The zombie apocalypse is really not that far-fetched
Paku Daoust-Cloutier / The Link
And if it arrives, will the airlines care?
January 25, 2012 6:00 AM ADT
MONTREAL (CUP) — On Jan. 14, the scene at the annual Canadian University Press national conference, NASH 74, played out like a clichéd zombie flick, dirtying bathrooms and Twitter alike in Victoria.
Delegates from around the country had come to hear top journalists speak about their profession from Jan. 11–15, but they got more than they bargained for. The conference’s title, Archipelago, was re-christened #archipukeago by tweeting casualties as what it assumed to be norovirus (formerly known as Norwalk virus), a highly communicable gastroenteritis-causing bug, visited dozens of CUP delegates at the Harbour Towers Hotel and Suites like a cruel, stomach-haunting ghost.
It was gala night at #barfipelago, and the room was filled with attractive, intelligent 20-somethings listening to smart-ass ESPN and Esquire writer Chris Jones recount a story of the time he bled on George Clooney’s couch. Jones also declared his preference for putting two hard cocks in his mouth and banging them around like microphones rather than doing a story on his college nemesis.
While many in the crowd felt their guts busting with laughter, others’ guts were busting in a different way. The crowd slowly began to lose members as journalists slipped away to the bathrooms. They managed not to raise a fuss, though; so, as planned, about 300 student journalists piled onto yellow school buses to make their way to the gala.
At this point, no one knew that norovirus was making the rounds on these sunshine-coloured wonder-mobiles. Buses are the best places for widespread, inexplicable vomiting, and the virus becomes airborne when puked up. These buses were just glorified disease vectors.
Upon arrival at the scheduled drunk-fest/dance-off, more puking ensued — but, strangely, the puking came before the heavy drinking, not afterwards. For those not immediately affected, it was a waiting game. And like any good zombie movie will show you, no matter how careful you are, resistance is futile.
Zombification comes for you slowly, inexorably, as members of the group experience the magic of the disease one by one. Approximately 70 delegates were hit with the virus within the first 12 hours, with others succumbing in the following days.
But the real tragedy of #pukeipelago was not the actual puking. It was the red-tape geniuses at WestJet and Air Canada, whose response to the outbreak seemed ripped right out of the script for Contagion.
As generally responsible members of society, many at #pukegate decided to push back their departure dates, not wanting to re-create the earlier school bus scenes while airborne. The airlines, however, were slightly less concerned about the transfer of a virus that could make people poop uncontrollably within half-an-hour of contact.
When contacted during the early stages of the outbreak, WestJet didn’t advise infected delegates against flying, which is weird considering that the Vancouver Island Health Authority made it clear that those very same people should remain in their hotel rooms.
As a result, many of the infected were forced to choose between their wallets and the well-being of their fellow humans. When you switch a flight, you have to pay a “change of flight” fee, and you also have to pay the difference in cost between the original flight and the new one.
So the airlines — first WestJet, then Air Canada — decided to waive the “change fees” for infected persons, which is really tricky language, as it implies that changing the flight would have no costs associated with it. Wrong. It was a huge expense to those among us who didn’t relish the prospect of 200 people all trying to fight the virus in a tin can with one bathroom 20,000 feet in the air. The Link spent a total of $1,066.48 on change of flight fees for four delegates. After the situation was explained to WestJet, the $50-per-person change fees were waived, but the paper still had to pay the difference in fare. No refunds were offered.
Aside from essentially forcing sick people to board planes, it appears that airlines do not even have a contingency plan to deal with viral outbreaks that may or may not turn the entire population into brain-eating zombies.
In a tweet, WestJet said, “We do not encounter this very often. We always team up with health authorities to determine the best course of action.” That’s, if you will, hard to stomach. What about SARS, the bird flu, and H1N1? Were there no contingency plans for those situations?
It’s frustrating to see a big corporation like WestJet tacitly encouraging people to turn their Boeing 737s into flying toilets, but it’s worse when one considers what the ramifications would be like if the virus had been a more dangerous one.
The moral of the story? The zombie movies were right — the real villains aren’t the affected, but those who make the spread possible. One way or another, the end of the world will come down to money matters.
As for the delegates filtering home? Well, just call them the #NorwalkingDead.
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