UNCFanatik

21 minutes ago, MrMarc said:

This is the part that I think is the basis of much of the disagreement now.  While I wish I could see things that way, I really cannot.  I think if we take that view, we could easily head downhill very quickly.  I think it would be so sad if way abandoned the race because we thought we were at the finish line, when the actual finish line was actually just a little farther ahead.

Like wait...just two more weeks? Is this another 15 days to slow the spread? 

41 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

At least you're getting refunds.

 

I still have about $200 of taxes and port fees from a March cruise that RC is always "still looking into" when I inquire.

UGH!!! Hope they sorted it out soon

I i just got off the phone regarding my refunds for cruise planner purchases for my cancelled Symphony sailing and I saw all my cruise planner refunds hit my account with the exception of my cabana purchase. Royal only refunded $500 to my account for the cabana. The Royal customer rep told me that she sees that they applied the balance of the cabana purchase to my FCC instead of refunding the funds to my account and then gave me option to have balance refunded

I dont know if this is a common practice but I find this rather shady by not informing me first. 

Just something for others to be aware of when looking for your cruise planner refunds

36 minutes ago, JeffB said:

At the request of @cruisinghawgI'll reluctantly respond to this and a few other comments:

Not really ........American Citizens have no Constitutional protection from being told by a state vaccinations are required. 

Nearly 100 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts,33 upholding the right of states to compel vaccination. The Court held that a health regulation requiring smallpox vaccination was a reasonable exercise of the state’s police power that did not violate the liberty rights of individuals under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The police power is the authority reserved to the states by the Constitution and embraces “such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety” (197 U.S. at 25, 25 S.Ct. at 361).

It is good to understand the history of how the requirement for vaccinations emerged in the US. I's all right here:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/guides-pubs/downloads/vacc_mandates_chptr13.pdf

Look, I get the concern about children being vaccinated and putting thier safety above any sense of duty to the public health. This is true especially given the short history of the COVID vaccines approved in the US. One needs to be on point when they take that position.

In a that was then, this is now sort of dialogue, distrust of the state has increased dramatically since Jacobsen v. Massachusetts. But the FDA has remained as apolitical and balanced as any government agency in this pandemic - the rigorous testing protocols that pharma has to comply with in brining a drug to market, even under EUA, and with the exhaustive review process the FDA conducts, all the US approved vaccines are very safe. Yet misinformation about their effectiveness and safety flood social media platforms as in, "that decision (not to vaccinate a child) is a no brainer." It is? Really, based on, "Right now, with cases averaging 22 per day on a population of 1.4 million and multiple cases of myocarditis locally."  I doubt both the validity of the numbers and how these are being presented. These are the facts:

CDC numbers through late May estimated that 16 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis would be reported for every million second doses given to people ages 16 to 39. That works out to 0.0016%, or roughly 1 in 62,000.

By contrast, de Lemos said the best studies on college athletes put the chances of a young person getting myocarditis after COVID-19 at between 1% and 3%. That's roughly 1 in 50.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2021/06/21/should-rare-cases-of-heart-inflammation-put-your-covid-19-vaccine-plans-on-hold

There's more:

Though fewer children contract COVID-19, and fewer kids and young adults experience serious illness, there’s still some risk of contracting the virus. Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 7.7 million COVID-19 cases have been reported among people ages 12 to 29. In May, that age group represented 33% of COVID-19 cases. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 2,767 coronavirus deaths have been reported among this age gr

https://whyy.org/articles/myocarditis-and-the-covid-19-vaccine-what-to-know-about-rare-heart-inflammation/

And then there is this:

All of the foregoing facts seem to indicate that it is a no-brainer to not get your kids vaccinated. 

Profiteering by big pharma as an underlying cause of distrust of vaccines is also a frequently held parental concern. IMO, that denigrates the work of 100s of dedicated scientists that worked on these vaccines and deployed them in record time. I don't think that circumstance is fully understood by critics of big pharma. That pharma developed these in a public private enterprise is perfectly good reason for these companies to be rewarded and the public to benefit from the miracle drug the mRNA vaccines are. I reject that concern as largely baseless. Now of course you could argue that the Chinese and the Russians who deployed Sinovac and Sputnik through government nationalized production did just fine. But they didn't and countries that received these vaccines in a form of vaccine diplomacy are battling reinfections.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/business/economy/china-vaccines-covid-outbreak.html   

One final comment on another set of stats that are floating around on social media platforms that vaccine nay-sayers grab on to without checking them out. The conflations and missuses of absolute and relative risk along with vaccine efficacy abound in social media platforms then trickle down to casual conversations. The  link will take you to a great article that describes these misuses, how believable they appear and how utterly dangerous they are to rational, well informed thought on getting vaccinated or not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-thelancet-riskreduction/fact-check-why-relative-risk-reduction-not-absolute-risk-reduction-is-most-often-used-in-calculating-vaccine-efficacy-idUSL2N2NK1XA

All of this sounds like lecturing and badgering those who aren't vaccinated or don't want their kids vaccinated. I apologize for that because it is the least effective way to change people's minds on any number of COVID and Pandemic related views and especially in the hotly debated arena of vaccinations. Generally it's hard to do. But judgements based on inaccurate or misleading information are dangerous. What I encourage is not blindly rejecting or accepting, even being moved by what I've posted here but rather keeping an open mind to views contrary to your own. Become convincible. Join legitimate focus groups led by doctors and scientists. Ask questions.  

I will get into more later but once again you present CDC modeling as established science and yet again the CDC used outdated data. 

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/93340?trw=no

more articles later but just wanted to present this because there is still concern for children being vaccinated. To present this as anyone that disagrees with your assessment is an uneducated rube that spreads disinformation is not only arrogant but very insulting to the 1000s of doctors out there voicing their concerns and putting in the same kind of work you described above. 

"Science" is slow to respond because once a narrative and groupthink has set in, many scientists do not want to go against that for fear of losing their careers. A few months ago, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook would take down posts on the lab leak theory but now we are seeing the lab leak theory accepted in more circles and even see scientists that previously said lab leak was never possible to now changing their position. 

The CDC has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. Even in last administration, the CDC director held up a mask and said it was better than a vaccination. The current CDC director ignored data on children and had teacher unions craft school reopening guidelines. Im sorry but you cant trust the CDC when they came out with those unscientific and harmful summer camp recommendations to mask children in 90+ temps. 

Now we have the CDC which has dragged their feet about heart inflammation among younger people while other countries have halted vaccinations among young people. J&J vaccine was stopped for less than this. AND that was a MAJOR misstep by the CDC and FDA which caused additional vaccine hesitancy and slowed down vaccination rates in the US

I am not an anti-vaxxer by any means. But I am more than hesitant to have my 13 year old step daughter to get a vaccine that has been shown to be linked to heart inflammation no matter how much the CDC wants to downplay it as being "mild" or temporary. Especially since she is in an age group that Covid risk is VERY low. There is every reason for parents to give pause to vaccinated their 12 year olds just because they have been approved to have vaccine. I am not in the just cause you are eligible, you should get vaccine camp at all because that thinking just ignores the current data we have that needs to be weighed. 

And its amazing if you watch side effects from vaccines written off as nothing to do with the vaccine by the same group of people that failed to distinguish that dying from Covid was different than dying WITH Covid. 

And speaking of testing, the PCR test were always run at too high a cycle rate which you now see has been lowered. 

Not only has the CDC and "science" been highly politicized, there is also the financial incentives now to have a never ending number of booster shots. 

The CDC is broken and has lost public trust. However, it is hard to divorce the CDC from politics and money. The CDC ignored years of accepted pandemic protocols in favor of widespread lockdowns that caused massive financial damage and collateral damage in other areas undiagnosed and delayed treatment for major illnesses. The data is in and the lockdown "cure" was truly worse than the disease. And how anyone can look at data from the last year and conclude that masks work is truly beyond me. One could even draw logical conclusions that masks gave people a false sense of security which led some people to engage in risky behavior where they got infected. Some still thing Zero Covid should be the goal. Crazy!

All this to say, that natural immunity gained through previous case of Covid should be shown to be the same as someone being vaccinated. Some cruise lines understand this and will accept natural immunity in lieu of vaccines. We are nearing herd immunity in the US. There are those in the society that do not want to lose control they gained in the last year and want to keep trying to scare the general populace with the latest variant that will wipe us all out. The UK variant, the South African variant, etc, etc, etc. 

I support the cruise lines with their stance on vaccines because I believe that businesses have a right to set their own terms of service. But I do not believe that every person who is eligible should get the vaccine especially children. Each family needs to decide for themselves and not be ostracized for it. Royal has setup its two tiered system of protocols and published them for customers to read for themselves. If families decide that they dont want to cruise under those protocols because they dont want to vaccinate 12 yr old Suzy because no cruise ship vacation should be the sole reason for vaccination then they would need to decide to cancel or not thus sending a message to Royal. For my 13 year old step daughter and a cruise planned in November, I am choosing to wait for more data to come in before vaccination and then wait and see what protocols on the ship will be in November

I saw on one of Matts videos from one of the Adventure sailings that he mentioned being able to pay $1.99 a day to text through the Royal App.

questions:

1. is this a thing one would think would be offered on other ships and sailings?

2. Does it work? I think I have heard trouble previously with texting through the App

3. If it is on a given sailing, can it be ordered through cruise planner or must it be purchased once onboard ship?

Interested in experiences with using this feature on the Adventure or otherwise

37 minutes ago, JeffB said:

I said a few weeks ago when it became obvious that RCL was going to have a hybrid pax manifest that that approach would open a can of worms. Welp, guess what? It has.

I thought @joshgatesmade a good point in another thread about Caribbean countries not having access to vaccines yet and that their populations are largely unvaccinated and therefor vulnerable to COVID being carried to them by unvacinated cruise passengers.

There's no question that the risk of serious illness from COVID is only about 1-2% across all age cohorts - higher for over 50s. The problem is transmission. One person, a citizen of a Caribbean country the ship is making a port call in, gets exposed and boom, you have the potential for an outbreak in that country and it shuts its boarders. Maybe no one gets seriously ill or dies but there is a pretty good chance of a bad outcome attendant to letting unvaxed go ashore...... to me just another can of worms that RCL (and now co-branded Celebrity) has set themselves up for.

I too dislike the policy that you can't board if you're not vaccinated because it shuts out families that have under 16/12 age kids with them. But I think the bad PR that policy begets for being the spreader of COVID in a Caribbean country is considerably less than that from the policy that everyone aboard has to be vaxed. That's the policy everywhere else that I'm watching now that vaccines are available. I support it because that is my reality .......Id' probably feel differently if my reality had kids that want to cruise with me and/or my return to cruising won't happen because I have members of my party that can't get vaccinated for any number of valid reasons.

Just like in the US, countries in the Caribbean have to set their own Covid policies. In the US, we are continuing to learn the disastrous effects of lockdowns on not only the economy but societal long term damage we have done to our children. 
 

Caribbean nations are well aware of the potential of Covid spread by opening their ports back up to cruise ships. But these sovereign nations also know the effect of continued economic shutdown by the cruise lines not visiting. They understand that poverty and economic distress causes more health problems than Covid presents.

it’s not as if the cruise lines are forcing these island nations to allow them to port. Each nation has decided whether to allow cruises to port or not and therefore assume the responsibility for Covid spread. And I would imagine that many citizens of these nations that were reliant on tourist generated income, Covid is the least of their worries and they want their governments to allow cruise tourism back. 
 

AND again, natural immunity is being ignored. Just because citizens of these Caribbean nations may not have access to widespread vaccines, this does not mean that a percentage of their populace had already had Covid and now have natural immunity against Covid 

6 hours ago, JasonOasis said:

The truth that we all are dancing around is this every cruise leaving the US with the exception of Alaska cruises are all sailing to an international country.  Right now there are only a few Caribbean island nations that are still closed not only to cruise traffic but just about any tourist traffic. Most Caribbean island nations have reopened and all have testing requirements for arriving passengers who arrive by air they are required to present a negative test no more than 72 hours old and many nations will test the passenger again upon arrival at the airport. However many Caribbean Island nations have chosen to relax those rules or look the other way for cruise ships because they need the tourist dollars that cruise ships bring in.  We all know COVID is here to stay it is never going away, we also now know just how effective the vaccines are, in that a vaccinated individual can not spread the virus but also a vaccinated individual if they do get infected 99.999% of them are not facing hospitalization or worst. 

Here in the US people 12 years and older now have a choice they can choose to be vaccinated or they choose not get vaccinated.  However in most Caribbean island nations they still don't have that choice something one of my coworkers pointed out and he happens to be from Grenada, and I feel like that is an important thing to remember when we are talking about shore excursion and Caribbean Cruises.

If you are saying there is no chance these children picked up COVID on a shore excursion then what you are saying is they brought COVID onto the ship with them which in turn means they brought COVID onto every island if they disembarked the ship. If we all can't see the danger in that then Lord help us.  We are all so concerned about what happens on the cruise ship itself but I wonder how many of us have given one thought to the human beings on the islands that we will come into contact with.  Many of them right now do not have access to any vaccine so they don't have a choice vaccinated or unvaccinated but will welcome any and all cruise ship passengers with open arms because they need the tourist dollars.  Is Royal Caribbean really the bad guy for  saying unvaccinated passengers will no longer be able to go on third party excursions I don't think so.  The people in the Caribbean deserve a fighting chance they deserve to be able to make the same choice we all here in the United States now take for granted and a vacation shouldn't override that. Once the vaccines are available to any and all who wants one then I'm all for Royal dropping the requirement but until there is more vaccine in circulation/distribution in the Caribbean all cruise lines have a responsibility to help limit the amount of COVID being brought onto an island by unvaccinated individuals.  

I believe unvaccinated American's should be allowed to cruise and enjoy themselves on the ship without restrictions.  But until there is enough vaccine in circulation where every person who lives in the Caribbean has a choice (the same choice we now have in this country) then I think unvaccinated individuals should be restricted to cruise sponsored excursions where there is a bit more control and where the cruise can limit contact and possible exposure.   Last week on this site I posted the only Caribbean island nation that has nearly 70% of their population vaccinated are the Cayman Islands and to give themselves a chance they have banned cruise ships until some point in 2022.  The Cayman Islands are one of the wealthiest island nations in the Caribbean as are the British Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos.  What I've noticed is the wealthier the island nation the higher their vaccination rates are and the more restrictions they have in place or are exploring putting in place for cruise ships. And while the Cayman Islands has decided to remain closed to all cruise ships the British Virgin Islands which has just reopened will only allow passengers who are fully vaccinated to disembark a cruise ship in port. The governor of the US Virgin Islands is imploring Governor DeSantis to reconsider his stance on vaccines and cruise ships not because the US Virgin Islands is concerned about what happens onboard the cruise ship, he is concerned about what unvaccinated passengers may be bringing onto the US Virgin Islands where there still isn't enough vaccine to meet demand.  The US Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands are not alone in expressing their concern about unvaccinated passengers on disembarking cruise ships in port and left to just roam freely other island nations are concerned as well and we are starting to hear more about it as we inch closer to cruising resuming from Florida.

The cruise industry holds a lot of power within the Caribbean because they are an essential part of the life blood of the Caribbean.  Pre-pandemic more passengers arrived in the Caribbean by cruise ship than by airplane. But make no mistake these Caribbean Island nations that are opening their borders to cruise ships and their passengers are hoping and expecting both cruise lines and their passengers to do the right thing and protect these islands until there is enough vaccine where their citizens will then have the same opportunity to make the same choice any American over the age of 12 can now make.  In my opinion any American who chooses to cruise unvaccianted in July, August, September, October, even November should expect to run into some type of restrictions at the different ports of call within the Caribbean. Hopefully by December or January 2022 their will be enough vaccine in the Caribbean where these islands can begin to drop their concerns over unvaccinated cruise passengers.  Until then I think it is incredibly selfish for unvaccinated cruisers to think their third party shore excursion is more important than protecting people who don't yet have access to life saving vaccines.

 

Lot to unpack here. But let’s start with the level of poverty on many of these islands and the economic effect that not having cruise ships in port for over a year. Many local businesses that relied on the cruise visitors have went under. It’s incredibly selfish to us to assume what the people living on these islands shouldn’t  be given a choice 

we aren’t talking Ebola here. Covid is a virus with a 99% survival rate. When you can’t provide for your family, is catching Covid at the top of your list of concerns? Poverty creates health issues that are far worse than Covid. 
 
that’s not to say that cruise passengers shouldn’t be responsible because they should. But is very presumptuous to deny islanders a right to decide about their livelihoods and means to provide for their families. 

just like in the US when low wage earners that didn’t have jobs where they work from home had to go to work to provide for their families in the middle of the pandemic.

not everything is about Covid no matter how overblown the media has made it to be 

2 hours ago, 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

Good luck with royal running a business with 100% vaccination requirement. 

and the data tells me these two teenagers will be just fine. 

better get used to the idea. Covid is endemic and there will be cases on most sailings moving forward either known or unknown. 

19 minutes ago, JeffB said:

People reading Merrydays ruling last Friday may not have caught this but Merryday noted that Trump was offered as an option and reportedly considered shutting down air travel. Instead he exempted it as essential. Cruising didn't get that exemption. Merryday brought this up in a Q&A with CDC attorneys where he was making the point that presidential power is limited both in the Constitution and in congressional legislative action. He went on to suggest that it was likely that Trump knew or was advised that he couldn't shut down the airlines and not exceed his presidential powers by doing so.

Merryday then asked the CDC attorney, "you mean, you are telling me that Secretary Bacerra could come back after the president and shut the airlines down because that's what he did with the cruise lines?" After the CDC attorney perceptibly paused at the implications of that question, he said, "yes, the CDC has a constitutional duty to protect the public health and carry that duty out under USC 242." Of course that response was laughable and Merryday moved on but sighted this exchange in his 124 page ruling.

My point is that it wasn't the airline unions or lobbyists kept that airlines operating. It was appropriate limits on the executive branche's powers, something the CDC attorney arguing his case before Merryday was clueless.     

Thank you for clarification though I could see both factors in play because it was not just essential flights flying unless you think my trips to see customers were vital to the US...lol.  Of course this proves even moreso that cruise lines were singled out. 

I still would like to see studies done on Casinos where I think there are some similarities to cruising. There are those people that may never leave a large casino to go anywhere else in Vegas and gamble, eat, watch a show, with many of the same people indoors. To me that is a very similar experience to cruise ship. Seems covid could spread indoors in crowded gambling floor with people in close contact just as easy as a cruise ship. 

And I know they say the ventilation system on planes keeps fresh air circulating but logic would dictate that Covid has spread on long flights but we very rarely hear about air travel and Covid risk because I have flown at least 10 times in pandemic and American always had full flights with middle seats filled. You have never seen a big push to shut down air travel because of the unions and lobbyists

I keep hearing this idea that the cruise lines that cater to families during the summer have a desire to run 95-100% vaccinated sailings out of FL. While I think that they stated as much to meet the CDCs guidelines, now that the CDC guidelines will not be binding and just suggestions, we will see where the cruise lines stand now. 
 

I know cruise lines cannot afford bad PR on Covid cases but zero Covid is not possible on cruises now. The CDC is a terribly run organization. That is how you got them saying it was a less than 10% chance to catch Covid outdoors when it was actually less than 1% chance. Then they said they were taking an aggregate of internal studies. Ridiculous. And with masking, there are zero controlled randomized trials that prove efficacy of cloth mask but yet the CDC treats this as religion that shall not be challenged. There are only models. Just one look at japan where mask compliance is very high among populace but yet they had a big increase of Covid cases the last few months. AND the CDC “emergency” meeting on vaccines and heart inflammation amount younger people has now been delayed twice. 

now, from a business standpoint, I am a solid believer that businesses should be allowed to set their own terms of service. I believe DeSantis should carve out an exception 

However, also from a business standpoint, how willing is Royal to turn away business from families this  summer? They have to do their own internal risk analysis to determine their policies and I promise you that the DeSantis law isn’t the only factor. Will they lose business from families if making vaccination standard too high for them to reach and then require masking of children which is not necessary? Will they  lose business from those that would rather be on a 100% vaccinated sailing? What is best possible vaccination rate on a given sailing out of FL given the age demographic of that sailing?

These all are factors that Royal must consider when determining vaccine policies. Not just DeSantis. 
 

the biggest challenge through all this is public perception. Covid cases will be on cruise ships moving forward. It’s endemic. Unless they test 100% of passengers daily, there will be unknown Covid cases on the ship. There will also be know cases of Covid. The expectation can not be that zero Covid will be on all ships that sail. Never gonna happen. A responsible media that’s not fear porn driven would point out that cruise lines have proper protocols in place that didn’t exist with The Princess when there were so many unknowns. Times have changed. Covid is on the way to being endemic. On its way to a mild infection for most. 

Desantis is an easy scapegoat in all this. Do i think he should make an allowance to his vaccine passport law for cruise lines? Yes.

However, from a purely business standpoint did Royal ever have an interest in fully vaccinated Caribbean cruises in the summer? When Royal looked at their bookings this summer, did they think they could even meet the 95% vaccinated threshold set by CDC? 

Lets say Desantis' law is struck down or an allowance is made tomorrow. Would Royal then require vaccination records for all guests? What then? More refunds.....cancellations...rebookings. Logistical nightmare. From a business standpoint do they REALLY want to discourage unvaccinated passengers especially families with children this summer?

I get the argument in response that the cruise industry cannot afford restart with Covid cases on ships. However, we all know even with a vaccinated crew and passenger ships, Covid cases can still happen if testing is done. Its about mitigation and following protocols. 

Lastly, as has been stated many times, we need to start treating Covid as endemic and not pandemic as cases continue to wane across the country. I know the media will keep with the variants scare but that seems more of a tactic to get more people vaccinated. I bet the NIH, CDC, and FDA all have vaccination rates among their employees lower than they are requiring for cruiselines. 

Is amazing to me to see the same people so anxious to get cruising back up and running now wanting to deny boarding to families with children. Not to mention the current vaccine concern for those 12-16. As an aside, the ever incompetent CDC pushed back “emergency hearing” on this issue until next week. CDC is a joke. They paused the J&J vaccine for less than this. 
 

from a business perspective, Royal doesn’t want to turn away families and there is no guarantee that they ever could have met the 95% vaccinated passengers in the Caribbean this summer.
 

There won’t be 100% vaccinated sailings this summer in Caribbean. The adventure didn’t have 95% vaccinated rate among passengers. 
 

what would you have Royal do? Ban all children this summer? Refund more people? There is zero way from stopping Covid on cruise ships. ZERO. and if you are vaccinated believe in science! Trust the vaccine. It will be ok if you sit with unvaccinated people! I would sit with them and I am vaccinated! I just flew on a plane with 200 of my closest friends for a 3 hour flight. Stop the fear. 
 

26 minutes ago, JeffB said:

@UNCFanatikI looked and can't find a unambiguous statement in the applicable crew section of the CSO that  requires a ship to retest a vaccinated crew member after they have gone through the required new crew embarkation protocols that include receiving a vaccination. It may be there and you may know where it is. Please share.

It's nearly impossible for most of us diving into the CSO as it is displayed at the CDC web site and make sense of it. I think if you'd been following the evolution of the CSO and it's updates like I would expect all levels of medical staff - corporate and operations -  to be doing, its probably more understandable.  

I do know that as a routine screening measure, the CDC does not recommend testing vaccinated people. I realize there's a difference between congregate setting and those that aren't that as the CDC defines them. Odyssey was apparently tesing vaccinated crew members and it may have had something to do with the complicated color coding system that's been around for a while. No telling. If for some obscure reason in the CSO it's required, fine. If not ......????

In my post above I applauded RCL's step above and beyond to test vaccinated crew but on further review, if it's not required, doing it sets up an unending circle jerk of testing, quarantine, testing as @LizzyBee23 points out. That's not helpful at all.

This is from Matt’s blog post regarding cancelled Odyssey sailings. Maybe I read this wrong but to me it made it seem testing was a CDC and CSO requirement.

*edited to add… surely some of crew were vaccinated prior to getting to US? If not.. then I understand this 
 

“According to the cruise line, all the crew members on Odyssey of the Seas were tested on June 4 when the ship arrived in Port Canaveral, as part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Conditional Sailing Order.

The crew were tested again on June 10, and eight crew members tested positive.”

As long as the CDC required testing of vaccinated crew, you are going to see breakthrough cases. I think the million dollar question to be answered is do these vaccinated people with breakthrough cases have enough viral load to be transmissible? 

As @JeffB has pointed out many times, Covid is on its way to being endemic. The CDC and safe sail guidelines will have to change accordingly as time passes. 

Just like with the mishandling of the J&J vaccine, the issue with heart inflammation with younger people will certainly cause hesitancy to get vaccinated. 

Any vaccine hesitancy presents more issues for a cruise line when trying to set their vaccine protocols. 

Still some questions/thoughts linger:

1. Why did Royal never announce a CDC test sailing for Odyssey as they did for other ships? Some will say they saw the test sailing in the App and Bayley said there was a test sailing planned for June. But again, there has to be some reason that they never formally announced the test sailing dates for Odyssey but moving forward with a July 3rd sailing? AND only now when they announce the delay, we hear about more Covid cases on the Odyssey. 

2. It is my understanding that the Adventure sailed with less than a 95% rate of passengers with about 1000 passengers aboard. Is it realistic to expect that ships sailing in the Caribbean in the summer can even reach 95% vaccinated passenger rate? Perhaps Royal is realizing that they cannot meet that CDC standard? If they have trouble meeting that standard on the Adventure then how can they expect that on other sailings. Maybe Desantis is right when he is constantly saying that the CDC guidelines for % of passenger vaccination is not realistic at this point and time. And I will not debate this but more and more news is coming out about heart inflammation among the 12-16 year olds who have been vaccinated and this may give some parents pause to vaccinate their children. This cannot be helpful to the cruiselines either that are trying to meet the 95% vaccinated threshold.

I know there are those that desire a fully vaccinated cruise but are the cruise lines that cater more to families willing to forego their business in summer season in the Caribbean? MAYBE, its not about Desantis' vaccination passport law but more about cruise lines now realizing that they cannot meet the 95% vaccination rule by the CDC without limiting their business this summer. I know people want to make Desantis the villain and he may well be but the cruise lines are also making their decisions on data they see from those who have booked for the summer sailings

Royal never officially announced an odyssey test sailing contrary to what one source, cruise critic, reported. It’s no surprise that July 3rd wasn’t sailing even without the new development 

They were never going to sail on July 3rd to begin with. let’s be honest. Now we know why there was never a confirmed test sailing announced of the odyssey from royal 

This is why you never saw any confirmed test sailings. 

I didnt think they were ever going to sail on July 3rd to begin with. 

1 hour ago, barjpoe said:

yes

Are you certain? Not seeing that being reported

5 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

Covid had this peculiar effect of "viral interference" which shut down the flu and pretty much all common cold viruses except rhinovirus. My son was in school full time all year, and kids 10 and under didn't have to wear masks. There were barely any cold bugs going around, and zero flu. It was amazing (other than the shadow of covid)

Now the cold virus is coming back and it's freaking people out because they forget what it's like to have the common cold.

Yes, it’s comical to think the flu just disappeared because of the use of masks. Just before the flu disappeared, we were told about the double effect of flu and Covid.

Yes, the reason the flu was a non factor was indeed viral interference. But, come next flu season, there will be those who will push for masks on children again because they don’t understand correlation and causation and it will not stop the flu. 
 

9 minutes ago, Craig 01020 said:

There's the difference. Covid = 598,000 deaths in the U.S.

We have no idea how many deaths would have been attributed to H1N1 in the US if they would have tested for it the way they test for Covid now AND counted deaths back then the way we have counted them in the last year

And we have a counting problem in the US. We have failed to distinguish between dying FROM Covid from dying WITH Covid in many cases because of the financial incentives. 

And then there is the seasonal flu, should we shut down cruises with families because of cases of flu found aboard which is much more harmful to children than Covid has been? 

I hope cruising can survive this restart because no matter what, Covid will be on cruise ships just like everywhere else in our daily lives. Its just how the CDC, media and general public handle the news when cases are discovered on multiple cruise ships because if you test every vaccinated passenger, Covid cases will be found. And the there are the false positives where passengers can get left at a port.

I know, I know, people will say that is the price to be paid for cruising now but we will never remove Covid from cruise ships because it will become endemic 

Too bad there will be collateral damage done with the false positives that are sure to come. 

Can you imagine being vaccinated and having to take covid test and its a false positive and your cruise is disrupted or worse, you are just left at a port? 

I know some will say thats the risk one runs when taking a cruise during these uncertain times but still...