"It's no secret that submarines with their confined quarters are ideal places for diseases to spread. Yet the U.S. submarine force, which has a little more than 24,000 members, has managed to keep the novel coronavirus at bay with an infection rate of less than 0.5%, according to the force's commander, Vice Adm. Daryl Caudle. In a phone interview this week, Caudle attributed the success to a variety of factors. Those include "a culture of compliance" among submariners, who are trained to run and operate nuclear propulsion plants at sea, a "strong team ethos" of not wanting to let fellow crew members down by bringing COVID-19 on board, and the compliance of local communities such as New London County, where these sailors work and live. While the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt became the worst-case example of how COVID-19 can rapidly course through sailors aboard a ship, submarine crews have not experienced such an outbreak."