given all the hyperbole imbedded in the story, i'm going to take a shot that the flight crew and cleaning crew actually were human beings who discovered and cleaned up the vomit as best they could...if it WAS a pool of vomit, then i'm hard pressed to believe no one smelled it/complained about it getting on the plane....even the father in the story mentions nothing about noticing the vomit after sitting down until his wife felt the carpet, realized it was wet, and then smelled her hand...my guess (since none of us were there) is that they did clean the vomit, the carpeting was wet from disinfectants. in this scenario, then FA offering the blanket as extra layer of protection as opposed to delaying the flight actually might be reasonable stopgap measure