TheOldBear

9 hours ago, Windsurfboy said:

 

It's called a black tie event, to distinguish it from a more formal evening dress , a white tie event, not because the ties have to be black. The orginal black ties were a blue/black mix, which looks even blacker than pure black at night under artificial lighting .

 

When I  referred to Curchills straight bow tie, I was referring to the fact it was a proper hand tied bow tie , which is almost impossible to get perfectly straight and even. Not a that he never wore a black bow tie. I was encouraging  the OP to have the fun and frustration of tying your own.

 

 

Last year, on the eastbound crossing, there was bow tie instruction before the first formal night. This was mentioned in the daily program, but was not an official Cunard event - instead a passenger arranged the session. About sixty folks attended the session in one of the tender lounges on deck one.

This is something that Cunard should be offering, but the onboard shops do not even sell bow ties (other than pre tied ones)

You may want to look at the archived Q&A session on the Cruise/Travel Insurance page.

A couple of the travel insurance sites [TripInsuranceStore; InsureMyTrip] offer side by side policy comparisons, definitions of terms used by the policies and other helpful features. 

I compared on TripInsuranceStore their available policies vs 'CunardCare' and decided to go with a policy purchased via the store. Much better medivac coverage, 'primary' for medical coverage [avoids needing to send paperwork to Cigna where it is rejected 100% of the time] for not much price difference.

1 hour ago, untailored bostonian said:

Just booked a NYC - NYC 21 day cruise to Norway on the QE2.  We have not cruised on Cunard.

 

Will I need a tux or will a black suit  be sufficient?

 

Any other Cunard culture advice?

First, you need to edit QE2 to QM2 😉

A dark suit and tie is fine for formal (now called “gala” nights. A jacket, with optional tie is needed for other nights.

Each seven day crossing will have three formal nights. Likely fewer for the Norway leg.

There are places where casual is ok - the Kings Court buffet, the adjacent Carthinia lounge, the Golden Lion pub and the casino. The G32 nightclub is also one of the casual venues, with access through the Queens Room - where the dress code is in place, along with any evening theme.

Need to check with my $UN_NAMED_TRAVEL_AGENT if this is a better deal than my current booking [less paper onboard credit, but gratuities included] and if its possible to switch

We have done two transatlantic round trips [2017 & 2019] with a third planned for 2021.

On our 2017 cruise [M733B, for those keeping score at home 🙂 ], the westbound crossing encountered strong winds [Force 11] and large waves from a tropical storm. For the most part, the ride was smooth - there was a period where the spa pool was unavailable, but that may have been due to other issues [large piece of the pool overhead needed repair on the eastbound leg].

I have read reports, and watched some video clips filmed aboard QM2 in Force 12/Hurricane winds - and the ship handled the weather gracefully.

We don't avoid boisterous weather, so we typically will schedule crossings in the early autumn. 

The QM2 round trips fit our schedule, and lets us avoid air travel and hotel stays. [Only need to unpack once]

For ports, the round trips have multiple port days between the crossings, but the ship itself is our main attraction. 

Anthony Inglis with the English National Symphony - on eastbound QM 2 crossings in 2017 & 2019 [and again in 2021 if things go as planned]. 

15 hours ago, cb at sea said:

This virus will NEVER "go away"....viruses don't do that.  They may mutate to a lesser form, or get worse....no one knows.  The "common cold" is a form of Corona virus...we have NO cure...and folks suffer from it yearly.  And yes...some have complications from it, and die.  Life is not safe, or sure.  

Learn to live with it.

 

From what I recall reading, there are several 'families' of virus that produce the common cold - rhino virus, corona virus, and something called 'RSV' [ see https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_causes as an example]

About 20% of colds are attributed to corona virus - with four common strains [ https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html ]. Looks like SARS-COV-2 may be come a fifth common strain.  [Again, from what I recall reading, the corona virus 'D' strain caused a death rate comparable to a bad flu year when it was first encountered]

From what I have seen, the QM2 sails under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge before 6AM, and docks before 7. (Next crossing, I'll try to be awake for the arrival) 

Self disembarkation is available as soon as customs officials are ready in the terminal [before 8]. Once on board, air travelers can schedule airport transfers and their disembarkation time is scheduled to match.

With Customs, NYC traffic & airport security theatre - I would think 1PM would be the earliest departure at LGA or JFK, possibly later at EWR [Newark].

Have you looked at booking your flight(s) via Cunard?  Note, we are in driving distance to Brooklyn, so have never planned on air travel before/after the cruise.

The Imposters - Stan Tucci, 1998

3 hours ago, SelectSys said:

Looks like we'll have an example coming soon from the Russians with their approved vaccine.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/russias-accelerated-covid-19-vaccine-greeted-with-alarm-as-experts-say-phase-3-trial-is-essential-2020-08-11

 

https://apnews.com/fcda62ad992db414d65f23b2adb78e44

I don't think I would want to depend on Russian or Chinese sourced vaccines. If its ready now, there hasn't been time for phase three trials tp complete. US and UK sourced vaccines are at best only a few weeks into phase three.

Last years transatlantic round trip [Brooklyn - Hamburg - Brooklyn] was counted by Cunard as a single 'voyage', but it could have been booked as 4 separate cruises [Brooklyn - Southampton, Southampton - Hamburg, Hamburg - Southampton, Southampton -LeHavre-Brooklyn]

Oddly the spa concession treated our round trip as two separate bookings, had to get the pursers office involved so we could use the spa days we paid for on the return trip.

Cunard says to leave the tray in your cabin - looking at the hallways, it seems most folks put them in the hall.

12 hours ago, CruiserBruce said:

Because one measurement of success is developing antibodies. It's not neccesarily required to be exposed to determine effectiveness. They don't test bullet proof vests by requiring someone to be shot while wearing them!

That is the purpose of the phase two trials. At least one of the trial vaccines (Oxford) not only demonstrated antibodies, but also some other reactive immunity (memory “B” cells).  

I'm on Long Island's south shore - about 65 miles east of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.

The one rain band impacting the area lasted about half an hour, and skies cleared about 20 minutes ago. Still quite a bit of gusty wind, and lots of tree limbs down. Local fire department has the road closed where a tree is being held up only by Verizon phone lines.

From what I have seen on QM2 - people 'vote with their feet' and the Queens Room has quite a crowd every evening.

Seems to be working - for what its worth, earlier the login link did nothing.

Tested in Safari [MacOS & iPad], Opera & Firefox with the same results

Blount Shipyards built ships for the 'American Cruise Line' - I think there is some shared ownership of the firms.

1 hour ago, njhorseman said:

Veterinary vaccines of limited effectiveness developed many years ago aren't exactly a beacon of hope or foundation for development of effective vaccines for humans. As I said no human vaccine for SARS was ever able to be developed. Funding for the vaccine research eventually dried up because SARS never spread very far and was quickly  no longer a threat to humans.

 

I'm aware of the new mRNA vaccines under development. They could be a major advance, they could be a failure.

 

It's nice to be hopeful but let's remember that about 90% of vaccines that advance to human trials never make it to market...but with so many potential vaccines under development and all the government funding of COVID-19 vaccine research perhaps the chances of success are better than they were in the past.

It was my understanding that the SARS / MERS vaccine trials were abandoned in part due to their phase three trials unable to demonstrate significant protection - by the time that trial phase ended, there was not enough circulating in the wild to see if the placebo was less effective than the trial vaccine. 

Not all the SARS/MERS vaccine efforts were wasted - a couple of the current vaccine trials involve a few tweaks to the abandoned SARS-COV-1 virus vaccine to produce a SARS-COV-2 [covid19] candidate.

37 minutes ago, njhorseman said:

 

The second article is about 1968, not 1957, but regardless flu vaccines have been available since the 1940's . Development of a vaccine for an influenza variant strain doesn't require starting from scratch as is the case with COVID-19.  Note this sentence in the Scientific American article: "Flu vaccines had been available since the mid-1940s, so researchers weren’t starting from scratch in 1957. "

 

The vaccine development for COVID-19 had to be started from scratch because no viable vaccines for similar coronavirus variants such as the one responsible for SARS exist. SARS vaccine research went on for more than a decade but was unsuccessful.

 

Suggest you read this article by the former president of Merck's vaccine division. He says the quickest development was 4 years and typical time is 10-15 years Is he enough of an expert for you?  https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/05/19/we-roar-covid-vaccine-12-18-months-dont-count-it

 

 

 

There are veterinary coronavirus vaccines - but they not considered too effective for long term protection [see from 2004 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15742624/ ]

What looks interesting for the current vaccine development is the use of virus genetic sequencing and engineering - creating vaccines using messenger RNA. I was reading a bit this weekend [popped up on my phone news feed] saying that the mRNA vaccine has the advantage of providing an antibody template of the virus before it gets a chance to attack a cell. This is apparently very different than older techniques. I'll be quite interested in how effective this proves to be.

27 minutes ago, ed01106 said:

Keep in mind if we have a vaccine in mid - 2024 then Covid-19 will be the quickest developed vaccine in human history.  The current record is five years.   

I'll need to dig things up, but I recall reading a Scientific American article [Bio of a NIH vaccine scientist] where it was mentioned that a 1957 'Hong Kong Flu' vaccine was developed, tested and deployed [first 40 million doses ] in a four month period.

Found the link https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-man-who-beat-the-1957-flu-pandemic/

I was about to add [was interrupted for domestic stuff] that the stage three trials are the ones large enough to need a mass appeal for volunteers - the earlier trials can be folks 'well known' or connected to the vaccine producers [med students, family members, administrators ....].

I would suggest [if any are reading this] that travel / cruise / hospitality folks volunteer.

From what I have been reading, it looks like typical vaccine trials are conducted in three stages.

Stage one tests for dose tolerance, and uses a small number (30 or so) volunteers. This establishes the largest dose that can be tolerated - later trials will use less.

Stage two looks at immune response, and uses a larger number of volunteers - a couple of hundred. If immune response is not reliable, development stops here.

Stage three uses thousands (30,000 seems typical) to see how the vaccine performs in the wild. This is the stage where previous SARS and MERS trials were abandoned as the infection rate was too low to ‘challenge’ the vaccine (compare infection rates of the vaccinated to a control population)

49 minutes ago, Luckiestmanonearth said:

When you say you are signed up for several stage 3 trials, is that with one of the vaccine producers or several of them?

It’s a site Ron by Oracle for the National Institute of Health (NIH) for all US vaccine trials.  coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org

Mrs Bear and I have signed up for vaccine trials. There will be several ‘stage three’ trials starting in August.

As a practical matter, the ship for each example will be 'zeroed out' at the NYC or SF stops. (all passengers and crew except for designated watchstanders must be off the ship).

So folks sailing [for example] Quebec back to Quebec will need to go ashore in NYC for the 'zeroing out' and only re embark once everyone is accounted for. Some folks will just wait in the terminal, others will use the turn around day for an excursion. The 'in transit' passengers can board anytime they want to after the zero out is completed, no need to wait for new passengers embarking for the NYC to Quebec sailing.