The Diamond Princess
The story of the Diamond Princess cruise ship was heavily reported at the time. The ‘novel’ Covid-19 virus was ripping through those on board; countries were unwilling to let the ship dock; individual countries were making efforts to medivac their citizens off the ship and get them to hospital; all of which must have been incredibly distressing for everyone on board.
In ‘normal’ times, this event would have been a gift – two large and distinct populations (passengers and crew), isolated on a floating petri dish for several weeks, battling a brand-new virus that we knew virtually nothing about. However, in these not-so-normal times, the data that emerged from the Diamond Princess contradicts the narrative of a highly contagious, deadly disease, and so the story is in danger of disappearing into a memory hole.
Here’s an overview, lest we forget.
Timeline
The ship set sail from Yokohama, Japan, on January 20, 2020, for a tour of South-East Asia to coincide with the Lunar New Year. On board were 2,666 passengers (median age: 69, 55% female) and 1,045 crew (median age: 36, 81% male), a total of 3,711 people.
The outbreak was traced to an 80-year-old passenger from Hong Kong who had recently spent time in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and boarded in Yokohama, despite having a cough. He later left the cruise in Hong Kong, probably on January 25, 2020.
At the end of July, the ship docked in Taiwan, and then sailed to Okinawa on February 1, 2020. On the same day, the passenger who disembarked in Hong Kong went to hospital with a fever, tested positive for Covid-19, and the authorities immediately alerted the Diamond Princess’s operating company. For reasons that remain unclear, it was a further two days before those on the ship were told, and for several days thereafter, life aboard continued as normal, with all the fitness clubs, theatres, casinos, bars, and buffet-style restaurants fully open, and shows and parties continuing as planned.
February 3 – the ship returned to Okinawa but didn’t dock.
February 4 – 31 passengers tested, 10 found to be positive. The decision was taken to quarantine the ship and isolate all those on board for 14 days, as per WHO guidelines.
February 7 – confirmed cases on board now 61.
February 10 – now it was 135 cases, and sick passengers were triaged into three groups, depending on severity, and evacuated to on-shore intensive care facilities as necessary.
February 17 – 454 cases confirmed, including 33 crew and one quarantine officer.
At this point, various countries started sending specially chartered planes to repatriate their citizens and quarantine them on home soil. A total of 328 Americans were flown back to the US on two planes, one landing at Travis Air Force Base in California and the other at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas. Canada, Hong Kong and Italy followed suit, and Australia evacuated 124 passengers from the ship, of whom 24 had tested positive. They were all quarantined in Darwin for 14 days.
February 19 – passengers testing negative began to leave the ship.
February 20 – the WHO reported 1,076 known cases outside of China, of which more than 50% were from the Diamond Princess. By March 1, everyone was off the ship.
Criticism
The Numbers
The number of deaths vary, depending on the source, but range between 9 (the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and 13 (the Japanese government and the WHO).
In terms of the total population, this represents a percentage range of between 0.24% and 0.35%.
However, no one from the (younger) crew cohort died. We can therefore adjust these to be percentages just of the (older) passenger population of 2,666, and the range becomes 0.34% to 0.49%.
Of the 712 infections, 145 occurred in crew and 567 occurred in passengers. As pointed out above, none of the crew died, so the CFR in that population was 0%. For the passengers, the CFR was 2.3%.
Assessments & Updates
As early as March 17, 2020, John P.A. Ioannidis was calling the unfolding pandemic 'a fiasco in the making', citing the Diamond Princess as proof of how overblown the MSM rhetoric was (and still is) in a long article.1) (Ioannidis is a controversial Stanford professor,2) yet the WHO still published one of his papers on Covid-19.3))
Other Cruise News
In December 2021, ZeroHedge brings us right up to date, reporting that multiple virus outbreaks on multiple cruise ships reveal just how nonsensical the 'effective' part of the 'safe and effective' mantra really is.4)
On December 29, 2021, the AIDAnova, with 2,844 passengers and 1,353 crew onboard, docked in Portugal on Dec. 29 while en route to Madera for New Year’s celebrations, but was unable to continue after 52 COVID-19 cases were detected. Everyone on board had passed a COVID-19 screening test and were vaccinated with two doses before the ship sailed out of Germany, In a strange reversal of the Diamond Princess infection pattern (where all infections were among the largely elderly passengers), here, no passengers on board the vessel tested positive for the virus, and all the infections were among the fully vaccinated crew.5)
On December 30, 2021, the CDC raised the risk level for cruise ships to the highest possible level advising people to avoid them, even those who are fully vaccinated. According to Bloomberg, Covid-19 cases have been reported in 94 ships in US waters alone.6)
January 7, 2021: It emerges that four Royal Caribbean cruises have been postponed, “amid a global surge in COVID-19 cases”.7)
January 15, 2021: The guidance from the CDC, known as the Framework for Conditional Sailing Order,8) expired and became voluntary. “After the expiration of the Temporary Extension & Modification of the CSO, CDC intends to transition to a voluntary program, in coordination with cruise ship operators and other stakeholders, to assist the cruise ship industry to detect, mitigate, and control the spread of COVID-19 onboard cruise ships,” the CDC wrote in its guideline.
Ships operating in the United States with international itineraries that choose not to follow CDC guidelines will be classified as “gray” on the health agency's “Cruise Ship Color Status.” Those who choose not to follow the guidelines but are only sailing in U.S. waters won't be listed at all.9)