LotharioRowe

The interesting thing about the risk of severity is that Royal's official policy has never required boosters or being "up to date" on shots, which means individuals can board even if their last shot was over a year ago now, which effectively means their risk of severity matches that of the unvaccinated. So even their current policy isn't great if the goal is to reduce risk of severe cases...so I do think moving forward with just negative testing without regard for vaccination status would probably be a good compromise, and still provide a good level of protection and mitigation. And I personally have no problem with self testing and reporting.

This is the same line of thinking I had above. Though in my opinion vaccination is not an adequate replacement for testing, as too many vaccinated people still can and do catch and spread covid. This is why I think testing is the most important priority (with no preference for vaccination status), as a cruise with 100% of the guests having recent negative test would give would give a much higher probability of having a low incident cruise than one with a fully vaccinated but untested population.

What an exciting chance to return to a more normal experience! Personally, the most important thing for my peace of mind is knowing that everyone on board has very recently tested negative, within 48 hours of embarkation. While everyone in my extended family group is vaccinated, it has shown in practice to be mostly irrelevant in terms of actually spreading covid, and every one of them except my partner and I have caught it recently with pretty bad symptoms. So at this point I really don't care about vaccination status, I'm much more interested in ensuring those onboard are testing negative and likely not contagious. My vaccinated uncle just got turned away on the day of his cruise for testing positive. If there were no testing requirements, he would be onboard and potentially spreading it to others - and his vaccination status would be irrelevant. I think the most reasonable position to best mitigate covid outbreaks at this moment is to keep the (admittedly imperfect) testing requirements in place to ensure (as best as possible) everyone on board is likely negative and not contagious, and get rid of vaccination requirements. Since a positive test means the person is likely contagious regardless of vaccination status, it would still be best for the safety of others that they stay off board, regardless of vaccination status. So the negative test result is the most important thing at this point, since a positive test would mean the same level of risk to others regardless of vaccination status. This allows for maximum inclusion, and gives everyone a chance again to enjoy a cruise, so long as they are not sick.