Perhaps you didn't notice, but cruise ships haven't been sailing out of American ports lately. Something about, um, a virus.
Many of us heard the first squeaks of a future pandemic when waves of infection broke out on a few alleged pleasure boats, leaving their guests stranded on board, hostage to the new plague. The industry has recently been on ... hiatus. But now it's clamoring to get back in action with as few new rules as possible.
Florida, under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, is suing the federal government to open up the harbors. At the same time, it's prohibiting cruise lines from asking passengers for proof of vaccination.
We pause here to note that at this moment in time, DeSantis is regarded as one of the leading candidates for the next Republican presidential nomination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been unenthusiastic about letting the ships back on their voyages, and really, who could blame them? Imagine you were stuck trying to protect the nation from another COVID-19 surge while you had the whole country on your case, complaining about face masks. You're terrified the pandemic could somehow come back, kill another half-million people and wreck the economy.
Would you really want to swiftly restore Americans' rights to squish into a boat with several thousand other people, crowding at buffets and dances while enjoying entertainments like "roller coaster at sea" or a floating tattoo artist?
Nevertheless, the CDC came up with criteria that would allow the cruise ships to cruise again. The industry decried the rules as too burdensome and confusing.
Let's take the opposite approach. As long as the government is devoting so much time and attention to the cruise industry, how about adding on a few other issues? In a typical year, there are more than 300 ships floating around the globe, scaring the whales and polluting the ocean. A 3,000-passenger ship, which today would rank just over medium-size, can produce 21,000 gallons of sewage a day, most of which gets pumped into the sea.
The human beings on board aren't all necessarily in good shape, either. It was only recently that Congress actually required that the ships have a physician on board to treat any passenger in the event of an emergency.
"They treat their workers like you-know-what," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., remarked delicately. A longtime cruise industry watchdog, Blumenthal had to fight for years just to get that doctor rule.
So we've got pollution, scared whales and oppressed workers. You will now undoubtedly be stunned to hear that Blumenthal also says the cruise lines "avoid taxes very aggressively and energetically."
None of this has had any impact on DeSantis, who launched his anti-regulation campaign on behalf of the cruise lines by announcing that "Florida is fighting back."
Cruise ship defenders have noted bitterly that people have been returning to air travel with relatively little controversy. Of course, airplanes all have serious ventilation systems. And we fly in planes because we need to get somewhere. Nobody ever buys a ticket thinking it'd just be fun to be in the air for a week or so.
To be fair, there are many, many people who really enjoy taking a cruise with several thousand strangers. Bet they'd have an even better time if they knew the new gang wasn't infectious.
The New York Times