
Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus - danso
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/coronavirus-norwegian-cruise-line-leaked-emails-show-booking-strategy-11590056
======
program_whiz
Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It
seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary
ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they "get duped".

But couldn't we have a standard where literally anything anyone says to a
customer must be true, or was not false to the knowledge of the person saying
it? Scammy warranties, timeshares, and other "gotcha" products would be a
thing of the past. To make money, providing honest value with a product that
matches the expectation of the customer would be required.

In these situations, cruise lines will of course lose money in the short term.
But the alternative is that we accept the risk to human life to people taking
these cruises, all in the name of short-term capital gain. What if instead we
had to either "eat the loss", or invest in true safety (we can take 50% of
normal passenger load, add these safety measures, these cleaning routines,
etc).

~~~
mech1234
Advertising fraud is already illegal. The situations where case law dictates
what is illegal are varied and nuanced. As a side note, there are many
categories of claims that fall in neither "provably true" nor "provably
untrue", and enforcing upon these claims is tricky.

You can google for "advertising fraud precedent" "advertising fraud case law"
and "advertising fraud case studies" for more information.

~~~
12xo
Right... That’s why you have an “unlimited” data plan that is “guaranteed” or
it’s “free”...

There is no such thing as truth in advertising. There is only a Make Lawyers
Rich lawsuit..

~~~
mech1234
Don't those unlimited plans state that data may be throttled, etc? Unless you
cite a specific example it's pretty tough to argue against.

To argue against your theoretical case: If there is a data plan that
advertises unlimited data without giving any fine print describing the
throttling behavior, or other strange details after high data usage, then yes,
they should be able to have false advertising claims pressed against them
successfully.

~~~
12xo
Come on. In theory, with "unlimited" legal resources, you can take such
matters to trial and onward to a victory...

~~~
mech1234
What mechanism other than litigation and the consumer protection bureau do you
think should enforce against false advertising? How much resources should be
expended to fight it? Do you have an alternative to propose, or do you prefer
instead to attack a known-to-be-imperfect system?

------
eCa
This is about Norwegian Cruise Line, and not the airline Norwegian.

~~~
duxup
Alternative confusion:

I assumed it was a weirdly worded title about the country... but then I
wondered why they had a 'Sales Team'.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Depending on the target market and customer's place in the sales funnel, a
country's sales team is called "ministry of culture", "ministry of foreign
affairs" or "army".

~~~
belltaco
A lot of countries have a "Ministry of Tourism" and a Tourism Minister.

------
socialdemocrat
As a Norwegian I want to point out that there are no Norwegian owners of
Norwegian Cruise Lines. It is to my knowledge fully American owned. It was
Norwegian long time ago.

Sorry just don’t want to get us associated with such extremely unethical
behavior.

Frankly it ought to be punishable in the justice system.

~~~
sharken
Good point!

I can add that the name Norwegian is associated with the Airline company here
in the nordics. So using just Norwegian in the headline is unfortunate.

~~~
Symbiote
I would think that association holds all over Europe. They are the 9th largest
European airline, with 130 destinations.

~~~
HenryBemis
And to their (Norwegian Air) honor they provide WiFi at no extra cost (at
least I had it anytime I was flying from Helsinki to London or the reverse).
Fantastic airline. I wish they could expand more and take some routes from
Wizz/Ryan.

------
jacquesm
That's borderline criminal. To blatantly lie about the risks - especially
elderly passengers - people are taking should be actionable in some way. These
emails will come back to haunt them if family of future casualties sues them.
I sincerely hope they go out of business.

~~~
ryandrake
Then again, who is stupid enough take medical advice from a vacation salesman?
These customers have agency and are ultimately the decision makers. What this
company is doing is unethical, but we all need to be responsible for the
decisions we make. If I decide to go on a cruise right now, knowing what has
been going on, it’s not the company’s fault if I get sick.

~~~
jeltz
Sure, but scamming the gullible is still both criminal and immoral. And
similarly intentional dangerous misrepresentation of facts like this should be
criminal (and maybe already is, I do not know American law that well) even if
you would have to be an idiot to actually believe it.

------
dboreham
s/Norwegian/Cruise line "Norwegian"/ ?

~~~
tyfon
Yes, this is not about the airline but the American cruise line called
Norwegian Cruise Lines for some reason.

I guess it was owned by Norwegians at one point.

------
throwaway55554
> "Scientists and medical professionals have confirmed that the warm weather
> of the spring will be the end of the Coronavirus," a second says

That wasn't a "scientist", that was the President of the US of A.

His lies are going to get people killed.

------
rado
Miami New Times is unreadable:
[https://i.imgur.com/jBCtyvS.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/jBCtyvS.jpg)

~~~
qayxc
Just disable javascript - solves my readability problems with 9/10 websites.

~~~
ed312
Or just use uBlock Origin and continue to enjoy functional websites:
[https://imgur.com/a/SgBJGjk](https://imgur.com/a/SgBJGjk)

~~~
arnaudsm
uBlock Origin is awesome, but those workarounds are temporary. The web has an
usability problem that is worsening every year.

~~~
Mathnerd314
uBO is temporary in the way Debian is temporary - i.e., in the short term, not
at all. 80% of the top websites are going to be ad-free and working 80% of the
time, for some value of 80%. It's true that some fraction will not work, but
is any consumer software 100% reliable?

~~~
arnaudsm
I'm calling uBO temporary because adTech is evolving to evade adBlockers (in-
domain tracking and ad obfuscation). Surfing the web is a nightmare for the
average user, and the tech industry barely notices. The web has an
unsustainable business model, and we need to address the issue.

~~~
Mathnerd314
In-domain tracking and ad obfuscation have both been around for years. And uBO
has evolved to address them. There is content-based blocking/filtering for in-
domain, and script injection to defuse obfuscation. I'll agree there's an arms
race between ads and ad blockers, but it's like DRM, in that the home team (ad
blockers in this case) always wins eventually.

------
Jommi
Can we change the title to reflect that this is a company called NCL,
Norwegian Cruise Lines, not Norwegian, the Norwegian airline?

------
hannob
This is of course all horrible, but I seriously wonder who at this point
thinks: "Let's book a trip on a cruise ship right now!"

~~~
godshatter
Lots of the people booked on cruise ships right now probably made their
reservations months ago. That's how we did it on the cruise we went on last
year. Put down a deposit to reserve a room in September, paid in April, sailed
in August.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
Cruises mostly get more expensive towards the date of departure, so booking in
advance is the thing to do if your ability to take the time for a cruise is
predictable. I have a cruise scheduled for March 2022. If a cruise price does
go down it is because they overestimated demand, and cruisers will be watching
for when the price of new bookings drops below the price they paid. The
deposit, so far in advance, can be both tiny and fully refundable.

------
lt
I have a Caribbean cruise scheduled for mid April. Royal Caribbean is offering
free rescheduling up to 48hrs before boarding.

Haven’t taken up on it yet but likely will. Cancelling the test of the trip is
going to be tough, financially, so I’m looking on how this progresses.

------
wbl
Time for the health department to put some big red notices up on the office
and the ships.

~~~
creaghpatr
The CDC already called out cruises specifically
[https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/covid-19-cruise-
ship](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/covid-19-cruise-ship)

~~~
wbl
Called out is not the same as walking over and saying "you're shut down".

------
ryanmarsh
These emails leaking might have something to do with the layoffs yesterday.

------
whatawaste8383
Good thing we’re not inducing this emotional behavior at scale.

Surely it would be insanity to drum into people’s heads “profits before
species!”

I’m sure this is an isolated incident.

~~~
omgwtfbbqhihihi
Ummmmm I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning.

------
CiPHPerCoder
.

~~~
jnty
Wikipedia seems to suggest this passage is entirely correct
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019)

"Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe
acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),"

and it is backed up by a WHO factsheet
[https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-
disease-\(covid-2019\)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it)

------
sonicxxg
This recent coronavirus outbreak has been very enlightening, cause it gaves us
more information on why cruises are a bad idea, and perfect for an epidemic.
The same air is recirculating among all cabins.

However, it does not explain why we haven't heard of flu outbreaks in cruises
before this coronavirus. It seems cruises are perfect for the proliferation of
any airborne virus.

~~~
dboreham
I'm interested in what the known spreading instances on ships and at
conferences tell us about how the virus is transmitted.

As I understand it, the message from CDC etc is, roughly: It's transmitted
through droplets coughed or sneezed from one person that then end up through
common touching of not-cleaned surfaces and thence into the body through face-
touching.

My gut feel is that if that's how transmission occurs, we shouldn't see
infection spread between large numbers of people who were simply present in
the same room as each other for a few days.

Which makes me wonder if all the hand washing is just "Epidemiology Theater".

~~~
barry-cotter
> My gut feel is that if that's how transmission occurs, we shouldn't see
> infection spread between large numbers of people who were simply present in
> the same room as each other for a few days.

People cough and sneeze all the time, even healthy people, and the droplets of
saliva from that land on surfaces that other people touch and then they touch
their faces, rub their eyes and pick their noses. So the virus will spread in
the air and also by transmission onto mucus membranes from your hands. It’s
not airborne but there is droplet transmission. The danger is relatively small
if people don’t touch, like shaking hands, hugging or kissing, and if surfaces
are wiped down with disinfectants regularly and everyone washes their hands
but that does not describe most people’s experience of being in a room with
other people for a few days.

~~~
dboreham
I read in another thread that sneezing aerosolizes the payload such that it
will stay in suspension in a large volume of air (a large room for example)
for hours. I'd call that "airborne transmission" but it seems that means
something different. That being the case, could it be that the hand washing is
more to do with reducing the surface area onto which a droplet can land and
make it into the target's body? This would explain quite well how someone can
infect 50 other people in a large room, and also why hand washing is helpful
(but not a 100% protection since droplets can still float in through the nose
and mouth).

