Lady Business: Cruises and other corona crises; ‘Okay ladies, let’s get in Reformation’
Hello and welcome to Lady Business, a newsletter about women, the business world, and all the ways they overlap. You can sign up for Lady Business and read previous issues here. This is the 96th issue, published on The Ides of March, 2020.
Cruise Control
The incoming disaster seems a little closer now. All this week, as I watched the long arc of COVID-19 approaching my home turf, I kept, inevitably, reaching for comparisons.
Hurricane Sandy, the last time New York got advance warning of a natural disaster that still walloped us. The aftermath of the 2016 election, when we started to get familiar with the rampant anxiety of “uncertainty.” The last major market crash, and the long, grim months of the ensuing financial recession.
And this week ten years ago, when I was celebrating my grandmother’s 90th birthday aboard my first and still-only weeklong cruise:
The fun is certainly grinding to a halt for the $150 billion cruise industry. The rapid spread of COVID-19, which stranded thousands of people on two separate Princess ships, took on new menace for cruise operators on Sunday, when the U.S. State Department bluntly warned that “U.S. citizens, particularly travelers with underlying health conditions, should not travel by cruise ship.” The CDC, in only slightly softer language, recommended that travelers “defer all cruise ship travel worldwide.”
The warnings, coming after weeks of terrible headlines about passengers and employees quarantined in claustrophobic cabins and even-more-crowded crew bunks, escalated an industry-wide financial crisis during what is supposed to be cruising’s high season.
Things have degenerated for cruise companies since that article was published on Wednesday: By the end of the week, all of the major cruise lines had suspended operations for 30 days. Which threw an unprecedented wrench into the works of an industry that’s weathered regular criticism of its negative environmental impact, widespread sexual assaults, and generally terrible labor conditions.
Before the Diamond Princess became shorthand for “hellish weeks isolated in a floating jail,” its industry was on track to generate $150 billion in global economic “output” and to attract 32 million customers in 2020, according to a cruise trade group. Those numbers are probably pipe dreams now -- but cruising still has some pretty diehard fans. These are the people who, as The Daily Beast reported earlier this week, saw a global health crisis as an opportunity to snatch up some sweet travel deals:
Human is far from the only soon-to-be cruise ship voyager who has reassured himself that the disease won’t affect those who are young, healthy, and willing to take steps to avoid infection. It’s a touch of youthful hubris with a dash of a gambler’s high, all dropped into the milieu of a global medical crisis.
Take Ben Stults, a sophomore at Florida State University who is set to go on a cruise to Mexico this week with four of his college friends. His ticket was $500 and rather than eat the fee, he’s hoping to—in his words—”hit the sweet spot.” The sweet spot, in this case, is traveling to a region not yet hit hard by the coronavirus and getting the hell out before it becomes a problem. Just in case he misses that window, however, Stults brought a P100 respirator face mask, along with a deck of cards and Cards Against Humanity, in order to pass the time if he’s quarantined. He would have stocked up on hand sanitizer, he said, but the local Target was sold out.
Asked if he thought it was a good plan, he said, “Honestly, no.”
So I’m grateful I wasn’t on a cruise ship this week, or any time recently. I’m grateful I have health insurance, and paid sick leave, and a job that allows me to work from home for as long as I need to without jeopardizing my ability to get paid or to continue accessing that health insurance. I’m grateful that the things getting canceled on me are inconveniences or minor setbacks, rather than threats to my livelihood.
I’m pretty lucky in my uncertainty. But I’m still pretty worried about the other side of this, because it’s not just about me. The final shape of how this hits us will depend on the aggregate, not the individual. And it's pretty terrifying that so many people in our country don’t have my assurances, and have to live with so much more consequential uncertainty than I do.
Lady Bits, Happy-Things Edition
--Picking stupid fights with Megan Rapinoe & Co. continues to end poorly for men. And leads to the promotion of the “first woman to oversee the 107-year-old organization” of U.S. Soccer, even if it sounds a little like a glass cliff situation!
--“Although this is a first conviction, it is not a first offense.” It already feels like a million years ago now, but: Harvey Weinstein, actually sentenced to 23 years.
--“All eyes on me, no criticism/I look more rad than Lutheranism.” I feel badly for the Anne-Boleyn-meets-Avril-Lavigne Tudor-feminist-pop-concert musical Six, which was supposed to open the night Broadway closed down, and which I got to see in previews a couple of weeks ago. But a version of the soundtrack is widely available and is delightful, combining Beyoncé parodies with jokes about Henry VIII’s self-serving religious schism and monstrous marital failings.
--Speaking of fiction about Henry VIII, I’m grateful to Hilary Mantel for finally finishing her Thomas Cromwell trilogy and publishing her conclusion just before we all go into lockdown!
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