Points Guy article re: Celebrity Edge today

[Jill]

Feel good article! 
https://thepointsguy.com/news/celebrity-first-cruise-from-us-port/?utm_campaign=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_term=Editorial&utm_content=3F63F5AC-D6C4-11EB-BA7B-5CC0923C408C&fbclid=IwAR0wNH8DTp8fb7qulE9lqhMwLGLKMcQ5wxXDP_TJIr9nAqjAM45eycX3q2M

 

[JasonOasis]

Kerry Sanders from NBC News is onboard Celebrity Edge as well and he has done a really good job showcasing all the hard work the cruise lines have put in to restart the industry. I think Kerry Sanders my be an avid cruiser but he isn't allowed to say that on national television because in one of his reports he framed the original outbreaks on cruise ships last year as not being the fault of the cruise industry but do to the fact cruise ships were turn away from multiple ports which could have stopped any break. He is  probably one of the first if not the only national journalist to finally point out the truth.

That being said he did note in his report today although 99% of all passengers are crew are vaccinated, once the Edge arrives in port Celebrity will allow guest to go ashore and shore excursions have to be booked through the cruise line, the reason for the change is because there are unvaccinated children and some adults onboard.  In his report this morning he noted since the 2 cases onboard the Millennium, Celebrity on this cruise will test all unvaccinated passengers while in port as they return to the ship.   I don't know and it wasn't clear if Celebrity is doing this (testing unvaccinated passengers as they return) simply because of the media presence onboard the Edge, or if RCC is doing this as a test to see  if this is something they should explore rolling out to all RCC ships and test all unvaccinated passengers at least in the short term in port as they return back to the ship.

He also reported unvaccinated passengers in certain indoor settings are required to where a mask.  However when looking at his live shots from the pool deck and other outdoor spaces you can see both adults and children vaccinated and unvaccinated out and about with no mask on.  In an interesting turn of events customers onboard don't seem to mind the changes to the buffet instead of people serving themselves the crew serves you.  But the ship is only at 40% capacity so there are no lines no waiting it will be interesting to see if that change sticks around or if in time cruise ships revert back to self serve type buffets we've all become accustomed too.

One thing he always does is he talks to normal everyday paying passengers and the one thing they all say both vaccinated and unvaccinated is they all feel like they are finally on VACATION. Even though things are a bit different onboard they all have stated they feel like they can finally relax, breathe and have fun again.

I must say I'm shocked by NBC News at first I thought they were interested in a "I got you moment" but good ole Kerry Sanders is really doing a great job showing people who may not be avid cruisers just  how safe it is get on cruise ship. 

[JeffB]

Good stuff @JasonOasis

In reading the morning news, there's a small piece on the Edge sailing - first cruise ship sailing from a US port since March 2020. Great. The most "important" news was worry about Delta and now Delta + variants. Of course it had a political part to it. You'll know what it is so no need to bring it up here.

The thing about the Deltas worth bringing up is that in states with low vax rates, hospitalization rates have started moving up for the first time in 2 months. This is worth fleshing out if you are interested.  I've gotten adroit at finding the kernels of truth at the CDC web site among the mountains of data residing there - it's hard and it is why journalists have trouble putting the Deltas in perspective. So you can make sense of the graphs at the second link, the Delta variant is B.1.167. The link takes you to the chart of the SE region. You can select any region you want on that page.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-info.html

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

My take aways:

• The Deltas are not a threat to people who have been vaccinated. (The US overall is very close to 70% vaxed)
• As of right now, there is an almost imperceptible but nevertheless real up tick in what I call "disease burden" as measured by ED visits for COVID like symptoms and hospitalizations. You have to look regionally to see these. It is not wide spread in the US.
• Upticks in these metrics are closely associated with vaccination rates, i.e., the un-vaccinated are the ones going to the EDs to seek care and/or getting hospitalized. There is notable shift to younger aged cohorts and that is because those cohorts also correlate with low vaccination rates both by circumstance or choice.
• It appears to me that PH focus on the Deltas, here and abroad, as a means to push people to get vaccinated will complicate political decisions to re-open 

  Lets look at this statement in light of the above:

1 hour ago, JasonOasis said:

it will be interesting to see if that change sticks around or if in time cruise ships revert back to self serve type buffets we've all become accustomed too.

 Generalizing that question to one that asks when will things move closer to normal aboard cruise ships operating in a world of COVID? Not any time soon is my response. Experts augmented by the media continue to warn that "the pandemic is not over." IMO, that's overkill. It has certainly been subdued but mainly in countries that are hitting vax rates above 50%. Country COVID circumstances and regs will continue to drive cruise line's safety and health protocols for at least another 18-24 months and this will apply especially to sailing to or from foreign ports. For example, even though sailings from non-FL ports are operating with 95% or above vaxed pax manifests, in Greece, because the Greek government still imposes an indoor mask mandate, cruise ships operating from there require guests onboard to be masked indoors (usual exceptions apply).

Caribbean and Alaska sailings are the ones most likely to more quickly move closer to normal ops. That is because US, including Hawaii, and Caribbean ports are even now enjoying low viral prevalence rates and that should improve over time. EU sailings will lag, but only slightly, behind US cruise activity. Same for Canada but slower still.  Asia sailings are going to be tough and that will impact transpac ans pacific Island cruising. By country low vax rates are hurting these regions. I can't even speculate how quickly this situation will improve. Things are too fluid. South American sailings? Probably even tougher. Don't count on improvement in that cruising region for a long time and if there's a restart, the voyages will be highly restricted. Australia and NZ? Man, who knows? Those governments are locked into lock downs to quell outbreaks. It kinda makes sense on Island nations but that tendency will continue to have a significant impact on cruising in that region.

None of this is particularly good news but I think for us cruising fans its a wake-up. The regions where we can cruise and enjoy some normalcy in the short term are limited. I'm fine with that as long as I can get back on a cruise ship somewhere. But those bucket list cruises to EU ports will start slowly and those form Asian and South Pacific ports we're probably going to have to wait a while. 

 

 

[smokeybandit]

14 minutes ago, JeffB said:

The thing about the Deltas worth bringing up is that in states with low vax rates, hospitalization rates have started moving up for the first time in 2 months.

This has nothing to do with Delta, but with the seasonal viral effect in lower latitude states. The same thing happened last summer (though to a much higher degree since there was much less immunity at the time).

[JeffB]

Sure, that's contributing but not alone. Here's an expert's take on seasonality:

Challenges Seasonality of COVID-19

Hardy doesn't agree with the IHME's experts that SARS-CoV-2 is seasonal. Last winter's surge, he noted, occurred to a much greater extent on the West Coast and in the Midwest than in the Northeast, where a seasonal trend would have been expected because of the cold weather driving people indoors.

This is a decent article that looks at causality and experts disagree on causality of COVID surges. Certainly seasonality is a player wrt increased COVID cases but there are other factors too (human behavior, transmissibibility of variants, vaccination rates etc.). I think the CDC does a pretty good job of assigning causality to a rise in new cases. To me and in the current time frame, I believe vax rates are playing a significant role in the rise in case numbers. My post focuses on vaccination rates but there are other factors as you point out. 

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210520/what-experts-predict-from-covid-this-fall-and-winter

 

[smokeybandit]

Looks pretty seasonal to me, based on the Hope-Simpson viral model. Experts have been very hesitant to give credence to latitude-centric seasonality but some studies are finally looking at it.

 

 

[Jill]

37 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Looks pretty seasonal to me, based on the Hope-Simpson viral model. Experts have been very hesitant to give credence to latitude-centric seasonality but some studies are finally looking at it.

 

 

Interesting about high humidity but makes sense with an airborne virus. Dry air allows particles to move more freely whereas higher humidity makes the particles “heavy” and inhibits movement. 

[JeffB]

Lots of stuff at play. If I'm reading the charts above correctly, they end in December 2020.  Certainly, vaccines are going to dampen surges. I think most experts agree that there might be a rise in cases come fall and winter but disagree on the extent of it with vaccines in the mix of causal factors. The percentage causality of the many factors coming this fall is going to be hard to sort out.

If you go to the home page of Hope-Simpson modeling (link below) there's lot to be learned from the graphs and charts. The link hopefully will take you to a side by side comparisons of the US, UK (both with high vaccination rates approaching 70%) compared to Norway (low vaccination rates around 42% and in the far northern hemisphere). The difference in new case numbers are similar both in terms of absolute numbers and trends. If a rise in case numbers we are seeing in low vax rate US states have "noting to do with Delta's (or variants in general) and more to do with cold weather associated with seasonal changes, you would expect to see new cases increasing in the colder Norway. They aren't. If the link goes to the home page you can either bleive me or use the various toggle to set up the comparison above.

You took issue with my statement that, "The thing about the Deltas worth bringing up is that in states with low vax rates, hospitalization rates have started moving up for the first time in 2 months." To which you responded, "This has nothing to do with Delta, but with the seasonal viral effect in lower latitude states." The CDC thinks there is a correlation between the increase in a US state's new case number, seroprevalence of the Deltas and vaccination rates absent seasonal viral effect in the lower latitudes. Many aren't listening to anything the CDC has to say and I understand that but in this case the likelihood that they are interpreting the available data correctly in the US is pretty high.

Part of my point in the original post was that as vaccination rates per region/country/locale/ increase cruises will trend toward increasing normalcy. The higher the vax rate on each ship, the better. That vaccines are dampening new case numbers in high vaccination rate places absent temperature variants is going to help a return to cruise normalcy. Every reasonable metric of disease burden points to the conclusion that vaccines work. It's hard for anyone to deny that and I don't think you are doing that.

http://hsmap.rice.edu/map/gds