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Another cruise start-up hit with COVID-19


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The Paul Gauguin just restarted cruising with international passengers last Thursday, with a mix of resident, American and European passengers.

Both French Polynesia and the Gauguin (Ponant) had extensive arrival & embarkation testing & screening protocols.
See here: https://www.pgcruises.com/travel-advisory

it was as a result of the 4-day self-administered follow-up test that a female passenger was found to be positive late on Saturday. The ship returned to Papeete on Sunday, the passenger was retested positive, then taken off the ship with her companion to be placed into quarantine. All remaining passengers and crew were also retested on Sunday, with the results - and a decision as to what will happen next - to be announced later today. Passengers are now confined to their cabins.

This morning, there was more info available on French media, with little elsewhere - one English language source incorrectly identified the case as a crew member. The nationality of the infected tourist has not yet been disclosed.

Bora Bora, which had remained COVID-free up to now, had all passengers disembark for the day, before the results of the follow-up test came back. Extensive contact tracing will be undertaken there as well as in Tahiti, where the passenger spent a couple of days before boarding.

*This* is the one to watch, folks...

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6 minutes ago, CruisinForABruisin said:

WhY iS the CdC dEsCrImiNaTiNg AgAiNsT cRuISeS?!?! 

What does the CDC has to do with any of this???? 
Besides which, get real, whatever policy decisions, protocols, and any containment measures various countries and health authorities mandate is done in response to a serious global pandemic.

The French government is in the drivers’s seat regarding what will happen with the Paul Gauguin, and others will be watching.

 

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13 minutes ago, GrandmaAirplane said:

What does the CDC has to do with any of this???? 
Besides which, get real, whatever policy decisions, protocols, and any containment measures various countries and health authorities mandate is done in response to a serious global pandemic.

The French government is in the drivers’s seat regarding what will happen with the Paul Gauguin, and others will be watching.

 

Nothing in this case, but it's the circle jerk going around on the other threads. This is a perfect example of why we can't start back up

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33 minutes ago, CruisinForABruisin said:

Nothing in this case, but it's the circle jerk going around on the other threads. This is a perfect example of why we can't start back up

Have we closed the Home Depots and everything else due to someone working there ever testing positive?  Or a customer?

 

Just wondering......

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1 hour ago, GrandmaAirplane said:

The Paul Gauguin just restarted cruising with international passengers last Thursday, with a mix of resident, American and European passengers.

Both French Polynesia and the Gauguin (Ponant) had extensive arrival & embarkation testing & screening protocols.
See here: https://www.pgcruises.com/travel-advisory

it was as a result of the 4-day self-administered follow-up test that a female passenger was found to be positive late on Saturday. The ship returned to Papeete on Sunday, the passenger was retested positive, then taken off the ship with her companion to be placed into quarantine. All remaining passengers and crew were also retested on Sunday, with the results - and a decision as to what will happen next - to be announced later today. Passengers are now confined to their cabins.

This morning, there was more info available on French media, with little elsewhere - one English language source incorrectly identified the case as a crew member. The nationality of the infected tourist has not yet been disclosed.

Bora Bora, which had remained COVID-free up to now, had all passengers disembark for the day, before the results of the follow-up test came back. Extensive contact tracing will be undertaken there as well as in Tahiti, where the passenger spent a couple of days before boarding.

*This* is the one to watch, folks...

It will be interesting to see what happens here. Also, with the long incubation period it is near impossible to know if a person is positive or not before they got on board. By the time symptoms show (if there are any) they could have been around hundreds or thousands of people even before boarding. If a person is found to be positive after a cruise, there is no way of knowing if they had it before the cruise or got it while on it. At some point everyone is going to have to stop and look at things from a different perspective. Unless the virus just basically disappears (which is possible but not probable) then we must look at it as we do other sicknesses. As in, yes you could get sick with it, but what is the actual recovery rate? In the US it is about 94% and that is without any kind of FDA approved medication/treatment if you aren't in a hospital. Worldwide the recovery rate is 90% and when you factor in that some of the places don't have good healthcare at all, it is still pretty good. I'm not saying we all jump on board now, but we need to realize that this is something to think about. Also, they need to start looking for treatments and not just a vaccine. A virus isn't like a bacteria or germ. A viral infection doesn't work the same. I wish people would drop the politics and just start clinical trials on certain medications that may help. Try meds that people use for the regular flu, SOMETHING! People are sick and playing politics is just cruel when some truly are dying.

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17 minutes ago, Mrs. Thomas said:

I wish people would drop the politics and just start clinical trials on certain medications that may help. Try meds that people use for the regular flu, SOMETHING! People are sick and playing politics is just cruel when some truly are dying.

Completely disagree with you about the seriousness of the disease and what we should be doing in the short term, but I agree that eventually we will all probably get it and soon we will just assume the risk as we rush back to normalcy.

I'd just like to share that there are over 600 compounds under investigation for treating COVID (including 255 clinical compounds, nearly 100 of which are in Phase III or IV), and the FDA has expedited much of the approval process for starting trials (using the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program). All of that to say, most people who could possibly help us find a treatment or a cure are doing so, and there are lots of good reasons to wait a few more months to give them some time to do so.

(The link is at www.bio.org if you want to see the status of the trials... Updates every Monday and tracks vaccine development as well.)

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18 minutes ago, CruisinForABruisin said:

Yeah, it was a smaller ship, and it was a terrible idea, now imagine an Oasis class ship running into the same problem 

It would be a very interesting exercise if someone tracked a sick person at Home Depot and did contact tracing.  I wonder how what would work out....My point is that we already have uncontrolled spread going on a myriad of other ways.  I find it comical how this is picked on while a zillion other issues are unaddressed.

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10 minutes ago, LizzyBee23 said:

Completely disagree with you about the seriousness of the disease and what we should be doing in the short term, but I agree that eventually we will all probably get it and soon we will just assume the risk as we rush back to normalcy.

I'd just like to share that there are over 600 compounds under investigation for treating COVID (including 255 clinical compounds, nearly 100 of which are in Phase III or IV), and the FDA has expedited much of the approval process for starting trials (using the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program). All of that to say, most people who could possibly help us find a treatment or a cure are doing so, and there are lots of good reasons to wait a few more months to give them some time to do so.

(The link is at www.bio.org if you want to see the status of the trials... Updates every Monday and tracks vaccine development as well.)

I understand that, for some, this virus is very serious. However, the numbers are clear and, if you take into account that they have been inflated a bit or that sick people were purposely put into nursing homes in NY, they aren't even as bad as what we see, especially for the average person.

I appreciate the link, but all I couldn't find any information; just requests on how to give money. However, I did find other sites that talk about it. What I don't understand is why things are going so slow and why is it bad if a medication for one person isn't the best for another but both do the same thing? Things like that happen all the time with other illnesses. I just hope that they can get things going again soon.

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40 minutes ago, CruisinForABruisin said:

Are we dropping off 6500 people off at once at each of those home depots? Just wondering 

Depending on the town, one employee of a place like that can see hundreds or even a thousand people in a daily shift.

Fast food places are up and running and they see more people than a home improvement store.

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9 minutes ago, Mrs. Thomas said:

What I don't understand is why things are going so slow and why is it bad if a medication for one person isn't the best for another but both do the same thing?

I'm not going to pretend to know the intricacies involved in clinical trials, but as a scientist I know the importance of getting good data and using strong analytical techniques to draw conclusions from it. The reason so many of us feel like we have whiplash regarding advice we've been given about the virus is because we're discovering new things nearly every day. You can see that born out in the falling mortality rate as doctors continue to zero in on a standard of care that works. 

The process may seem slow, but it is complex and despite all the shortcomings here in the States, history will probably judge the world's response to this as relatively rapid (and hopefully it gets us to lay the groundwork for future, faster response efforts).

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Back to this issue of the Paul Gauguin.

It’s now been confirmed that the infected passenger is one of a few Americans who travelled earlier in the week to Papeete to board the cruise. She was tested negative 3 days before leaving home.

She was probably infected 0-5 days before leaving home. She could have been in contact with an infected person at a Home Depot or Walmart or Macy’s, doing last minute shopping. She could have been infected at LAX. Who knows... with the U.S. having uncontrolled COVID-19 community transmission, it’s really not important where or how she came in contact with the virus before arriving in French Polynesia.

However, it will matter to the French authorities, and to every other country who is considering allowing American tourists to return, that she very likely arrived already infected and pre-symptomatic before her second test was done.

Almost all of the ship’s passengers right now are residents of French Polynesia, which has literally been COVID-free for weeks, after having very few cases to begin with. Many onboard went to visit family members on Bora Bora. Some are just a couple of miles from home, stuck on the ship in Papeete right now, who at best will need to strictly self-isolate for 14 days if they are allowed to disembark in the next day or so and return to their homes.

Island nations do not have the medical resources to respond to large outbreaks. Tahiti has a large hospital, Bora Bora does not. Returning residents who go back to their homes on other islands than Tahiti, and those exposed residents and locals who may later develop a positive test or symptoms, or draw a losing ticket and become very sick with COVID, may not have quick access to adequate care.

This is what the rest of the world is looking at. So stop making any and every discussion about cruising and this pandemic a uniquely U.S.-centered problem. And stop making it a political issue.

All that the rest of the world is perceiving right now is that American tourists are covidiots. 
By reading many of the responses here, I’d agree.

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48 minutes ago, GrandmaAirplane said:

All that the rest of the world is perceiving right now is that American tourists are covidiots. 

By reading many of the responses here, I’d agree.

It's a sad but deserved criticism of the US right now. We still have people who doubt the severity of what is going on, or question the reality before them. It's one of the ultimate injustices that we, as a country with all of the resources in the world to mitigate the spread within our borders but who lacked the political will and communal commitment to do so, will probably have early access to a vaccine while the countries that we exported cases to (who have a fraction of what we have in terms of medical resources) will have to deal with the mess that we hand delivered to them. 

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1 hour ago, GrandmaAirplane said:

Island nations do not have the medical resources to respond to large outbreaks. Tahiti has a large hospital, Bora Bora does not. Returning residents who go back to their homes on other islands than Tahiti, and those exposed residents and locals who may later develop a positive test or symptoms, or draw a losing ticket and become very sick with COVID, may not have quick access to adequate care.

Then it was the fault of the island to open up to tourists, not the fault of a tourist that didn't know she was sick. Being American doesn't mean you are automatically sick or are a virus.
More than 98% of people in the country have not had this virus. As I said before, the incubation period makes the checks a moot point. There are many other places that are still closed to tourists, which is a good idea at this point. These islands or tourist destinations need to know that if they open that an out break is possible and take that into consideration for their decision. I'm tired of people making it sound like if you are American then you are a nasty virus that needs to be treated as such.

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1 hour ago, Mrs. Thomas said:

I'm tired of people making it sound like if you are American then you are a nasty virus that needs to be treated as such.

The ongoing uncontrolled community transmission in the States is making it impossible for other countries to accept your citizens as tourists. Saying this does not make any of us treat a person who is American as “a nasty virus”  - as you state in your strawman argument. You can, however, justifiably be regarded as a society that lacks the collective will and direction to change your situation.

I am sure that the American tourists now in quarantine in Tahiti will be treated very well, and if she becomes sick, will get good medical care in Papeete.

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@Mrs. Thomas How have you determined if 98% of American's have not had the virus? Given the new and changing facts of the virus it is possible that more than half of Americans have had the virus.  Also there are facts and perceptions. Since are numbers keep increasing...whether you attribute that to testing or actual spread....we look like we are incompetent and diseased filled to the rest of the world. I mean people who try to treat this as nothing or the flu in America, while other countries take it serious, is idiotic. So in this case that woman is at fault, not the island.

 

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7 hours ago, Mrs. Thomas said:

As in, yes you could get sick with it, but what is the actual recovery rate? In the US it is about 94% and that is without any kind of FDA approved medication/treatment if you aren't in a hospital. Worldwide the recovery rate is 90% and when you factor in that some of the places don't have good healthcare at all, it is still pretty good.

To me this is the reason cases are not going down. To say 94% cases recovering is good is unthinkable to me. 

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