COVID-19 and the Ships of the Damned: A Plea for Humanity

For several weeks now this author has been concerned for the safety of cruise ship passengers and crews. Governments around the world have been turning these ships away, refusing them entry into their ports, and in some cases even refusing to provide medical assistance. This is an urgent problem, requiring concerted action. The increasing insularity of countries in the COVID-19 age is more broadly concerning. This is a global pandemic, and if we cannot work together, the death toll will be much greater. This essay only addresses one aspect of the problem but an especially disturbing one. If you read this I hope you can amplify my voice, and make clear to as many people as you know with the power to affect the necessary change that this is a moral test we cannot, if we wish to consider ourselves truly human, fail. Medical professionals have lived up to their moral obligations in this time with great bravery, risking, and sadly sometimes losing, their lives. They are not the only ones who need to be called to action though. The fate of cruise ship passengers and crews is the responsibility of politicians around the world. Please don't let them forget this. Someone once said that their nation was humanity (unless I just made that up then). Let's join them in this ideal, the ultimate patriotism, not degenerate into the narrowest definitions of identity, fearful of foreigners who need our help (and sometimes even of our own countrymen and women, some of whom seem, by virtue of this virus, to have become foreigners to all humanity).