered burghers. Rick made sure to warn
Speaker 1: their waiter Tony where they'd come from. We're in the
Speaker 1: general population. No one's wearing masks. Rick remembers, as far
Speaker 1: as Holland America was concerned, it was as if we
Speaker 1: somehow got cleansed of the virus when we were up
Speaker 1: in the air. Ashford defends the use of commercial flights,
Speaker 1: not just because the cruise line followed c DC guidelines.
Speaker 1: In contrast to random people on a flight, who do
Speaker 1: you think is safer? They were in their room for
Speaker 1: two weeks, checked with all the protocols we had, He says,
Speaker 1: That's about the safest group on the plane in my opinion.
Speaker 1: To Rick Depino, though it felt jarring and irresponsible in
Speaker 1: the morning, they were treating us with hazmat suits. He
Speaker 1: remembers thinking, and now we're sitting at a bar eating burgers.
Speaker 1: The CDC would change its guidance the next day forbidding
Speaker 1: the use of commercial flights or public transportation to get
Speaker 1: passengers home. Cruise lines have yet to find a way
Speaker 1: to repatriate the tens of thousands of crew members still
Speaker 1: languishing on its ships. Over the next few weeks, Rick
Speaker 1: would wonder whether he'd gotten COVID nineteen on the cruise.
Speaker 1: He hadn't felt ill at any point, but he knew
Speaker 1: cases could be asymptomatic, and five of the six friends
Speaker 1: he had kept in touch with from the Zendam ended
Speaker 1: up testing positive. He wondered about the people who sat
Speaker 1: near him on the flight to New York. He tried,
Speaker 1: unsuccessfully to contact Tony at the airport bar to make
Speaker 1: sure he hadn't since gotten sick. In late April, he
Speaker 1: and Wendy got COVID nineteen antibody tests to see if
Speaker 1: they'd had the disease. Both came back positive. With Austin Carr,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Levin, and Tasia Sipahutar. Check out this story and more.
Speaker 1: It's in this week's edition of the Bloomberg Business Week magazine,
Speaker 1: on newsstands, online, and on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Carol
Speaker 1: Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Check us out every day
Speaker 1: on the radio Bloomberg business Week. It's live two pm
Speaker 1: to six pm Wall Street Time. This is Bloomberg