I’ve written previously about the unhelpful state of public discussion around what are misleadingly dubbed “vaccine passports”—a discussion that tends to conflate Orwellian visions of immunization papers being demanded at every pub and corner bodega with the far more plausible scenario: a few categories of businesses exercising their freedom of association when they deem it necessary, given their specific circumstances, to operate safely.
One example I offered was cruise lines, because several had already announced their intention to restart operation for fully vaccinated passengers, and also because it seemed like such a clear-cut case where such a restriction would be eminently justifiable. Yet Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has pushed one of the most extreme “vaccine passport” bans, is insisting that the ailing cruise lines sailing from his state may not require passengers to be vaccinated before boarding, threatening hefty fines against companies that request proof of vaccination.
This is objectionable on general principle, insofar as business owners should generally be free to make their own judgments about who they want to allow on their property. There are, of course, well-known exceptions, designed to remedy exceptional wrongs embedded in our history: “Public accommodations” cannot lawfully deny service on the basis of certain “immutable characteristics” like race and gender. But analogizing “discrimination” based on the choice to become immunized against a lethal virus with racial discrimination is both obtuse and at least faintly offensive. Declining to be vaccinated—which is certainly every individual’s right—no more confers membership in a “protected class” than “declining to wear pants” or “declining to pay the ticket price.”
Florida’s policy is even more foolish when applied to cruise lines specifically, however, because there are, for the foreseeable future, extremely compelling reasons to want vessels to sail with fully-immunized passengers, even if one is unmoved by business owners’ general right to free association.
Cruise ships typically have an infirmary with at least one licensed physician and a handful of registered nurses on staff to deal with the inevitable medical issues that arise among any large group of people at sea. But they are ill-equipped to deal with scenarios in which dozens or hundreds of passengers become seriously ill simultaneously. An outbreak onboard effectively means the cruise is over for vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers alike. Recall the early-pandemic outbreaks on ships like the now-infamous Diamond Princess, which in addition to being terrifying and harmful to the passengers, were a ruinous public relations debacle no industry wants to risk.
Cruises also, of course, routinely stop in other countries, many of which have substantially lower vaccination rates than the United States, and are eager to revive their devastated tourism industries without imposing further risk on their own populations. In practice, barring cruise lines from asking about vaccination status will likely mean a lot more unpleasant and wholly unnecessary COVID tests as a substitute.
Little wonder, then, that a poll run by the consumer website CruiseCritic found a large majority of regular cruise goers—80 percent—would rather sail on ships with vaccination requirements.
In order to pander to a rabidly anti-vaccine portion of his base, DeSantis has opted for a policy that the cruise lines don’t want, that the cruise passengers don’t want, that impinges on freedom of association, and is jaw-droppingly feckless from a public health perspective.
