Although Carnival employees were as susceptible as anyone to the tension and emotional strain of a pandemic, Carnival as a company was more mentally prepared than most to take on a public health crisis. Why? Because the coronavirus pandemic was hardly its first storm. For Carnival, COVID-19 was one crisis in a line of many that plagued its fleet over the course of 38 years of operation. Granted, laying up an entire fleet of ships was an unprecedented event, but responding to the outbreak of a disease was not.
“We’ve gone through Ebola, Zika, MERS, SARS. … Because we’re global, we have to deal with this stuff all the time. The difference with this one is community spread has been global,” Carnival CEO Arnold Donald told CNBC in April.
