Its probably a good idea.
Cruise ships are Petri dishes and given its probably a lot of older passengers, off-loading them and sending them scurrying home or to hospitals all over North America would be a huge vector for the virus. Trying to quarantine them all would be another huge effort.
Cruise ships have doctors and small hospitals, don’t they? Drop them swab kits for testing, and Hydrochloroquine and Azithromycin and zinc tablets to treat those who are ill.
After 14-21 days, they’ll all have immunity, then we can test them for antibodies. Same with the Teddy Roosevelt.
We can learn a lot about coronavirus from these two floating experiments.
Not to seem heartless but shouldn’t they be heading to their FLAGGED home ports.?
Yes, and bleed them for plasma loaded with antibodies!
Mostly, but not completely /S
“Cruise ships have doctors and small hospitals, don’t they?”
In February we visited the Medical Services area on Sky Princess. Amazing modern facility, lab, and wonderful staff — from S. Africa, I think. We even saw an ICU unit. It’s a new ship, so I doubt if all ships’ medical offices are that good.