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I am going to throw this out here and see what everyone thinks. Since much discussion has ensued on getting on a cruise or who could go on a cruise I thought I would throw this out.

RCCL need to sail 2 ships on the same day, one will be 100% vaccinated and smaller say Vision and Radiance and the second for vax and unvaxed and could be the larger Voyager, Freedom, Oasis and Quantum classes. They sail the same day from the same port and have same itinerary just in reverse.

I already know some issues with this but looking for some solid feedback for fun.

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3 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

You say that TIC, but a completely unvaccinated cruise would be the ultimate test case.  It'd be great to compare against the last unvaccinated cruise test case, Diamond Princess.

Perhaps I wasn't clear (Sometimes I'm not), I wasn't calling for an unvaccinated cruise ... just one in which it wasn't a factor. Pre-March 13, 2020 rules, no segregation, no testing,  no paranoia ... just a cruise. A sailing that nobody was worried about being near "Those people", just a cruise. 

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2 hours ago, CrimsonCruiser said:

I'm not old-timey science-y enough to risk real human lives.

Not to mention a cruise like this where your objective is determine what the occurrence rate of COVID is among passengers and crew on a cruise ship without any mitigation measures v. SARS2 would be unethical. Yeah, it would be interesting with that ship as a control group so to speak but if you're actually going to set up a serious study, it goes through peer review among a panel that is part of the sponsoring scientific organization, e.g. the CDC, JAMA, Science and Nature, Lancet. 

Here's some useful data that we already have: I linked to a study, released just this month I believe in JAMA, in another thread that looked retrospectively at this using a cruise ship sailing out of Greece and Turkey in early March of 2020. Recall that the WHO had not yet declared a pandemic and most countries in February and March hadn't imposed any mitigation measures or if they had done so they were limited.

It had roughly 3000 passengers and crew. The estimated R(0) following the first detected and reported COVID case was north of 2.0 before the ship was quarantined in a Greek port and sick/asymptomatic infected passengers were debarked. This means infections on this studied ship grew at an exponential rate very quickly ...... doubled (X2), then X4, then X16 and so forth. If I remember the data over 30% of the pax and crew on that ship became infected within a matter of days from recorded case #1.

Infections were highest among crew that had higher rates of per-person face to face contact among each other at their bars, clubs and quarters than paying passengers. A cruise ship with zero mitigation measures and a passenger manifest of unvaccinated naïve hosts would be a SARS2/infectious disease nightmare. Even now. Infections are infections even though we are dealing with them much more effectively than we were 18 months ago. if anything, the virus has become more transmissible over time.  I have heard that there are on-going studies looking at large gatherings and trying to model a safe vaccination rate. Is it 50% of 1000 people, 80% of 2000? Hard to say but that's being looked at. My gut tells me the cruise lines have an idea of what vaccination rate produces and acceptable level of positive COVID rapid antigen tests over a range of numbers of pax on a ship's manifest. Variables are hard to control but one could come up with something to go on that is better than nothing.   

   

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That ship did NOT have 3000 passengers and crew. It had 383. It's not even a cruise ship. It's a 40 year old passenger ferry that was a work charter at the time.

So there's absolutely nothing to take away from that study in regards to cruising since the dynamics were so very different.  

And there's no way to say that there was a patient zero on that ship since it's more than likely many of the passengers had covid when they boarded.

It's actually rather embarrassing the CDC is using that study as a warning to cruise lines.

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@smokeybanditI went back and looked at the study. The CDC is the sponsoring organization. It was the Greek Health Ministry among others that provided the data and did the analysis. They are credited in the study.

TBH, after going back and reading it, I'm not really clear on how many pax and crew were on board. If you look at Appendix 1. I'm lead to believe that there were 383 positive cases on board among all passenger and crew - the specific number not named. In the abstract, it says there were 383 crew members on a 2000 person capacity ship so ????. Admittedly the abstract leads you to believe there were 123 cases of COVID among 383 passengers and crew. Is it just coincidental that there were also 383 crew and the exact number - 383 - cases? I don't know.

Despite this confusion, the data demonstrated at R(0) of 2.6 on board a cruise ship with naïve hosts as pax and crew and limited (masks and hand hygiene) mitigation measures in place.  I'm more interested in this figure than I am the confusion over numbers of passengers and/or crew although I grant this is not unimportant. After re-reading the study, I didn't get that it was a 40 year old passenger ferry on a work charter. Admittedly, I assumed it was a cruise ship. I'll also defer to your view that nothing can be taken from the study although I disagree with that assessment.

There is ongoing debate on this forum and elsewhere about the degree of risk that sailing on a cruise ship presents to passengers and crews. There are many who say the risk is small such that it is no more risky than getting in your car and driving to work. I don't think the evidence supports that view but it is widespread. If you are among that group, I'm not going change your mind. The problem with debating it is that it is hard to define the system for the debate and deal with all the variables in an on-line forum.

From retrospective data we have available, I do think it is safe to assert that cruise ships can and probably do produce higher rates of SARS2 infection, among naïve hosts, over a defined time span than other congregate settings (by CDC definition). That is just because of the nature of living, eating and socializing aboard a cruise ship. Assessing the risk to one's health of that higher infection rate is much more complicated. I'll leave it at that. Here's the study:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/7/21-0398_article 

 

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But this is a case of construction workers living on a dusty old ferry that surely isn't that up to the cleanliness standards of a cruise ship.  Also their social patterns will be a lot different (hanging out in close contact with the same people every day at work, then over a few beers that night).  Plus despite it being a big ship, I would imagine they all were confined to one portion of the ship.

The fact it was only 33% (with 46% being asymptomatic) is actually a good result.

 

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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

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1 hour ago, UNCFanatik said:

You have never seen a big push to shut down air travel because of the unions and lobbyists

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.     

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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. 

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2 hours ago, JeffB said:


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.

 

 

I’d love to have this “attorney” show me exactly where the Constitution mentions the CDC and says they “have a constitutional duty to protect public health”.

 

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1 hour ago, nate91 said:

I'd love to see a poll of the members of RCBlog, asking whether people, if given the choice, would choose:

a. a fully vaccinated cruise ship

b. a mixed cruise ship, vaccination status not required

c. a 2019 cruise ship, run exactly the same as a pre-pandemic cruise.

Since you came up with this poll I'm curious which option would you choose?

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1 hour ago, nate91 said:

I'd love to see a poll of the members of RCBlog, asking whether people, if given the choice, would choose:

a. a fully vaccinated cruise ship

b. a mixed cruise ship, vaccination status not required

c. a 2019 cruise ship, run exactly the same as a pre-pandemic cruise.

I like a modified (c) that includes all the additional cleaning protocols.  Rationale:  We were on the last Liberty of the Seas cruise before shutdown (early March 2020).  The ship was immaculate.  I had a side discussion with some restaurant staff about the extra working due to cleaning.  They told me that it is a lot of work, but in their opinion, should always be done in food services side.  We had a large family group about 13, and no one picked up any of the typical cruise crud during that trip.  In fact, in just observing other passengers, we didn't hear the sniffling or coughing you usually hear in the pubic areas.  The crew was on top of everything out of order.  No masks yet, full ship, and certainly appeared all were healthy.  Anicdotal observation, but it was the perception we were left with.

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19 minutes ago, JasonOasis said:

Since you came up with this poll I'm curious which option would you choose?

I would go with c. I also agree with cruisellama that cleaning is important, but I think we can all agree that RC has been VERY good at keeping things clean even pre-pandemic. I think that at some point, we will all need to go back to weighing individual risks whenever we do any activity, whether it's going on a cruise or crossing a street. The vaccines are protective, so if I'm vaccinated, I don't much care who else is or is not.

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16 hours ago, ChrisK2793 said:

 

I’d love to have this “attorney” show me exactly where the Constitution mentions the CDC and says they “have a constitutional duty to protect public health”.

 

You are 100% correct @ChrisK2793. The constitution does not say that ..... not even close. The point of that portion of my post was to demonstrate how foolish the CDC's attorney's made themselves appear by taking stands like this in oral arguments before a very constitutional law savvy federal judge. 

How much authority the 2020 CDC had to issue the NSO and the CSO was determined by case law going back 150 years. That is all in the 124 page Merryday ruling. In summary, before the 1930s the feds largely left it to the states to regulate free pratique (ships coming and going from US ports). During the 30's and beyond Roosevelt's New Deal programs shifted PH programs from state control to federal control - this mostly a result of federal grants to state run PH programs and the emergence of expansive federal entities such as the NIH, and now the secretariat level HHS. The net result was more federal presence and  "guidelines" but, according to Merryday's review of the case law, not more statutory authority. He concluded that HHSS/CDC simply assumed they had the power to issue what Merryday characterized as inappropriate defacto laws governing free pratique that violated separation of powers provisions in the US Constitution between the legislative and executive branches of government. 

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16 hours ago, nate91 said:

I'd love to see a poll of the members of RCBlog,

A poll like this seems to be overly focused on vaccination protocols for cruise ships. Maybe that was @nate91objective. Subsequent posts seemed to add sanitation considerations. I think these are two discreet areas.

The VSP (a CDC developed program) is intended to assist the cruise ship industry to prevent and control the introduction, transmission, and spread of gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses on cruise ships. VSP operates under the authority of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. Section 264 Quarantine and Inspection Regulations to Control Communicable Diseases). With the advent of SARS2, the CDC greatly expanded the VSP and the CSO is actually a document enforceable under the VSP (not any more). The VSP says nothing about vaccinations - the CSO should have and probably will if the CDC bothers to update it by next week, present it to Merryday and be a part of any future mediation to take place before July 18th.

We all want the cruise ships we are on to be sanitary and we've developed our own expectations about this. The cruise lines are attentive to these and I think they do an outstanding job. Do they need the government breathing down their necks to insure the ships are sanitary? Some would argue they do. I'm not among them to the extent it is done presently.

Vaccinating passengers and crew to prevent the transmission of SARS2 is a different subject separate from sanitation - although I can see how there is a relationship between disease prevention through vaccination and disease prevention through sanitation measures. One posters points out that where you stand on cruise line vaccination protocols is largely dependent on the level of risk of getting COVID you are willing to accept given your own assessment of the myriad factors that impact that risk.

In daily life with COVID I've seen the whole range of behaviors that involve risk taking. We're going to see that reflected in any poll asking the question as it is framed.  The more COVID  risk averse a person is wrt cruising, the greater the likelihood that person is going to chose cruises with the entire cruise ship vaccinated and masks required on board. The opposite is also true. One thing I think the CDC has failed at badly is developing the tools and advising us on how to use them to make rational individual COVID risk assessments.

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17 hours ago, ChrisK2793 said:

 

I’d love to have this “attorney” show me exactly where the Constitution mentions the CDC and says they “have a constitutional duty to protect public health”.

 

Unfortunately, the various regulatory agencies act as an unchecked "Fourth Branch" of government.

But let's get back to cruising, my friends. ? 

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On 6/20/2021 at 6:36 PM, Ogilthorpe said:

I would add a 3rd ship to the poll ... completely free from vaccine consideration ... I would be onboard without reservation.

To quote Billy Joel: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun" ??

 

I'm a vaccinated sinner who wants to live to laugh and sin another day!

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