The Navy Is Losing Its Fight Against the Coronavirus

Most of the sailors were given some form of liberty. They stayed in hotels. They circulated and visited sites. And toward the end of that port call, they learned that two British tourists at one of their hotels tested positive for COVID-19.

The decision was made then to test with a temperature check until they could get more testing—all the sailors at that point tested negative. It was only when they got back underway that they started getting seeing illnesses. On March 22, the first sailor was diagnosed with COVID-19. It spread very quickly from there within three days. By the time the ship docked in Guam on March 27, the orders were, Stay on the ship, we’ll figure it out.

He did a few things before he wrote that letter. That’s what’s interesting about this, because at one point, Thomas Modly—the now former Navy secretary—had basically said, Well, Crozier went outside of the chain of command. That’s not entirely true, because within a few days of porting in Guam, Crozier was already in communication with Modly’s chief of staff and his bosses. Crozier said, Get 90 percent of this crew off so we can stop the contagion and test everybody. And it seemed his superiors favored less ambitious efforts. At that point, Crozier shot out his four-page memo to probably about 20 or 30 people in the service, including his staff and a couple people who were in his chain of command as well as a couple people who weren’t.

This is what I mean when I say the virus is an existential problem for the military. Part of that is because service members of every rank have been trained to see lethality and readiness for combat as the highest values, higher than your personal well-being. It’s grounded into you from the first day you put on uniform. What Crozier posed to his superiors is that when there’s no violent threat on the horizon, how much of this lethal readiness is too much? He made this point: We can fight if you need us to, even with the virus raging, because that’s what we do. But we’re not at war with anybody right now. So there’s no reason for my sailors to die.

You see a real difference between how the admirals and the political appointees are dealing with this. The admirals are looking for how to get the sailors off and investigate what happened. But the political appointees, specifically Modly and Esper, seemed like they were completely foundering and looking for a political mitigation tactic that might save them face.