AntiMatter

There's a difference between between requiring some form of screening and not requiring anything. I'm booked on a transatlantic coming up soon and intend to get a legit test from a 3rd party. If my test is positive, I won't go. Being a responsible person, I don't need Royal to tell me that. I'm confident many others others would do the same. Those who do a self-test on the honor system doesn't mean that all of them will cheat. I mean, 5000+ passengers aren't all going show up with a photo of fake self-test results. So requiring some form of proof of testing at least it cuts down the odds vs not requiring anything at all. Especially if you have to defend yourself in a court of law against gross negligence and reckless conduct by a common carrier. If a bad outbreak occurs, then Royal can point to their testing and vaccination requirements and argue that they did something, enough even, as opposed to doing nothing, though perhaps not exactly the highest standards they can utilize to protect passengers. So to answer your question, the reason why Royal has this policy in my opinion probably has to do with legal liability and avoidance of bad public relations, more than anything else. My "theory" applies just the same and specifically it's an opinion to address comments along the lines as to why Royal still has these covid requirements for transatlantics and the implication in comments that it is arbitrary, not necessary, etc..

I've been on 4 transatlantics with Royal (3 prior to Covid) and it's funny to me to note how many ppl cough in a packed elevator at start of cruise vs near the end of the cruise. Unscientific, sure, but the results are consistent. In transatlantics, you are potentially close to a week away from a port in case of emergencies. So imagine a scenario where you have hundreds of passengers and/or crew with a contagious deadly virus and nowhere to dock to help the situation. Conversely, imagine the potential liability and PR for Royal. They know we're still in a worldwide pandemic. They know cruise ships are conducive for virus spread. They know that treatment options and emergency services are limited once they depart from US to Europe. They know that allowing a passenger with contagious virus onboard can be disastrous for other passengers and crew. So they're not even going to require a TEST to screen for the virus and just let everyone onboard for nearly 2 weeks? How much sense would that make? Yeah, transatlantics are different.