JeffB

Comments on my post above: First, we should dismiss the issues on Sea Dream if, as I have seen posted is true, that they weren't using the STS protocols. This just proves, yeah, we should be using those. On testing: I think from the Economist article above we can derive that RAPID Antigen tests aren't ideal for screening or surveillance given the basis upon which they are intended to be done for pre-boarding screening. The chance of a leaker who is infected getting through that process is fairly high. I have posted previously that it was my belief that RCL would be using RAPID RT/PCR tests such as BINAX NOW for pre-board screening. I also think part of the STS protocol was going to back up positive RT/PCR tests with a second confirmatory test. That protocol - two tests - seems to be pretty solid, first for making sure leakers don't get through and second, identifying true positives and handling them in accordance with local procedures. The good news out of the Economist article is that by mid-2021 a RAPID, saliva based, antigen test is going to be available. One test, one result, with 99% accuracy for positive and negatives. I'd feel very good about boarding a ship and sailing on her given that sort of screening accuracy. Finally, the grandstanding as it has been properly named here by members of Congress is crap, not based on any realistic evidence and completely uninformed. Unfortunately, that is what we are going to be dealing with as the cruise industry starts to gear back up and restart. I do think, as stupid and uninformed as it is, this kind of thing is going to keep delaying a restart. COVID politics as usual, not to mention the negative impact of a restart due to what I believe is the CDC's designed to fail gating process (hoop jumping) the cruise lines have to deal with.

I just reviewed an article in the Economist (paywalled) at another site and I'm going to post that review here and then comment about how it applies to the Sea Dream and by extension, the major lines planning to cruise from US ports or are already cruising in Europe and Asia. Finally, before we all go and watch CFB ....... another great article from the Economist. This one gets a little technical. I've touted testing here as a panacea in combating the spread of the virus. Experts agree it is but there are important caveats that I wasn't aware of in any kind of specific way. We know the RT/PCR is the gold standard but it takes too much time to be of much use beyond a diagnostic tool. It sucks for screening and surveillance - the stuff you want to do at airports, on cruise ships, going to concerts or large scale events.The problem for screening and surveillance is that not only does the test need to deliver results quickly, like in a matter of minutes, but also it has to be accurate enough to prevent leakers who are actually infected but for what ever reasons tested negative falsely. That's bad news for people, for example, at a football game crammed into their seats thinking so-and-so strangers to their left and right aren't COVID + when, they actually are. Right now, RAPID antigen tests aren't very accurate; antibody tests like the BINAX-NOW are more accurate. The value of a true positive or negative is affected by a number of things two of them being if the person being tested has symptoms and/or the prevalence of the disease in the locale where the testing is being done. It goes way up when a person actually has symptoms AND where the disease is present and way down when these two factors aren't present.The chart below demonstrates this:Here's the key point going forward:For now, rapid tests are licensed for use only by medical professionals. The regulatory bar for stand-alone home tests is high. They must be 99% accurate and pass extensive usability trials to ensure that people employ them correctly. That would be easier if the secretion being tested was saliva, which is freely accessible, rather than material found high in the nose or deep in the throat. Saliva does work reliably in some pcr tests but no one has yet devised a good antigen test that uses it.At the current pace of progress, though, this may soon change. Bruce Tromberg of America’s National Institutes of Health (nih) thinks that a rapid over-the-counter saliva based antigen test could be available in America as early as next summer. Rapid antigen tests are, then, likely to become a big part of countries’ covid-19 testing strategies. In particular, they will be used for testing at home, in doctors’ offices and clinics, and in remote places where pcr laboratories are not available. They will be especially handy for mass testing in places prone to outbreaks, such as large congregate settings, prisons and student dormitories.https://www.economist.com/science-an...r=nl_special_3

I have a B2B, 10 & 11n, 2 slightly different southern Caribbean itineraries on Celebrity Reflection starting March 3rd. I'm with Twangster on this subject. We just don't know how RCG is going to play these. I'd like my chances of sailing if these were 4 & 5n B2Bs. I think WAAAYTOOO is thinking clearly in his view that keeping passengers in the bubble on a B2B has benefits to RCG in a whole lot of ways. So, maybe this cruise will go. I've been hopeful before only to get gut punched ..... I think I'm batting under .200 with my predictions to date. I've been wrong on guessing restart dates among others. So, my lack of enthusiasm is waning. I too have had 5 cruises cancelled since March, 2020, the latest a really nice 5n New Years' cruise on Millennium. We had already sailed 2X in 2020, the last one ending March 15th, right before shut down. I have taken 3 FCC, applied them in a rolling fashion to upcoming cruises that were subsequently cancelled and L&S'ed two - one an October, 20 Translant, Barcelona to Miami and the other the over NYs cruise. The New Years L&S preserved a really good deal but not over NYs. I was given 7 options from 12/10/21 - 3/03/21 - one of them would have been over Christmas which would have been nice but we have other plans. So, we took 01/22/21 only because our schedule will permit that....... on Infinity which is planned to replace Millennium out of Miami in late 2021 and into 2022 You can look at this two ways: (1) Celebrity has a lot of my money or (2) my next 5 cruises are more-or less paid for. Still, this whole pandemic thing sucks. It's really quite disruptive and a real shame having essentially lost a whole year to laying low. I'm 72, in good health but that lost year ain't coming back. The prospect that it is likely that planning travel to Europe before late summer, 2021 is going to be dicey. That just adds more lost months with restricted travel and specifically cruising - something that we love and had planned to do a lot of. Oh well, patience is a virtue ...... that I'm running really short of!!!

After reading the CDC's document on their phased plan to resume cruise ship operations from US ports, a wordy and overly complex presentation that has more to do with justifying their actions than presenting a responsible plan, how testing is going to be done is a bit clearer but not yet crystal clear. Although I do not know which RAPID testing product RCG will use, I know that it will be a RAPID RT/PCR, diagnostic test not a RAPID antigen test. If you recall my post where I explained the differences in the three types of testing defined by the CDC (Diagnostic, Screening and Surveillance), you'll know that the RT/PCR test is a diagnotic test and the "gold standard." It is as close to 100% accurate as one can get. There are both self contained RAPID RT/PCR products approved by the FDA that will give results in minutes and RT/PCR tests where a sample is collected and then sent to a lab imposing 3-14d delays in results. RAPID Antigen tests are for screening. These are self contained, some using a desk top device for processing, some use a cassette, credit card sized device. I think those would be fine, they are less expensive but they are a bit more sensitive to errors in collection and processing than correctly administered and processed RAPID RT/PCR tests - hence the CDC directions to not use antigen tests. This is a lay description of testing from the FDA. It has a different break down of test categories than that of the CDC .... which is reflective of the confusing often contradictory information coming from the federal level. It's still fine if you want to understand the details of testing. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/coronavirus-testing-basics The CDC has always taken the position that risk reduction has to be as close to obtaining zero risk of infection as possible. I think zero risk of infection is impossible. What needs to occur is a layered mitigation process that reduces risk of infection to manageable levels and the Safe to Sail plan touted that. I thought it was great. The bad news, IMO, on the CDC's plan to lift the no-sail-order is that it is designed to fail...... which I believe is the outcome the CDC wants. The CDC is not the friend of the cruise industry - cruising is the quintessential example of congregate settings that the CDC says must absolutely be avoided in the pandemic environment. We'll see. Back to testing ...... There are several ways to gather samples for RT/PCR tests in order of reliability: nasopharyngeal swabs, nasal swabs and saliva. All three collection methods are subject to operator induced errors. That's why these tests should not be self administered but rather administered by providers trained to do it. An advantage of using RT/PCR tests is that they are considered definitive - you don't have to run a confirmatory test like you would if using a screening approach with RAPID Antigen tests. The CDC does not say which collection method must be used - a bit surprising and this may be somewhere that the public does not have access to. I don't know if you will have to present some lab based proof that you don't have COVID before your arrival at a cruise terminal. I doubt it. There are just too many variables involving modes of travel that render pre-terminal arrival testing unreliable. So, you'll arrive at the terminal at your designated time and proceed to a testing station that will probably be before TSA screening and check in. Here you'll get screened. I suspect you'll have already filled out an on-line questionnaire and attested to a list of stuff. Then you'll be administered a RAPID RT/PCR test get and results in minutes. There will be protocols if you test positive that will involve some form of isolation and handling in accordance with local isolation policies. If you read the CDC document you'll know that the cruise lines have to make specific arrangements, agreed to by local public health and port authorities, to handle COVID positive crew or passenger cases discovered on screening. These will vary by the port you are embarking from. If you make it through screening and board, IMO, you'll be entering the safest bubble in existence. No environment I know of will be safer from becoming infected by the virus.

Not anything solid. I'm not telling you anything you probably don't know but hotels, airlines and cruise lines have developed sophisticated ways of optimizing profitability and logistics is key with the cruise lines having very large and complex logistics chains. I believe that high levels of efficiency in this aspect of the cruise line business, next to human resources, is hugely important. Making the logistics chain work efficiently and at the lowest costs is a focus for them. That's why I posted my comment about Celebrity's obsession with planning. How the cruise lines in general relaunch revenue operations is going to be key to profitability going forward. Screw this up, have it be less efficient and more costly than is absolutely necessary, will create drag on profits ...... that is not what these companies need after 9 months of bottom line disaster.

Not to be argumentative but, since we're speculating, I think RCL and Celebrity know with some level of certainty which cruises will sail and on what dates those sailings will occur. I can speak with some level of knowledge about Celebrity (1) becasue I'm interested in how a cruise gets planned and stocked for a voyage and (2) I've asked crew and Celebrity staff in the know about such things out of pure curiosity. The line is obsessive about planning, profitability of a cruise given load factors, logistics, port call arrangements and more. Of course there's some uncertainty but I would assume they have a gated plan for each cruise with a threshold of events checked. If the gate isn't made (i.e., not enough tasks checked off) it's going to get cancelled. As each cruise passes through a gate, it will move closer to actually sailing. I also tend to think that selected individuals within RCG, sometime in October after the Pence intervention, knew that the no-sail-order was going to be lifted on 10/30, knew they could start non-rev proof of concept sailings in November and revenue sailings in December. Therefore plans were submitted to the CDC to affect these practice cruises under the cover of the CDC's guidance for crew only manned cruise ships (The Red, Yellow and Green thing). I'm going to make a WAG ....... the first revenue cruise will start on or about the second week of December. Never mind that I might be influenced in this WAG by my booking on Celebrity Millennium out of Miami, 5N sailing on 12/28.

A good step forward re C-19 testing. Keep in mind there are several categories of tests. This test is a Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT/PCR) or a molecular test. There are three ways to collect samples: (1) via a nasophayrngeal swab (the most uncomfortable), (2) A nasal swab (not terribly uncomfortable), (3) A saliva sample (spit in a collection pipette). Costco is offering #3. The RT/PCR test is the gold standard. It is a diagnostic test. All of them are subject to errors induced by collection or processing. I'm not a big fan of home administered tests when they are easy to get with trained medical supervision/collection at a number of pharmacies and medical clinics at no cost to you. But, it's what's available now, the FDA has green lighted them and it is a part of the federal goal to expand testing as quickly as possible. So, OK. What the cruise industry needs are screening tests administered by ship's staff trained to collect and process them. I can't say for certain that these are or are not being used on crew members or passengers cruising now. There are several US manufacturers making these. Abbott Labs is one and was the first to be approved by the FDA in May. There are two of them; BINAX ID (the testing device is about the size of a small toaster) and BINX-Now The testing device is a cassette the size of a credit card). Binax ID is the one Trump touted and the one used (not very well) in the WH. Right now there aren't enough of either of these being produced and other pharmaceutical companies have problems crossing the FDA bar. They can be processed from a nasal swab sample in 15m or less. If you have been tested for flu or strep at a clinic this is the same thing. The ones that are being manufactured are being distributed from the federal level to State Agencies for distribution. Health care staff, hospitals, first responders and nursing home staff/residents are getting them now. Distribution will expand as production capacity expands. CVS has them as an option on their web site but they aren't available. I found 4 outpatient clinics associated with a large Hospital in Atlanta, GA (East Side Hospital System) that were administering the BINAX Now, 15 minute test. When I tried to schedule one all the appointments were booked. You have to be quick when the next day opens - they do them two days at a time. I was traveling to see my grand-kids and got an RT/PCR test before we traveled. It was simple and easy. You can certainly find a CVS, or Little Clinic (Kroger) and I think Target and Walmart pharmacies are doing them (I'd go for the CVS Minute Clinic variety). You may be able to locate a clinic owned by a large hospital system that is doing the 15m tests in your area. Big hospitals may take some of their tests and send them out to clinics they own. Insurance covers these and each will cost your insurer about $100 ($65 and up for the exam/collection, $35 for the test). They don't cost you anything ..... or you can spend 130 bucks at Costco, risk missing up the collection and a false result - mostly negatives. I can't emphasize the importance of testing, isolation when appropriate and tracing of contacts at scale enough. It is key to normalization of our lives. It has to be done from the Federal level with standard reporting of results to a single Federal entity, standard procedures for isolating the infected and standardized, well defined protocols for tracing. Every state has to follow the same protocols, trace and report the same way. Cruise ships operating now and when they start out of US ports are microcosms of a national testing strategy. It works to control the virus. Add compliance with the simplest mitigation measures, throw in a vaccine and this thing will be behind us by late July, 2021. The Feds should be getting on this now, are to some extent but the current administration still thinks states should run everything. That approach has resulted in unreliable COVID data that plagues our public health system now. It might get better in January.

Two separate sailings of same ship - Costa Diadema per CruiseRadio article: The first sailing, upon re-entering Italian waters for a port call in Palermo and at the request of the Italian health authorities, all passengers and crew were tested. 7 passengers tested positive, all of them asymptomatic. I'm assuming these passengers debarked and were quarantined - that's not clear. Following that event, the crew was required to be tested again. When all received negative results, the second charter cruise was allowed to depart on October 12. https://cruiseradio.net/mediterranean-cruise-ends-early-over-worsening-outbreak-in-france/ I'm in agreement with your position that all passengers should be US citizens when and if a cruise line restart out of US ports occurs

Twangster, I may be wrong about this but I remember reading that on the cruise in question, there were no positives. The crew positives were on a Costa charter that sailed prior to that. It is my understanding that these positives were appropriately dealt with and authorities green lighted the charter we're talking about. Either way you're spot on regarding the unusual circumstance that Costa has to deal with vis-a-vis a potential closing by the Italians of the Italian - French boarder . These sort of complications highlight the difficulties cruise lines have operating in the COVID environment. There are circumstances that come up that have nothing to do with sound COVID protocols onbaord ship but still impact them in ways that are hard to anticipate.

Sailed Edge in January on a 7n Western Caribbean itinerary before "it." Tried to rebook for an Edge cruise in mid-march right after an 11n Reflection cruise. That got cancelled. We had also booked Apex for a Barcelona to Miami East bound translant that would have departed 10/22/20. That's been L&S'ed. Edge is a great cruise ship with a ton of innovative features, some a bit quirky for my tastes. We booked a deluxe inside cabin. The pricing makes this option a good one on these ships. We prefer OV on Millennium class and Balconies on Solstice class.....when they are discounted. Edge class features the infinity balconies that I'm told aren't worth the up-charge. They are no more spacious than an inside deluxe but, of course open to a veranda view. That veranda is small and enclosed. These ships feature the exclusive Retreat with some very pricey villas and exclusive dining in several restaurants such as Luminae. Celebrity has a specific passenger target for these ships. I'm not in it but also don't feel I'm not treated as importantly as Retreat guests. IMO, the upcharge for this sort of exclusivity isn't worth it. Food is the same, service is no better or no worse, accommodations are better but that's not a factor for us. Price is. One of the things I liked on Edge was the spacious passageways. This is an exceptionally well laid out ship easy to find your way around in but it also has some funky design features. The Grand Foyer concept is gone and replaced by an Italian style Piazza. It's nice but I don't think it works. It's designed to be a gathering area but it's smallish. The bar - supposedly a martini bar - is too small. Solstice class Ice Bar is much more spacious and well laid out. Missed that. Eden which occupies 4 levels in the aft portion of the ship is the featured design element. It's beautiful, has a bar, 2 restaurants and in the evening at the main specialty restaurant within Eden, dancers dress up in costumes and float around the area. It's a little weird and, IMO, overdone. We have ONE favorite specialty restaurant aboard Celebrity ships, Murano, and it's gone on Edge class. Edge's specialty restaurants beyond Eden are very nice. We've felt the up-charge for specialty dining these days isn't worth it unless it's coming out of big OBCs. Main dining room food quality and service is usually very good. The specialties just aren't delivering a 5 star dining experience like I thought they did in the past and we've been sailing Celebrity since 2001 Just need to get back to this. Right now all my 2020 L&Ss fill 2021 ..... and they're paid for!

So what about politics and the NSO? They're in play. They're in play globally, in Europe, the UK and Asia. They involve the same arguments on both sides in most western democracies. They involve questions of government over-reach juxtaposed to the responsibility of governments to protect the public health/prevent disease spread. What's appropriate to carry out that objective and what's not. What makes sense and what doesn't. What are the costs v. the supposed public health benefits. It breaks down, in it's simplest and too often mischaracterized way, as a liberal v. conservative battle. It's way more nuanced than that, but you get the point. The encouraging thing to me in this debate is that the social and economic costs of various mitigation measures are being brought into the calculus in deciding whether to implement a particular measure. You may not have access to this article from the Economist but worth a read if you can figure out how to do it. The article discusses what the UK is facing as new COVID case numbers climb. Lock the kingdom down again to gain control of the virus or recognize there are alternative responses that avoid the social and economic costs of lock-downs. There are distinct parallels to the situation in the US. Similar COVID issues, similar politics: (A lockdown) would also be economically ruinous. In April, at the height of the first lockdown, Britain’s output was one-quarter lower than it had been in February. The imf argues that lockdowns may be worth it if they create an economy that can fully reopen for business. But nobody is suggesting that a short circuit-breaker could suppress the virus to that extent. And the trade-off would be even less worthwhile if you factor in the toll on mental health, the delay in treating other illnesses and the effects on long-term employment and education. To get covid-19 under control Britain should focus on sustainable local measures: identifying vulnerable groups, finding ways to protect them, identifying trade-offs, instigating local testing and recruiting leaders to generate local support. A circuit-breaker sounds like a scientific solution to a runaway problem. The reality would be a costly mess. ■ https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/10/17/britain-should-not-resort-to-a-new-national-lockdown?utm_campaign=coronavirus-special edition&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud

Great work Twangster .......... trying to make legal sense out of Maritime Law - a very specialized area of the law - or the NSO and what authority it is based on is difficult. There's been a couple of reasonable posts answering the question what is the NSO, who directed it, through what process will it expire or be extended and who makes that decision. Well, despite all the complexities interjected into this thread, a lot of it unnecessarily complicating answers to the pertinent questions, the bottom line is that the Executive directed the NSO. How did that come about? The president had traditionally and in the recent past delegated to HHS certain authorities consistent with their expertise within the CDC (a sub-agency within HHS) to prevent the spread of disease in the US. 42 U.S.C. Section 264 is the derivative legal authority for the NSO. Simple as that. HHS is by it's charter a regulatory agency. Here's what they do: Ihttps://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/42/71.1 HHS enforces it's regulations pertinent to the NSO through requirements of the ship's master to follow certain port entry requirements Failure to follow makes the ship's owners subject to fines. As to HHS responsibility to enforce, princevailantus provided this: The last question is who makes the decision to lift or extend the NSO? Well, under it's delegated authority that would be the CDC. They have stipulated and this has been discussed here, how and when the NSO will expire ..... right now that is October 31st. The executive, in this case in the person of VP Pence, can exercise his authority to intervene to limit what the CDC can do, to wit, to extend the NSO beyond 10/31. IMO, this isn't a matter of political influence as members of Congress have alleged. I think the CDC's position will be to extend the NSO. Best case: I think Pence will intervene and direct it's expiration on 10/31. Alternative case: the NSO gets extended through November 11/30 but only applies to revenue producing cruise ship operations with passengers. That allows cruise lines to prepare ships, assemble crews, conduct training and operate trial runs with employees acting as passengers.

In related news, Bahamas Paradise Cruise announced that it will sail one of its two ships from Florida on December 18th. Their CEO stated in the announcement, “We’re very pleased with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) decision to lift its No-Sail Order on October 31st, 2020. The past few months have been an incredible challenge for the cruise industry at large, and we’re thrilled to welcome our guests aboard for what we know is a much-needed getaway to Grand Bahama Island.” Interesting on its face. What does this company know that the others don't ...... or did this guy just spill the beans. https://cruiseradio.net/cruise-line-announces-december-2020-return-with-one-ship/

CruiseRadio published a story today detailing Costa Cruise Lines early termination of a Mediterranean charter cruise for French passengers. The ship will port in Genoa to discharge passengers. The reason was not that COVID protocols were not working aboard ship. They were. There were no COVID infections reported among crew or passengers. The reason was the increasing number of new cases in France and to allow French passengers to get home quickly and safely. This is the kind of thing we are going to see with any re-start. Officials on both sides of this - cruise line execs and public health authorities ashore - are going to have a very low threshold for pulling the plug on early runs of cruise ships. As I have written previously, new case numbers taken out of context are a poor indicator of COVID risk and disease burden. Regardless, this is the expert's standard and it has become baked in as THE measure for relaxing or tightening mitigation measures. https://cruiseradio.net/mediterranean-cruise-ends-early-over-worsening-outbreak-in-france/

I like objective data not claims of a "fact" related to the COVID pandemic without data to back it up. For example, the WHO claims lots of things to include the virus spreads via aerosols. Subsequently and within days, they backed away from that claim and say "we only know it's airborne." The reason behind the fall-back by the WHO was a lack of data to back up their claim. Claims of fact are one thing. Without data they are empty claims. Matt posted the announcement by RCG results of a study conducted by the University of Nebraska's Medical Center onboard the Oasis of the Seas confirming that cross-contamination of air between adjacent public spaces is extremely low, and undetectable in most test cases. The study marked particles < 1 micron in size (considered to be aerosols) and then injected them into a space aboard ship. Next it followed these particles with equipment designed to detect if they passed through the ship. They didn't. IOW, even if the virus gets introduced in this congregate setting, it's not going to spread in aerosol form (the only way they can do that) via the ship's air handling systems. This was one of the claims, one of the facts, advanced by CDC that isn't supported by objective data. Just want to be perfectly clear about the value of data backed assertions compared to well, it could be or it might be sort of facts. Here's another example. The CDC alleges it's risky to fly and the longer the flight the higher the risk of becoming infected with COVID from an otherwise asymptomatic COVID positive passenger. Don't get on airplanes or cruise ships if you are otherwise at higher risk for becoming infected. Given this very public claim, given that it is frequently augmented by the media, you'd be afraid to jump on an airplane to get to a cruise port, right? Don't be. Results from the Boeing 777-200 and 767-300 airframes showed a minimum reduction of 99.7% of 1 µm simulated virus aerosol from the index source to passengers seated directly next to the source. An average 99.99% reduction was measured for the 40+ breathing zones tested in each section of both airframes. Rapid dilution, mixing and purging of aerosol from the index source was observed due to both airframes’ high air exchange rates, downward ventilation design, and HEPA-filtered recirculation. Contamination of surfaces from aerosol sources was minimal, and DNA-tagged 3 µm tracers agreed well with real-time fluorescent results. Transmission model calculations using the measured aerosol breathing zone penetration data indicates an extremely unlikely aerosol exposure risk for a 12 hour flight when using a 4,000 virion/hour shedding rate and 1,000 virion infectious dose. https://www.ustranscom.mil/cmd/docs/TRANSCOM Report Final.pdf We should not be fearful of flying on commercial aircraft to get from point A to point B even when the flight is even 12 hours long. The data does not support CDC's recommendations not to fly for leisure. It appears this is another example of unsupported advice coming from the CDC, crushing a sector of the travel and leisure industry, in it's role of prevention. There should be no surprise that people don't trust them anymore with it's trustworthiness ratings among Americans plummeting.

Can you quantify the degree to which "long term Covid-19 symptoms" contribute to the public health impact of other known chronic conditions you wish to group these in? Is there evidence that "other near-term burdens to prevent death" that you mention haven't been completely overcome or at the least inovatively ameliorated? I tend not to deal in "could." It is could happen but then doesn't that is inappropriately contributing to policy making errors when it comes to COVID responses. My take is we've seen a lot of that coming from the CDC. I will deal in facts. We know what the CFR is and it is low, much lower in some age groups than others. We know which age groups are most likely to die from C-19. We know how many ED visits there are for ILI or COVID sx. We know, by age cohort, how many COVID and COVID like sx result in hospitalizations. I've dealt with these and shown how these metrics are not increasing or accelerating at the same rate as new cases. If there are increases they are local, for the most part being managed and should not be extrapolated to the national level. There is plenty of good news out there with vaccine developments, with new medications and with improved in-patient management. ....... yet the torrent of bad news drowns the good news out. The "dire consequences" narrative and hand-wringing continues. It's absurd.

A small quibble princevaliantus although I thing you're on the right track. I don't believe that the CDC has any enforcement role on maritime operations although I get that they are providing an aspect of infection control through immigration enforcement by DGMQ. Enforcing port closures, I believe, falls to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The agency doing the enforcing is the USCG. Therefore the Pandemic Response Team acting as the executive becomes the sole authority for either extending or letting the current NSO expire on October 31st. The CDC remains in an advisory role to the Pandemic Response Team. Pence can consider what the CDC recommends; he can consider the cruise industry's STS plan; he can weigh the costs v. PH benefits/risks and then decide whether to extend or let expire the NSO. If he decides to let the NSO expire, acting as the executive, he'll put into motion the steps necessary to call the USCG off.

I've personally found it difficult to remain positive about the likelihood of cruising restarting given the torrent of "bad" COVID news. Let's take stock: New case numbers are increasing. That is inevitable given exponential growth. More cases beget, well, more new cases ...... x, 2x, 4x,16x and so forth. Theoretically, unless you eliminate the virus there will be growth. The WHO and the CDC seem to have settled on a 5% percent positive rate in testing presumes containment of the virus. I've argued that managing your responses to the pandemic based on absolute new case numbers or any of its derivatives is a flawed approach. What is more important to look at regionally and locally is disease burden and there are numerous data points that enable officials to do that. The COVID Tracking Project is a good single source place to get data: Hopkinshttps://covidtracking.com/data/charts/all-metrics-per-state What conclusions you draw from it that guide policy formulation is another thing altogether. This is where we get into gray areas where it's hard to determine, for example, if one mitigation measure makes sense and one doesn't. The goal should be to limit disease burden. While you can argue that absolute case numbers and disease burden are intimately connected they often aren't. That is because we've learned that disease burden is very different by age grouping. We can also see, right now, with case numbers increasing, CFR (a proxy measure of disease burden) has remained almost constant if not down trending. Moreover the growth trends of other disease burden metrics like ED visits, hospitilizations, etc. are not accelerating at the same levels and, in fact in more regions than not, they are decelerating. Of course, there are local exceptions but one should not generalize a local occurrence to the nation and that is done all the time. None of this gets reported by the lay press. NONE. Full stop. This should make us all skeptical of media reports describing dire consequences from increasing case numbers. Let's apply this to the NSO. The STS Plan is a reasonable, very complete mitigation plan given the risk of congregate settings the CDC frets about. It's being successfully practiced in Europe and Asia. Now let's place this up against the torrent of "bad" COVID news and the politically charged atmosphere, the terrible and unfair rap cruise lines got in March, ground staked out and reputations that have to be protected and I think it would be a miracle to see revenue producing cruise operations restart in 2020. It could happen but it's a long shot given the misinformation mitigating against a restart that is out there.

cruisellama's post makes sense. One has to understand how the NSO went down. CDC, as part of the Pandemic Task Force, recommended, the executive concurred and the DHS published and is responsible for enforcing the NSO. The Task Force headed by Pence continues to take inputs from agencies and stake holders, decides on policy and has the appropriate agency execute. In this context it's another politically motivated wild goose chase for Congress to "investigate inappropriate WH influence on the CDC." The WH in the form of VP Pence IS and very appropriately making pandemic policy.

You won't get anger from me. Every new finding or opinion re SARS-CoV-2 and C-19 is worth a look. The link to the "analysts look....." is below. The look was from investigative journalists who acknowledge their's is not a scientific study and urged the Indian government to take one up. They do conclude that old age homes - a new phenomena in India - have had very low COVID mortality rates among residents compared to similar facilities in the west. The homes took several sanitary steps including restricting access, reducing residents by sending some of them home and better food sanitation. Notably, there were no controls in the study rendering it interesting but not conclusive. https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/india-s-old-age-homes-have-been-successful-in-staving-off-covid-19/story-X5NNnjgKIE9pEDdhmR9ZJK.html

All the language we're seeing reported in the SEC filling information is germane. I thought the most disturbing part of it was the RCG's expressed concern over the class action lawsuit filed by investors. The part about being a distraction and diverting time and money to defend against it suggests, not surprisingly, that RCG is worried about cash. To that end, it is clear they are delaying capital investments in shipboard and land based technology upgrades and further land development projects. Those are cash and debt conserving measures that often predate bankruptcy filings. Not suggesting RCG is on the brink but it's moving closer the longer the shuttering of this industry persists. I also thought it noteworthy that crew contracts will be ending, not renewed and then renegotiated when a path forward on restarting operations becomes clear. That is a slam dunk acknowledgement that labor costs are a prime concern and efforts to reduce them, when it is uncertain that cruise operations will restart before the start of the 2nd quarter, 2021, are being undertaken. As I read it, when they do this, it hamstrings RCG's ability for a quick restart once operations are green-lighted. It's not just warm-restarts that take a couple weeks, it's that plus signing crew back-up. A mess. Interpreting the events in the last week in the context of all three majors bailing on November are just telling me that in order to conserve cash, they've dumped crew. That makes a quick restart impractical. I think we heard from Carnival Corp. that they didn't see anyway that they could restart, as planned out of two ports in FL, in November. That is tacit admission that they probably don't have the crew to do it and that the reason behind that problem is that they have let a good portion of them go. Instead of optimistic talk about continuing dialogue with the CDC that we heard after the Pence phone meeting last week, I sense some RCG frustration over the statement that the CDC hasn't responded to their STS plan. That's not a good sign and reflective of a hardening of Redfield's position on the risk of congregate settings. Best case restart at this point is mid-December and I think that is fading fast. Worst case seems to me to be April, 2021. I think industry survival possibly up to and definitely past that date is questionable.

Well, the "choir" still has hold-outs or folks that just aren't convinced. My mission isn't complete. You could be right about the "chip on the shoulder" thing. Reputations to protect and all that. The buffer for that sort of thing is, IMO, Mike Pence and, Donald Trump. Believe me, I am no Trump fan but Pence stepped in and told Redfield, nope, you're not extending the NSO through February 2021. I'll give you a month. My take is that the writing is on the wall for the CDC and there are signals from substantial institutions (like WHO among others) weighing against the CDC's position to keep the cruise industry shuttered. Still, there has been some rational support for the risk of congregate settings of the size presented aboard a cruise ship. Trump has a record of dismissing that even though it is rational ...... and I'm not saying I agree with him on this sort of thing. We may just be in a confluence of circumstance that is going to get cruise ships running again from US ports.

You may be interested to know that not a single employee of Walt Disney World has become infected since they reopened and that, to my knowledge, not a single case of C-19 has been tracked and traced to that venue. That's not saying someone didn't get it there but news like that hasn't made it the media who would jump on it if was true. How do I know this? The NYT published what amounts to a mea-culpa for writing a piece shortly after the decision to re-open the parks in Orlando deriding it and claiming it would turn into a terrible hot-spot of C-109 spread. Well, not surprisingly, that didn't happen and, credit where credit is due, the NYT apologized for spreading fear. You can count on the same sort of thing happening if cruising restarts. The media will probably warn us of catastrophe and dire consequences but will more than likely end up with egg n their faces.

There's a couple things to recognize when looking at new case numbers in isolation as an absolute indicator of virus spread. That data is inherently flawed and so are conclusions being drawn from it. First, there is growing recognition by public health officials and epidemiologists that the virus cannot be suppressed such that there is zero risk of viral spread. Places can get close but it takes lock-downs and shuttering of businesses to do it and these are not sustainable for a number of reasons not the least of which is the economic and social costs of doing that. The WHO is latching on to this trend. You can read about this in the WSJ if you have a subscription. You may be able to get to the articles I'm speaking of w/o a subscription - worth a try. Google today's WSJ. The virus can be contained and it's impact on public health can be decreased - and already is being both contained and decreased regionally with reasonable mitigation measures. The point of the foregoing is that restoring appropriately restricted human activity and mobility is becoming a more acceptable alternative to lock-downs and shuttering of varying severity. It's known that the PH benefits derived therefrom are not sufficient to warrant the social and economic costs of them. That thinking is going to weigh in favor of restarting cruise ship operations.

ErinD, here are some things to consider: You've got more flexibility if you are within driving distance of your embarkation port. Despite COVID risks there appears to be a lot of pent-up demand to cruise ASAP. If the lines are green-lighted to go on 11/01/20, cabins for December sailings are going to get snapped up. If there is booking space in the cabin you want now, there's a good chance it will be gone within minutes of any announcement suggesting that ship is going to sail. Given RCG's current policy on refunds, you have little to lose, more if you have to make air travel and embarkation hotel arrangements - even then airlines are being pretty generous if you cancel. Hotels usually have free cancellation w/24h notice. Ask yourself if you and those you're cruising with are completely comfortable with masking, distancing and the rigmarole that the Safe-To-Sail plan will impose on your cruise experience. Cruising in the early stages of a restart is not going to be anything like cruising pre-COVID. Finally, if you are worrying right now about becoming infected on land or at sea and onboard the cruise you are thinking about booking, even with the layered mitigation measures being implemented, you're probably better off staying home.