Typically, this is a fecal-oral infection that is spread from hand to mouth (because) people are not good hand washers. Especially on a cruise like this, you have a lot of hand-contact surfaces. You don't go on a cruise and sit in your cabin.

We suspect that people are probably coming on board with the virus. On a cruise ship, people are out and about in very public areas, and so we have this depositing of the virus on various surfaces that then would be easily picked up by others.

It's very rare that we would see an outbreak on consecutive cruises. The company has an excellent protocol for dealing with outbreaks like this, (but the Mercury staff) were not real successful in implementing some of their own protocols.

We approved the letter (and) went down to the dock and talked to everyone.

Several ships have (the outbreaks), but it's not a cruise ship problem. It's a people problem.

For one thing, I don't think art needs to be about suffering; sometimes it really seems like it's only the art about pain that is interpreted as profound, and in my work for years I've really tried to deal with subjects that are substantial, not just fluffy, but presented in a more playful, approachable kind of way.