The Princess ships do appear to stand out.
The Ruby Princess, now off Sydney, is set to exceed the Diamond Princess's awful statistics in many ways. It is linked to 600 cases in passengers and of the 1100 crew 250 are waiting on test results. There are now 10 passenger deaths (Diamond -11) with I think to date 9 crew transported to on-shore medical facilities. Hopefully none of them die.
It all means that the Ruby Princess is responsible for more than 10% of covid-19 cases and just under 30% of deaths in Australia. It is also responsible for cases in New Zealand where a tour guide, inadvertently infected by passengers, subsequently infected a 70 yo relative who in turn infected at least 3 others in his aged care facility.
It was all very much avoidable. The Ruby Princess departed Sydney on 8 March, 8 hours late. Why late? Well, it had docked at 6am with 158 sick passengers. No doubt the Captain and medical staff regarded cleaning as needing to be done! But with that many sick passengers from the previous cruise, a proportion of crew would inevitably be sick as well. How could they not see that? Particularly in light of covid-19 news from around the world? Perhaps some 'intelligence' and guidance from Princess Cruise's/Carrnival management could have beeb provided? They had seen the situations unfold before on other Princess ships.
The Ruby's Captain, medical staff and at least one Carnival Executive made serious errors. They need to be held accountable. The latter has been reported as telling NSW authorities that although an ambulance was required for two passengers, it was not covid-related. That claim resulted in a ban on docking being reversed. One of the ambulance passengers subsequently died of covid-19.
At face value, Carnival (possibly incl Ruby's Captain) have been complicit in a callous and unconscionable ruse to dump passengers ashore ASAP so they quickly became someone else's problem. Based on experience with the Diamond Princess, had Carnival acted properly then passengers would have been tested, taken ashore in an orderly and controlled manner and isolated or quarantined. Instead they dispersed far and wide. For example, QF 7 from Sydney to Dallas (16 hr flight) on March 20 had 170 people who had come from the Ruby Princess on board, which horrified the Qantas Captain and crew midway through the flight. That is in addition to spreading to every State in Australia.
The Grand Princess incident in San Francisco seems to be very similar. Dump some sick people ashore then load up for another cruise. And then create a shipload of people who become sick.
By accounts of the Ruby Princess passengers, they are quite nice ships. To bad that Carnival and at least some of its Captains, and at least some of the Ships Officers, are proving to be persons unfit to operate them. And as noted by others, pity the poor crew.
Five ships have now left Sydney after 'encouragement' from the police. Four of them, xxxx Of The Seas, were shuffling crew around. A crew member posted online that the intent was to get the crew home or close to home, so the ships were all heading in different directions to do that. But as this crew member said: "I am from Italy, but live in New York. For me it is best to stay on the ship in a tiny cabin, without pay, than go to either of those places right now."
Cruise ships are easy to kick right now, but when they exacerbate the problems out of self-interest or ignorance then they deserve to be kicked.
Post Script:
A criminal investigation into what has been termed 'the Ruby Princess debacle' has just been announced. Police stated that there are discrepancies in information provided by Carnival regarding covid-19 cases on board. Apparently Carnival has indicated that it will co-operate with the investigation.