Some examples would be suicide or paranoia, or leaving the safety of a cabin during a terrible snow storm that one may be stuck in. However, related symptoms can lead the sufferer to make irrational decisions that could potentially threaten their life or the life of the group with whom they are confined. Ĭabin fever is not itself a disease and there is no prognosis. The concept is also invoked humorously to indicate simple boredom from being home alone for an extended period of time.
During cabin fever, a person may experience sleepiness or sleeplessness, have a distrust of anyone they are with, or have an urge to go outside even in adverse conditions such as poor weather or limited visibility. Ī person may experience cabin fever in a situation such as being isolated within a vacation cottage out in the countryside, spending long periods underwater in a submarine, or being otherwise isolated from civilization such as during a pandemic, or while under martial law. A person may be referred to as stir-crazy, derived from the use of stir meaning "prison". This stowaway, likely hiding in the lungs of a passenger or perhaps a crew member, was microscopic in size yet capable of overwhelming this gargantuan ship.Cabin fever is the distressing claustrophobic irritability or restlessness experienced when a person, or group, is stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended time. It was never cataloged or ordered and had not purchased a ticket. “One additional traveler was aboard the ship,” ends chapter one. The result reads like the longest newspaper story ever written mixed with the requisite dramatic flourishes required to keep readers turning pages. Each dispatch is dated and time-stamped as we read about the characters’ journey from “everything’s going to be all right out here in our adult playground on the ocean” to knocks on doors as trays of food are dropped outside cabins by crew members wearing hazmat suits. Smith and Franklin eschew the Bob Woodward approach, writing in the omniscient third-person, not trying to recreate dialogue. Over the course of the book’s 250 pages we learn their stories, with a focus on their experience aboard the Zaandam. In addition to Dutch Captain Ane Smit and a few of his fellow officers, there’s a pair of retirees from Missouri hoping to cross Machu Picchu off their bucket list, two men from Nashville celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary, and the manager of the ship’s massive laundry operation, Wiwit Widarto, who has spent 30 years working on cruise ships to provide for his family back home in Indonesia.
The book opens with a cast of characters - brief bios of the people on board who the journalists talked to to reconstruct the narrative. It’s not until April 2, 2020, that the ship finally docks in Port Everglades, Florida, with three bodies in its morgue and hundreds of other sick passengers on board. Days later the World Health Organization formally classifies COVID-19 as a pandemic and for the next 25 days, the Zaandam is adrift in international waters, denied safe harbor in every port as COVID breaks out across the world. They tell the story chronologically, starting March 6, 2020, just two days before the Holland America cruise ship the MS Zaandam leaves port in Argentina. That’s the starting point for a new nonfiction book called “Cabin Fever” by investigative journalists Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin. The prospect of touring the Falkland Islands, climbing Machu Picchu, and getting up close to a penguin colony in Chile far outweigh whatever dread you feel about global news. You’ve heard about a virus making people sick in China and Italy and Spain, but it’s thousands of miles away. Imagine stepping off a dock in Buenos Aires in early March 2020 to board a ship with 1,242 fellow passengers and 586 crew members for a cruise around the tip of South America.
“Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic” by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin (Doubleday)
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