Which Covid requirement goes away first?

[mook1525]

Let’s have some fun debate!

 

fingers crossed that Omicron was the last major outbreak and Covid becomes seasonal flu.

 

In this case, which requirement do you see going away first? Vax requirement or pre boarding testing?

I am fully vaxxed so selfishly I want testing to go away because it adds too much stress!

 

what say you?

 

[Srp431]

I would think pre boarding testing. I think vaccine requirements will be around for quite awhile, but its anyone's guess.

[shoreline]

Another vote for pre board testing. Myself and family scheduled for the July 17th sailing out of Port Canaveral.  So stressful making flight arrangements plus reservations for Disney after the cruise with testing hanging over our heads. Yuck.

[TXcruzer]

no question testing will go away well before vaccination requirement.

[Srp431]

I would add as cases drop, it will be become more difficult to find and schedule an appointment. All these pop-up locations may eventually close up shop

[smokeybandit]

22 minutes ago, TXcruzer said:

no question testing will go away well before vaccination requirement.

I could see testing going away if you're "up to date"

[KenCP]

Testing for sure.  Vaccinations will be a must for a long time i think. 

[Pattycruise]

Well the new variant is on the rise….so I don’t see anything going away. Sadly

[GatorCruiser]

Yeah B.A.2 is on the rise in Europe who’s typically 3 weeks ahead of us. Also parts of this country are starting to see an increase in Covid in the wastewater which heretofore has been a harbinger of increased cases counts. Hopefully natural immunity from B.a.1 will give us a backstop of immunity to mitigate another surge here. 

[smokeybandit]

Case counts are meaningless now.  Even the CDC has said as much. 

[Vancity Cruiser]

Pre cruise testing for vaccinated individuals will definately go away first. That being said, I believe there is a possiblitlity that at the same time precruise testing is dropped for vaxxed, unvaxxed will be allowed to sail with a negative pre cruise test. 

[Ampurp85]

We need to get through one more winter/flu season of low cases before all the 'theater' goes away. I say nether until maybe summer of 2023.

Why?

One because testing and vax requirements are keeping the ships sailing. That 95% rule will be in play for a while. Doing away with either this year is not a viable option, given the ever-increasing crappiness of a lot of human beings who would sue at the drop of a hat. 

They will keep vax and testing and do away with most everything else, like capacity restrictions and certain group activities restrictions...we can see parades returning already.

[LollyPop]

3 hours ago, mook1525 said:

Let’s have some fun debate!

 

fingers crossed that Omicron was the last major outbreak and Covid becomes seasonal flu.

 

In this case, which requirement do you see going away first? Vax requirement or pre boarding testing?

I am fully vaxxed so selfishly I want testing to go away because it adds too much stress!

 

what say you?

 

Preboarding test.  As someone who is immune compromised, and work along side of many in the medical system I'm taking a break from on my next cruise (come on April 29th) - I want to not only protect myself, but others since even with being triple vaxxed (sing this along to ... I Love Candy <lol> ) we could still be carrying the virus (asymptomatic).  I'll be one of the passengers who when feeling abit stressed in crowded areas, etc.  I'll be wearing a mask.  I was wearing a mask, when going on my last cruise, out of LA in February 2020.  Meet ups with folks that share the same immune problem as I do, pulled out of meeting up, since Covid was starting to rear it's ugly head up there.  I learnt a lot from a Mum of an immunocompromisedd child ... and was glad that in 2019 before on a cruise in B2B Japan cruise ... made me aware of how important mask wearing is.  If you feel ill, wear a mask to protect others, or visa versa.  And yes, it was on that Diamond Princess that was stuck in Japan in March 2020 that I was on for a B2B.

Also, Pfizer is working on a YEARLY shot ... much like our flu shot that most of us get. 

Okay, off to watch the next episode of Picard (Trekkie fan here)

[BowTieBrigade]

See, I disagree. I believe the testing should outlive the vax requirement for reasons similar to those posted by @LollyPop above. Vaccinated can still carry, catch, and transmit the virus, if they have it. You know who can’t transmit it? People who don’t have it. So, if we really want to prevent spread on the ships, the way to do it is to prevent it from coming onboard by only allowing negative tests. 
 

(I fully understand the false negative/positive issues with the tests, the fact that being vaccinated does reduce your chance of catching and spreading Covid, and that the pre-cruise testing is limited by shore excursion exposure, as well. I readily admit that this is just a gut instinct and I have not analyzed the numbers WRT any of those issues above.)

[CruiseGus]

3 hours ago, GatorCruiser said:

Yeah B.A.2 is on the rise in Europe who’s typically 3 weeks ahead of us. Also parts of this country are starting to see an increase in Covid in the wastewater which heretofore has been a harbinger of increased cases counts.

I think we found the winner.

Nothing more is going away and if anything some of the CRAP comes back.

I survived 6 cruises masked, in 12 days to my first unmasked, hopefully unmasked, since restart.  Just don't shut us down again!

[Lexster]

1 hour ago, BowTieBrigade said:

See, I disagree. I believe the testing should outlive the vax requirement for reasons similar to those posted by @LollyPop above. Vaccinated can still carry, catch, and transmit the virus, if they have it. You know who can’t transmit it? People who don’t have it. So, if we really want to prevent spread on the ships, the way to do it is to prevent it from coming onboard by only allowing negative tests. 
 

(I fully understand the false negative/positive issues with the tests, the fact that being vaccinated does reduce your chance of catching and spreading Covid, and that the pre-cruise testing is limited by shore excursion exposure, as well. I readily admit that this is just a gut instinct and I have not analyzed the numbers WRT any of those issues above.)

Being vaccinated absolutely does reduce your chance of catching and spreading covid, actually. Does it stop it altogether? No.

[Pattycruise]

pre-cuise testing  only serves to eliminate those who test positive at the moment.  There are still people who will pop positive after that only no one is testing daily (thank goodness!) Omicron had a 3 day turnaround from exposure to positive.  Test on Friday for a Sunday cruise, then go to a concert, party, restaurant-exposed-get it and bring it onboard.  Nothing will stop that.

[smokeybandit]

1 hour ago, BowTieBrigade said:

See, I disagree. I believe the testing should outlive the vax requirement for reasons similar to those posted by @LollyPop above. Vaccinated can still carry, catch, and transmit the virus, if they have it. You know who can’t transmit it? People who don’t have it. So, if we really want to prevent spread on the ships, the way to do it is to prevent it from coming onboard by only allowing negative tests. 
 

(I fully understand the false negative/positive issues with the tests, the fact that being vaccinated does reduce your chance of catching and spreading Covid, and that the pre-cruise testing is limited by shore excursion exposure, as well. I readily admit that this is just a gut instinct and I have not analyzed the numbers WRT any of those issues above.)

At this point in the game, if you're going to continue to test for covid, you need to test for the flu, RSV, HMPV, and many other airborne viruses.

[LizzyBee23]

7 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

At this point in the game, if you're going to continue to test for covid, you need to test for the flu, RSV, HMPV, and many other airborne viruses.

Agreed... But please don't give anyone any ideas. The number of people I spoke with last year who believed RSV was another crazy, new virus blew my mind.

22 minutes ago, Lexster said:

Being vaccinated absolutely does reduce your chance of catching and spreading covid, actually. Does it stop it altogether? No.

This is a point where the degree of reduction matters (a proportional reduction in an exponential function might help for hours, days, or months depending on the exponent), and I'd point out not even the CDC is trying to say that vaccines reduce infection or transmission anymore. They've retreated to the idea that it reduces severe disease or death, and even couch that in the idea that you have to have been recently boosted.

We're more than a year beyond when early vaccine adopters got their course of shots (I'm in that group). Knowing what I know now, there is absolutely no chance I'll get a booster and the early data suggests I'm about as likely to catch and transmit delta as someone who is unvaccinated (if not more likely than someone with recent naturally derived immunity). I'll link the paper when I find it. 

The point being unless you're prepared to make sure people aren't more than 3-4 months removed from a booster, the benefit of vaccination diminishes pretty quickly in terms of limiting spread beyond what is happening in the community on a cruise ship. Cruise lines seem pretty unwilling to adopt booster requirements, so it seems like the time to circle back to the original vaccine mandate in the first place is right about now. As time goes on, it's hard to view it as anything but punitive.

Also, of course the b.2 variant is going to take off here. The only question worth asking now is who's going to play along.

[BowTieBrigade]

1 hour ago, Lexster said:

Being vaccinated absolutely does reduce your chance of catching and spreading covid, actually. Does it stop it altogether? No.

That’s what I said. 

[BowTieBrigade]

55 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

At this point in the game, if you're going to continue to test for covid, you need to test for the flu, RSV, HMPV, and many other airborne viruses.

[Lexster]

39 minutes ago, BowTieBrigade said:

That’s what I said. 

Sorry! I totally misread your post somehow. I'm so tired of having to think about vaccines and stuff. I apologize!

[Leighq]

12 hours ago, Pattycruise said:

Well the new variant is on the rise….so I don’t see anything going away. Sadly

It unfortunately is the dominant one in china and Europe.  Cases have been found in Connecticut already. 

[CJS2766]

Bigger question is???? When would pre cruise testing go away? 2022? 2023?? I have 64 days until Alaska, so you know what I would be hoping for!!! 

[Kathleen]

17 hours ago, mook1525 said:

Let’s have some fun debate!

 

fingers crossed that Omicron was the last major outbreak and Covid becomes seasonal flu.

 

In this case, which requirement do you see going away first? Vax requirement or pre boarding testing?

I am fully vaxxed so selfishly I want testing to go away because it adds too much stress!

 

what say you?

 

^^^^^This! Takes the fun out of the pre vacation excitement.

[jticarruthers]

I would dump Vax requirement before testing requirement, personally i would dump both but that wasnt the question

 

[LizzyBee23]

1 hour ago, CJS2766 said:

Bigger question is???? When would pre cruise testing go away? 2022? 2023?? I have 64 days until Alaska, so you know what I would be hoping for!!! 

Are we on the same one? Ovation at the end of May?

[CJS2766]

2 hours ago, LizzyBee23 said:

Are we on the same one? Ovation at the end of May?

May be!  May 20 out of Seattle? Our first ever Alaska cruise and we are so excited! 

[LizzyBee23]

4 hours ago, CJS2766 said:

May be!  May 20 out of Seattle? Our first ever Alaska cruise and we are so excited! 

We are on the same one! There's a gaggle of us (we're like an ad for multi-generational cruising), and we're excited too (though we did AK a few times pre-kids on HAL).