There are two ways cruises get you. The first is that they give you the little pay pass thing so you don’t realise that you’re spending every cent you’ve ever earned on bright blue cocktails in plastic cups. The second is that they are apparently elaborate Saw-like setups for making a few hundred people confined to a boat shit themselves.
Maybe it’s proportionate to just how many people go on cruises, but it does seem like an awful lot of diarrhea epidemics have taken place on cruise ships in the bounds of Australian waters this year. There were two cases in February, one affecting around 140 people, the other around 90. Another 90 people saw themselves afflicted with the Devil’s Bowels in August, followed by yet another incident in late October / early November which saw a comparatively trifling 18 people piss right out of their buttholes.
Nearly 200 people have today received treatment for gastro after Ovation of the Seas docked in Hobart at the end of their two-week cruise to Singapore. Royal Caribbean International, the cruise line that owns the vessel, has reported that 195 poor toilet-bound individuals have received medication for gastroenteritis.
The company has said that the vessel will be “comprehensively sanitised and cleansed” when it gets to Sydney (its next port of call) and before passengers board for the next cruise.
According to the SBS, Tasmania‘s Director of Public Health Mark Veitch had said that five people had been hospitalised, but was unable to confirm whether or not it was from gastro. He was of the mind that these incidents are not particularly uncommon:
Outbreaks of highly infectious conditions such as gastro and respiratory illness can occur in cruise ships, where a population the size of a medium-sized town mixes closely together.
We wish these poor souls nothing but the best.
