99 new virus cases on Diamond Princess cruise ship

[Ms. Toad]

4. US citizens were permitted to evacuate to the US

And one of the main public voices about life on the ship - decided it was safer than evacuating and being taken with people who may be contagious to the off-ship quarantine area.

An American lawyer and his wife are refusing to evacuate the coronavirus-stricken cruise ship docked off the coast of Japan — because they say they feel safer aboard.

. . .

Smith said he’s skeptical about the government’s plan to evacuate citizens on two flights to the US, since some of the travelers could be sick. . . . “If we stay on board through next week, we will be tested and will likely come up negative,” he tweeted.

“But the U.S. Government instead wants to take us off without testing, fly us back to the U.S. with a bunch of other untested people, and then stick us in 2 more weeks of quarantine? How does that make any sense at all?”

. . .

The lawyer, who has been posting daily updates about life on the locked-down ship, tweeted that American health personnel had visited his room “until they learned, to their apparent surprise, that we had chosen to stay, at which point they moved on.”