https://www.donotpanic.news/p/the-arctic-plague-ship-that-disabled

In August more than one hundred writers, musicians and artists converged on Longyearbyen, the world's northernmost town, before setting sail around Svalbard, a group of islands in the Arctic circle.

Designed to immerse passengers in the stimulating landscapes of the Arctic Ocean and provoke creative expression, the trip, described as a residency by organisers, has been a semi-regular feature on the itinerary of many creative types since it began in 2009.

Passengers on the 15-day August sailing included the acclaimed writer Deb Olin Unferth, the chart-topping jazz musician Kate Schutt and the novelist Isabel Kaplan, author of the best-selling books Hancock Park and Not Suitable For Work.

This, then, was a ship stuffed with creative brain power, people whose brains have powered their careers, secured their livelihoods and made their names.

Yet despite this, the trip went ahead without any protocols to prevent contagion by a virus which, as shown by study after study after study, can, and often does, attack the brain. A virus which, at the time of the trip, was sweeping across the northern hemisphere. In August, the US was experiencing its fifth largest covid wave of the entire pandemic. 1.1 million people were being infected every day. At the peak of the wave, one person in every thirty-four was infected with the virus. In August, more than 5,300 people in the US died of covid.

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