LizzyBee23

Caribbean countries are still free to set their entry requirements... They're making adjustments because they need the tourism revenue.

Another thing I don't see mentioned wrt other entry requirements is the fact that there are without exception carve outs for age. A child does not need to be vaccinated (or in some cases even tested) to travel to most European countries with vaccination requirements for adults.

On 7/11/2021 at 2:45 AM, Renate said:

Smokeybandit Then why do you suppose Orlando, on their trolley system for International Drive, have UV sterilizers in all of their trolleys?? LOL, because they just felt like spending thousands of extra dollars?? And please explain why Royal Caribbean had 2 outbreaks of Norovirus in 2019?? (that I can recall/looked up) if their "ventilation" system was so good? Orlando spent the money on the sterilizers to PREVENT viral outbreaks to tourists visiting our city, and so far it's been pretty successful. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/norovirus-outbreak-infects-passengers-royal-caribbean-cruise-ships/

I'm sorry, so you're using the fact that something was done in order to justify the rationality for doing it? That's circular.

3 hours ago, Zurc said:

After seeing the mask protocols on other ships, this weekend I canceled my October Indy trip.  

We're on Indy in November and will cancel around final payment over this if need be, too. We get a few more weeks to see how the tides turn, thankfully. A drawback though is that as we get closer to the winter and the inevitable rise in cases, I truly do wonder if the masks and other protocol will make a return.

27 minutes ago, Matt said:

That analogy isn't remotely comparable to something about one's health versus one's vanity. 

More importantly, this isn't Royal Caribbean's decision. It's CDC requirements and from what I can tell, executives would love to drop the mask mandate for vaccinated in a heart beat if it were up to them.

Well, the data about masks suggests there's a fair amount of ambiguity around their effectiveness. Most of the lower confidence intervals include zero, meaning in many typical-use scenarios, they offer about as much as earrings.

18 hours ago, MrMarc said:

I am still trying to figure out if they acted athwart the Administrative Procedure Act how a CSO approved by the Judge would not violate the same act

Imagine you're a teenager with a new set of keys, your mom tells you that you have her permission to go to the mall nearby. You both know what that means (namely the mall in the small town you live in), but after looking at the offerings you decide the Galleria in the nearest major city is actually where you need to go. You hop in the car and go using the age old mantra of 'ask forgiveness, instead of permission" and believing some of the ambiguity in the original agreement could be lawyered. Is your mom right when she is understandably hacked off when you get home? Does the fact that you were wrong to go to the mall 4 hours away mean that you would have been wrong to go to the mall in your city?

21 hours ago, JeffB said:

Failing to aggressively manage a shipboard positive case just presents so many possible untoward outcomes that it just isn't worth the risk of less aggressive approaches and I don't think you're suggesting that. 

I kind of am (though I do agree that the risks of COVID are different from most other URI's for an immunologically naive person). The CDC doesn't recommend that vaccinated passengers who have been exposed to COVID quarantine, and even if you are unvaccinated but positive and asymptomatic the ability for you to infect another person who then succumbs to the disease over the span of the cruise is extraordinarily unlikely. I truly can't see a scenario where the ship's medical facilities would be overrun by people who were healthy when they boarded under typical circumstances. Perhaps special consideration is needed for cruises longer than 7 days, and for passengers above a certain age (vaccinated or not). In my mind, the only chance the cruise ship has to mitigate the negative effects of COVID is at embarkation... Once the ship is underway the focus should be on being able to administer lifesaving care (including the difficult and expensive decision to medevac someone).

I am almost positive the first serious COVID case onboard will be a vaccinated person over 65 who didn't have to be tested to board but was already edging toward showing symptoms. Nothing in the protocol as they are today can capture that, and to me that will present the biggest real risk as flu and cold season pick-up. I think we're letting this theater around catching positive asymptomatic cases distract us from the real bogey sitting just over the horizon. A ship's best chance at being able to deal with that are administering some of the medical interventions you highlighted, and promptly getting that person to shore. 

I'll be looking out for what happens in October as cold/flu season starts to pick up. It isn't unusual to carry a virus around detectable by PCR that doesn't actually cause you more than a day-long sore throat. Actually, unless you can remember screaming your lungs out, that very same phenomenon is probably what causes most of your very short lived symptoms that don't even rise to the level of being called a cold. I say this because right now when it's 1 or 2 people per cruise, it seems manageable. But what about when it inevitably rises to 15-20 (or more) as the level of virus naturally increases and you're still asking healthy people to not only isolate, but wait for a specialized transport to take them back to the US? How long are those extra costs sustainable?

We need to have our eyes on a near term goal of essentially treating COVID like any other URI: if you are sick, you isolate and the ship provides you medical care or gets you to more sophisticated facilities if needed. All we should be doing is making sure ships actually have the facilities to provide care in the short term (which IMO, was a huge shortcoming pre-pandemic) and do have robust arrangements in place to move seriously ill passengers if needed.

30 minutes ago, ConstantCruiser said:

Goes to show those quick tests are less reliable.  Crisis averted, protocols worked.  

Good story to see.  

Thanks for posting. 

The protocols didn't work. These *healthy* people very nearly had a vacation ruined. Even if they were PCR positive, so what? 

On 6/26/2021 at 7:36 AM, jticarruthers said:

Given the time it takes to go from exposure to infected, etc. I think its clearly not possible, but in the culture of fear ... who cares its a reaction.

 

This is why I'd like us to stop celebrating it as a win that we sent two presumably healthy people home on special medevac flights. Celebrating a clear cut overreaction as a win is just something else.

On 6/24/2021 at 8:20 PM, CruiseGus said:

Sorry if the data does not fit you paradigm, but this really tells me why all cruises should require vaccination.

Because even with the vaccination we will have breakthrough cases, but not at this level of risk.

I sincerely hope it is not serious for these 2 young men

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2021/06/24/royal-caribbeans-new-health-protocols-catch-two-positive-covid-19-cases-adventure-of-the

The odds are extraordinarily likely that it won't be serious for these two.

The quickest way to kick start an outbreak on board would probably be by putting all of the unvaccinated people together. Really is beyond comprehension.

There's no speculation about the vaccine's efficacy needed: this was caught on routine testing, not because someone showed up to sick bay seriously ill. Another round of routine testing in a month will likely turn up very similar results. And then what?

Oops, I did it again. Booked another one, making 4 between now and Nov 2022. 

On 6/11/2021 at 10:13 AM, CruiseRoyalDad said:

I can see the headline now "Covid not the only threat to the newly restarted Cruise industry...old foes such as NORO rear their ugly heads on the at sea petri dishes". Enter CDC. (End Scene 1). 

It's already happening elsewhere! Read a story headlined something like "New respiratory virus overtaking the South. Here's what you need to know."

It was talking about RSV. You know, the spectre that haunts parents of young children every flu and cold season. The most plausible explanation for it taking off right now is that it's spreading among adults (who are usually exposed every year or so, and it is nothing more than a week long nuisance) who have lost some immunity to it. The more adults who get it directly results in more children getting it, and thus more hospital admissions due to RSV.

Another fun tidbit from the article that made me want to scream: the reporter attributed the rise in cases to "not wearing masks, and dropping social distancing measures". While technically true, it kind of glosses over the reality that the root cause is a disruption in the adult immunity that children depend on for a virus with no vaccine or easily administered treatments... A disruption caused by the measures they're trying to say saved children from the disease until now.

I have never had faith the cruise lines would be treated fairly in the media, no matter if they had a near perfect track record with regard to COVID onboard. Every day we concede to operating within needless guidelines, we make it harder to get back to normal.

21 minutes ago, JasonOasis said:

People keep saying the protocols are working, well the only way for covid protocols to work is for a cruise ship to identify covid positive passengers early and isolate those passengers.  

Another alternative is to reject the premise of the game altogether, which in my view is what needs to happen for us to return to normal (on or off of a cruise ship).

Even if you don't realize it, you are buying into the CDC's idea that managing COVID must be premised on a zero COVID strategy. How different would our mitigation measures look if we could get public health officials to acknowledge publicly what they are already planning for privately: COVID is endemic. 

53 minutes ago, CruiseGus said:

seeing nothing of a major new story on this yet, not even a slight mention run on my TV news ticker this morning, where the less important stories go.

Barely a mention on the 3 industry new sites i look at from time to time.

I can tell you it's all over my social media (I tend to find myself in the same places as millennial liberals... only mentioning the politics of it because of how "curated" the internet experience is now based on who the tech companies think you are).

I think what it comes down to is we need to move away from this idea of testing as means of ascertaining someone's status now that the contours of the risk are largely known and we have vaccines who are in the greatest danger. If you aren't symptomatic, then carry on. 

Im really disheartened by what happened with MSC in Malta... To have the island say it is close to achieving herd immunity and then simultaneously deny entry to an entire ship of recently tested passengers because of the presence of two positives among them is absurd (and anti-science). If that is considered a rational response, then we really are already sunk.

13 minutes ago, nate91 said:

Overall, the background testing rate on a cruise ship shouldn't be any higher than a similar environment on land, say, Las Vegas. 

Exactly! Population incidence rates in port countries are the only thing that matter, and I'd argue with the advent of vaccines only hospitalizations and deaths. The CDC has begun to demonstrate as much by indicating they'll only track serious cases as breakthroughs. 

1 hour ago, smokeybandit said:

Meanwhile in Malta

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/05/25/malta-claims-herd-immunity-from-covid-19-with-70-of-its-adults-partially-vaccinated/?sh=3bb19d667573

Ugh. This doesn't bode well for the fall.

1 hour ago, danv3 said:

Kind of a PR disaster for X and RCG. Media is going to go nuts. 
 

Biggest issue from my perspective is too much testing. There’s no need to test vaccinated people with no symptoms. Just setting yourself up for failure as a cruise line. 

There's no need to test anyone with no symptoms who previously had a negative test to board the ship. These requirements set us up for failure in a world where COVID is inevitable. Consider the number of people that tested positive at the home port in the same time... If it's the US, it would have been at least as many per thousand if not double. 

I mention that because the aim should always have been for cruise ships not to act as accelerators. Quarantining symptomatic cases and beefing up medical facilities is all that should be required (in addition to agreements with the home port that the ship can't be turned into a "plague ship" and deny disembarkation because of some overblown media response). Everything else is just arbitrary theater, and sets the failure tripwire too low.

Wish RC would say to hell with the CDC's insane requirement for masks on 2 year olds at least. Go with the WHO and start them at 6. 

1 hour ago, CGTLH said:

I read it as the ship was using that port as a technical stop already. Similar to what Vision out of Bermuda was going to do in Freeport.

Quote: The passengers who tested positive and those in their party were not allowed to disembark in Malta where the ship docked ahead of the Siracusa port call, given it was a technical stop and passengers were never meant to get off the ship, CNN reported.

*No one* was allowed to disembark in Malta because of a call by the port authority. 

26 minutes ago, JasonOasis said:

My concern is for unvaccinated passengers if they either test positive while onboard or they are deem to have been in close contact and Royal decides to disembark them at the first available port it could potentially be very expensive for those individuals to get home especially if they don't have insurance.  And if they are actually positive with COVID and its not a false positive they can't return to the US until they test negative which would then involve quarantining in a country they never intended to stay in. 

I believe people should be given the choice whether they want to cruise without being vaccinated but this MSC story should be treated as an eye opener as to what can happen if you do and you test positive. 

Something I'm not seeing mentioned here: the entire ship wasn't allowed to disembark at a port stop, and the ship made a technical stop instead... Because of two asymptomatic passengers.

On 6/8/2021 at 7:19 AM, chodnett said:

Currently booked on Indy out of Port Canaveral in November.

 

TA thinks it will still sail, and they’ll move Indy, but I’m not certain.

Us too!! I'd prefer Indy, but honestly I'd just be happy to sail. This will be the first for both of our kids (a 4 year old and a 2 year old).

12 hours ago, Biggiojr said:

Longtime lurker here but I'm just to excited! looks like the first two sailings on Odyssey are available for bookings!

I have a cruise on Indy in October and my Cruise planner now says

IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’ve been diligently preparing for our Royal Comeback. As we update our itinerary plans, we’ve decided to reposition certain ships in anticipation of our return to cruising. Unfortunately, this means your sailing is being cancelled. The good news is your booking will be automatically moved to a new ship with the corresponding sailing to help make the transition easier. Or, you can opt in for a full refund. Learn More
Regardless of whichever option you choose, pre-purchased Cruise Planner items - like internet, beverage, dining, shore excursions and more, will be refunded to your original form of payment.

 

 

This might be the most excited I have been since the shutdown began!!

 

-Neil

We're on the Nov 1st Indy 4 nighter out of PC... Kind of hoping we get to keep that one. Even though the Odyssey is newer, the room type we've got is unique and pretty perfect for the family.