In a clear sign showing the changing nature of the coronavirus, eight Concord-area friends, quarantined midway through their luxury cruise and faced with what they believed was incompetency by federal officials, were scheduled to fly home Tuesday, one day after telling the Monitor they had 10 days of isolation remaining at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga.
That changed when Frank Keane of Allenstown texted this morning, “Just got called. Flying out at noon. Out of room by 10:00.”
Earlier by phone, Keane had described security measures, meant to smother the spread of the virus, that included weapons, fences and spotlights, as well as emergency steps that switched from isolation to packed buses, with no explanation available.
“The key point is there’s been no consistency from the government,” Keane said by phone. “They scare the daylights out of everyone like we will die tomorrow and this is their response? They were not prepared to handle 2,300 passengers and 1,100 crew members getting off a cruise ship for quarantine. You would need some kind of action plan.”
Keane, his wife, Deb, and seven friends, all in their 60s and 70s, all from Concord and the Suncook Valley, left for their annual cruise on Feb. 21. They flew to San Francisco, sailed on the Grand Princess – part of the Princess Cruise Lines, which they swear by – to Hawaii, then started back to San Francisco. They spent four days in Hawaii, leaving for the west coast on Feb. 29 for a four-day cruise back to the states.
“The captain told us that the seas would be high as we were going into a 60-70 mph wind,” Keane, an IT security consultant, wrote in an email. “For three days, it was like being in a washing machine. Luckily, none of us are prone to sea sickness.”
They were prone to isolation, confusion and uncertainty, however, prompting Bill Krueger of Concord, a regular on this trip for 20 years, to say by phone, “No one ever planned for it and they are winging it, and I have been around long enough to know that you can’t plan for everything. The frustration comes from the fact that the captain was trying to keep us updated on what was going on and he wasn’t getting any information, and no information compounds the fear.”
Shortly after learning that a passenger had contracted the virus during a previous voyage on the Grand Princess, the party of eight were shut down in their cabins for a week of separation, herded onto a bus, nearly filling every seat, and flown to Georgia, where the base had all-night spotlights like a scene from Hogan’s Heroes, just in case anyone chose to run.
“We have nothing planned,” joked Keane, whose plans, as of Tuesday morning, had changed for the better.
“We will be on a plane at noon,” Keane wrote in one of his final texts to the Monitor. “I will not have access to email until we land.”
We’ll know more then. Stay tuned, because things change quickly.