The Diamond Princess
Cruise Ship

30 April 2020: Population 0.0037 million. Covid-19 deaths 13. Deaths per million 3514

The cruise ship Diamond Princess travels the world continuously. Dates are important. On the 25th January ONE passenger disembarked in Hong Kong, who tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival. By now the Diamond Princess was at sea with 2666 passengers and 1045 crew.

4th February, 2020: The Diamond Princess was quarantined at Yokohama.

Health officials in Yokohama investigated taking all the passengers and crew into hotel based quarantine but it was impossible to find suitable venues. It was decided that passengers should quarantine in their cabins. It wasn't known then that many crew were also infected.

There were many problems with this on-the-fly plan. The Public Health Officials setting the rules, didn't really know what they were dealing with. Quarantine on the Diamond Princess seemed to be the only option. However the way the ship was designed made it impossible to set up green and red zones that were enforceable. Infected crew still has access to passengers. Infected crew were double bunked and infected each-other. The ventilation system passed the virus from cabin to cabin. There were many mistakes. What looked fairly easy became very difficult.

13 February: There are 39 new cases of the coronavirus aboard the ship docked in Yokohama, Japan, bringing the total to 174.

At the time (early February) the protocol was to do Covid tests for people with symptoms and their close contacts only. Thirty-one people were tested on that basis, and officials were shocked. Ten were Covid-19 positive. Passengers were mostly elderly, from 56 countries, they are an at risk population, and nobody had any idea how big this outbreak was.

21 March, 2020: In early February, the Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined off the coast of Yokohama, Japan. Hundreds of passengers ultimately tested positive for the disease.

The saga finally ended three months later. At that time 711 people had become infected, and 13 had died. Was this a disaster? It was, about twice as bad as the death rate the worst affected countries. It also refutes the idea that the Covid-19 virus is a hoax. What killed these people wasn't the flu.

You can find documentary length video on YouTube.

Buses, trains, aircraft, cruise ships, theatres, hospitals, schools, restaurants, prisons, all concentrate people together indoors. Each of these places enable virus transmission from person to person.

The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship

The Diamond Princess
Cruise Ship