Do you REALLY think we'll be cruising this year?

[yorky]

4 minutes ago, Fouremco said:

Really??? Given the context, I thought it very obvious that the reference is to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Which can and maybe will mutate as stated today on tv in the UK, I don’t believe anyone could make that guarantee. Even after a vaccine there is no 100% guarantee no one will catch it the same way you can’t guarantee the cold or flue.

[markeb]

1 minute ago, yorky said:

Which can and maybe will mutate as stated today on tv in the UK, I don’t believe anyone could make that guarantee. Even after a vaccine there is no 100% guarantee no one will catch it the same way you can’t guarantee the cold or flue.

 

For what it's worth, from the studies I've seen it's been pretty genetically stable. It's an RNA virus, and they do tend to change, but that may or may not impact the antigenic makeup enough for a vaccine or immunotherapy to be ineffective. Ebola is an RNA virus and it underwent significant genetic change during the 2013-2014 outbreak, to the point there were concerns about the PCR diagnostics, but the antigenic makeup stayed remarkably stable. So, we'll see. But no, a vaccine won't be 100% effective, and that's probably not a reasonable goal, at least not yet. The goal will be to deprive the virus of enough susceptible hosts that it burns out. If (no evidence, maybe no evidence either way) survivors are immune, then that helps us all. 

 

Influenza is the textbook case of antigenic drift and antigenic shift. But you generally end up with enough herd immunity from vaccination and natural infection that it doesn't establish itself between seasons. The strain is usually different the next season; sometimes radically different.

[Fouremco]

11 minutes ago, yorky said:

Which can and maybe will mutate as stated today on tv in the UK, I don’t believe anyone could make that guarantee. Even after a vaccine there is no 100% guarantee no one will catch it the same way you can’t guarantee the cold or flue.

Well, if cruises continue to have outbreaks of COVID-19 aboard, ports will probably remain closed to them. Whether or not severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) mutates. The issue when deciding whether to open up wouldn't be based on the question of why there are continued outbreaks, but instead on the fact that they exist.

[hcat]

One of my nightmare thoughts is having a ship with Noro and Corona..

 

(I have def been in home  social distancing  too long! )

[Ken the cruiser]

4 hours ago, Saab4444 said:

https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/news/joint-survey-shows-status-northern-european-cruise-ports

Thanks for posting this! Gives us hope for our upcoming Princess B2B cruise out of Copenhagen on July 9th heading to Norway and Iceland before disembarking at Southampton.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Ken the cruiser

[latserrof]

2 hours ago, Roger88 said:

 The nearest month that is more likely to have all the cruises back is June in my opinion. Not May. May is too early, there can be another break. June sounds way too promising and I have already seen many people booking for this summer 

?????   Norwegian has already cancelled all its cruises until July, Princess did the same two weeks ago, Cunard until August, etc. .?????  Maybe you mean June 2021?

Edited April 27, 2020 by latserrof

[phoenix_dream]

On 4/26/2020 at 6:49 PM, IrishKevinCan said:

I think there may be cruises by the end of this year and they will be very different.  I am optimistic, but I think seeing how Vegas and Disney open will help provide additional understanding on how public spaces will really work again.

I think you are very optimistic if you think Disney will open this year.  I wish it were otherwise, but...……..

[John182]

Cruise ports may open up at some time, cruise lines may operate and there may be vaccines but until such time as my travel insurance provider provides cover against COVID-19 then I will not be cruising. The additional potential costs of delays and sailing around in circles with no port accepting the ship are bad enough but the thought of the medical costs should we develop a severe infection and require ventilation is a compelling reason not to risk it. I'd rather keep my home thanks. I'm pretty sure all insurance companies have excluded COVID-19 for all new policies and renewals at least for us Brits.

 

Of course the same applies to land travel but at least I can control how I travel more in that case.

[yorky]

49 minutes ago, John182 said:

Cruise ports may open up at some time, cruise lines may operate and there may be vaccines but until such time as my travel insurance provider provides cover against COVID-19 then I will not be cruising. The additional potential costs of delays and sailing around in circles with no port accepting the ship are bad enough but the thought of the medical costs should we develop a severe infection and require ventilation is a compelling reason not to risk it. I'd rather keep my home thanks. I'm pretty sure all insurance companies have excluded COVID-19 for all new policies and renewals at least for us Brits.

 

Of course the same applies to land travel but at least I can control how I travel more in that case.

Just took a quick look and one insurance company did cover medical costs “Axa”and the other not “direct line” so I guess it’s a mixed bag. As with everything though I would imagine insurance companies will adapt policies as we move through the Covid situation given it may never totally be eliminated in one form or another. Maybe you will need to show you have been vaccinated, maybe not, who knows.

Edited April 28, 2020 by yorky

[laslomas]

20 minutes ago, yorky said:

Just took a quick look and one insurance company did cover medical costs “Axa”and the other not “direct line” so I guess it’s a mixed bag. As with everything though I would imagine insurance companies will adapt policies as we move through the Covid situation given it may never totally be eliminated in one form or another. Maybe you will need to show you have been vaccinated, maybe not, who knows.

 

I have / had a policy with Zurich UK to cover a May European holiday. The policy was taken out before the current situation and I took out the best (Gold) cover which included cover for pandemic. I have managed to move my holiday to August (still possibly not going to happen). I called the company and told them the dates of my holiday had changed and wanted the policy updated. They said fine, but it will not have the same cover as when I purchased it, i.e. no pandemic cover. I pointed out that I had actually saved making a possible claim by juggling dates, paying more money for high season, rather than waiting for cancellations etc. They said I could cancel the policy for a refund, so I did.

 

If I will not get the cover I paid a premium for, I may as well find a cheaper policy.  

Edited April 28, 2020 by laslomas

[yorky]

8 minutes ago, laslomas said:

 

I have / had a policy with Zurich UK to cover a May European holiday. The policy was taken out before the current situation and I took out the best (Gold) cover which included cover for pandemic. I have managed to move my holiday to August (still possibly not going to happen). I called the company and told them the dates of my holiday had changed and wanted the policy updated. They said fine, but it will not have the same cover as when I purchased it, i.e. no pandemic cover. I pointed out that I had actually saved making a possible claim by juggling dates, paying more money for high season, rather than waiting for cancellations etc. They said I could cancel the policy for a refund, so I did.

 

If I will not get the cover I paid a premium for, I may as well find a cheaper policy.  

Absolutely. I was quite surprised to see Axa were covering  medical costs for Covid so I guess they will not be the only one, Axa was the first name that came up doing a google search.

[Pushka]

My Travel Insurance covers Pandemics. But my cover ceased the instant Australian Government issued a Do Not Travel alert and closed our borders. Likely for 6 months. However our new cases are in the less than 20 Australia wide. Less than a total of 100 deaths. And we test relentlessly. Didn't help when Celebrity sent me a notification today saying I could now check in for a Med Cruise in July from Rome. Not a snowball chance in hell but celebrity act like it good to go. Not getting any more money from me come final payment date. 

[TeeRick]

14 hours ago, hcat said:

One of my nightmare thoughts is having a ship with Noro and Corona..

 

(I have def been in home  social distancing  too long! )

LOL-Easy to have nightmares these days! 😵 Unfortunately your nightmare has likely already been the case on some of the ships circulating with COVID+ passengers in Feb and March.  I believe many ships have some background level of norovirus but perhaps mostly under control so not reported.

[TeeRick]

15 hours ago, markeb said:

 

For what it's worth, from the studies I've seen it's been pretty genetically stable. It's an RNA virus, and they do tend to change, but that may or may not impact the antigenic makeup enough for a vaccine or immunotherapy to be ineffective. Ebola is an RNA virus and it underwent significant genetic change during the 2013-2014 outbreak, to the point there were concerns about the PCR diagnostics, but the antigenic makeup stayed remarkably stable. So, we'll see. But no, a vaccine won't be 100% effective, and that's probably not a reasonable goal, at least not yet. The goal will be to deprive the virus of enough susceptible hosts that it burns out. If (no evidence, maybe no evidence either way) survivors are immune, then that helps us all. 

 

Influenza is the textbook case of antigenic drift and antigenic shift. But you generally end up with enough herd immunity from vaccination and natural infection that it doesn't establish itself between seasons. The strain is usually different the next season; sometimes radically different.

markeb I agree with you.  For sure there have been new genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 virus identified.  The virus in Italy and the northeast USA is different than the virus from Wuhan and the west coast USA.  But for vaccine development to be effective in this situation, a vaccine must induce immunity to a conserved and stable piece of the virus that is critical to human infection.  For example, many vaccine efforts are focused on the Spike Protein.  Many mutations will occur naturally for this virus.  If the virus really requires a highly conserved Spike Protein sequence to bind human cell receptors and infect, that will be highly stable in all viral genetic variants and a good vaccine target.

Edited April 28, 2020 by TeeRick

[markeb]

7 minutes ago, TeeRick said:

For example, many vaccine efforts are focused on the Spike Protein.  Many mutations will occur naturally for this virus.  If the virus really requires a highly conserved Spike Protein sequence to bind human cell receptors and infect, that will be highly stable in all viral genetic variants and a good vaccine target.

 

Agree completely. I'm "assuming" as publicly available data is kind of limited, and I'm on the periphery of this right now, that the rapid serology is targeting an anti Spike Protein IgM/IgG. I'm actually in a high risk category right now, and may ask my specialist tomorrow what his thoughts are of doing serology. We were in Washington State in November (have lost a family member), London in December, and NYC in mid-February, and traveling in the DC area until this all broke loose. We're starting to see tracebacks that would suggest community-based transmission in pretty much all of those areas when we were there and before the virus was recognized in those locations.

 

I currently have limited confidence in both the cutoffs for titers, especially on the LFIs, and their meaning, but...

[EscapeFromConnecticut]

  "Do you REALLY think we'll be cruising this year?"

   Maybe the better question is "Do the cruise lines REALLY think we'll be cruising this year?"

- RCI dumped 26 percent of its workforce this month.

- NCL yesterday said it is putting the majority of its fleet into long-term parking.
      "The majority of ships in the Company's fleet are currently transitioning to cold layup." 
      https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/27/2022503/0/en/Norwegian-Cruise-Line-Holdings-Ltd-Provides-Business-Update.html

- CCL said in its early April SEC filing: "We currently estimate the substantial majority of our fleet will be in prolonged ship layup."
   https://www.carnivalcorp.com/static-files/8912eb63-49dd-4a1e-856a-8c2e316b3316 
 

 - The cruise lines are using their ships to return crew members to their home countries. 

We could consider some related facts, too: Boeing is dumping a ton of employees and warning that air travel won't be back to normal for two to three years; Hertz is laying off 10,000 workers; Marriott has furloughed more than 100,000.

Nobody enjoys these truths, but they are truths nevertheless.

This is an era when unfounded the unfounded (and often angry) "optimism" touted by a few posters here is actually bad news for cruisers, both emotionally and financially. Wiser CC members will let reality guide them as they envision 2020 and 2021 travel plans.
 

Edited April 28, 2020 by EscapeFromConnecticut

[yorky]

12 minutes ago, EscapeFromConnecticut said:

  "Do you REALLY think we'll be cruising this year?"

   Maybe the better question is "Do the cruise lines REALLY think we'll be cruising this year?"

- RCI dumped 26 percent of its workforce this month.

- NCL yesterday said it is putting the majority of its fleet into long-term parking.
      "The majority of ships in the Company's fleet are currently transitioning to cold layup." 
      https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/27/2022503/0/en/Norwegian-Cruise-Line-Holdings-Ltd-Provides-Business-Update.html

- CCL said in its early April SEC filing: "We currently estimate the substantial majority of our fleet will be in prolonged ship layup."
   https://www.carnivalcorp.com/static-files/8912eb63-49dd-4a1e-856a-8c2e316b3316 
 

 - The cruise lines are using their ships to return crew members to their home countries. 

We could consider some related facts, too: Boeing is dumping a ton of employees and warning that air travel won't be back to normal for two to three years; Hertz is laying off 10,000 workers; Marriott has furloughed more than 100,000.

Nobody enjoys these truths, but they are truths nevertheless.

This is an era when unfounded the unfounded (and often angry) "optimism" touted by a few posters here is actually bad news for cruisers, both emotionally and financially. Wiser CC members will let reality guide them as they envision 2020 and 2021 travel plans.
 

You are the one sounding angry. As before yes I feel there could still be a level of cruising by the end of the year, time will tell. 

[helen haywood]

If I have not succeeded in getting either any response from Celebrity for my three cruises they canceled, nor a penny of refunds that I requested 44 days ago, then being unfoundedly optimistic is the best I can do.

[EscapeFromConnecticut]

36 minutes ago, helen haywood said:

If I have not succeeded in getting either any response from Celebrity for my three cruises they canceled, nor a penny of refunds that I requested 44 days ago, then being unfoundedly optimistic is the best I can do.

 

   Helen - I'm wishing the best to you and the rest of the disappointed cruisers. The CC boards, as you know, are currently filled with complaints from cruise customers of all the major lines ... they put down their money in good faith, and are now stuck in this sort of refund purgatory.

   But let's be clear: You do not sound remotely irrational or blinded by head-in-the-sand ignorance.

 

    And you do not sound like someone so unfoundedly optimistic as to be booking another cruise now.    (Or advising a friend "Hey, look - great prices on an August cruise! Let's send in money now to be sure we get a good cabin. They'll never cancel, but if they do ... we'll score 125% back or a quick refund!! Yippee!!")

   Sadly, there are people doing exactly that right now.

 

   And that's their right. If they go in with their eyes open, all we can say is "oh well."

   But for the casual cruisers or new customers who come to CC looking for guidance, it would be awful if they saw just the false posts of "Oh, everything is fine - of course we'll be cruising soon."  

    

Edited April 28, 2020 by EscapeFromConnecticut

[latserrof]

44 minutes ago, EscapeFromConnecticut said:

  
   But for the casual cruisers or new customers who come to CC looking for guidance, it would be awful if they saw just the false posts of "Oh, everything is fine - of course we'll be cruising soon."  

    

Well said, and I totally agree. Those spreading false hope (and bad info) are doing a grave disservice to CC members.

[mayleeman]

51 minutes ago, EscapeFromConnecticut said:

But for the casual cruisers or new customers who come to CC looking for guidance....

 

Your posts have lots of good points. But I think we probably don't need to have any worries about random optimistic posts influencing novices to book. Anyone disregarding all the complaints about wittheld money and the threads about cancellations, then booking because someone says cruising by August will happen, is probably too far gone from reality to rationally assess risk of anything. (Related: How many people don't use seatbelts? @25% or something? Mind-boggling!)

 

As for @yorky ...A lot of us are in the same position of cruises booked with no idea of whether we cruise, get refunds, or lose money. I don't think @EscapeFromConnecticut sounds angry. I am certainly not. But there is a level of frustration that is now, for me, two months old in trying to have any discussion about the likelihood of safe cruising occurring when there is literally no plan in place for how it can be done. And when there is, as yet, no scientific evidence for the constant drumming refrains "The virus will go away by fall," or "We will have a vaccine soon," or the worst of all, "Only certain people are at risk." 

 

No one wants to make you feel bad, and no one is trying to. We who are extremely cautious, however, are trying to help people avoid the mistake of over-optimism so they don't throw good money after bad by making final payments, or throwing money away by doing things like the person who rebooked their insured May European trip to an uninsured one in August. (Unless I read it incorrectly, they had pandemic insurance that would have covered a May cancellation, but thae August trip is now uninsured because they got a refund for the insurance since transferring the policy would not have pandemic. I cannot understand why it wouldn't have been better to just cancel the May one, and then wait until August to find one if travel is possible. I hope I misunderstood!)

 

Anyway, people are entitled to whatever emotional outlook they wish to have. And people can disregard the warnings many of us have suggested. But, no one is entitled to ask everyone to disregard science.

Edited April 28, 2020 by mayleeman

[Oceangoer2]

My question is this...and an answer from both pesimistic AND optimistic is appreciated. 

Do I cancel my Nov. cruise now and lose the deposit (small) or hang on until Aug. final payment date and have a better idea if it'll even go in Nov.  If so, I pay the final payment and if cancelled afterward, there's a FCC attached, unless they open up the refund capacity.  Personally I'm in the middle of both attitudes.  Hoping it goes because of all the perks etc attached which won't be transferred to a new booking using an FCC (I think)...but very much doubting as airlines and ports aren't likely to be receptive to travel until next year.  My bigger concern is the airfare already paid for this cruise;  if it goes under I lose it...if I wait for them to cancel I get a credit...again, if the airline goes bankrupt there's no hope of remuneration at all (in my mind).  How do others see it...sorry...hope you can understand my gibberish explanations.

Edited April 28, 2020 by oceangoer2

[BigAl94]

Escapefromconnecticut and  mayleeman have provided possibly the most realistic and helpful posts on this thread, no one is angry, just pointing out the risks of leading people on by misguided optimism in what is a dire and likely to be a prolonged cessation of cruising worldwide.

Edited April 28, 2020 by BigAl94

[jonthomas]

5 minutes ago, BigAl94 said:

Escapefromconnecticut and  mayleeman have provided possibly the most realistic and helpful posts on this thread, no one is angry, just pointing out the risks of leading people on by misguided optimism in what is a dire and likely to be a prolonged cessation of cruising worldwide.

 

I very much agree with this.

[BigAl94]

6 minutes ago, oceangoer2 said:

My question is this...and an answer from both pesimistic AND optimistic is appreciated. 

Do I cancel my Nov. cruise now and lose the deposit (small) or hang on until Aug. final payment date and have a better idea if it'll even go in Nov.  If so, I pay the final payment and if cancelled afterward, there's a FCC attached, unless they open up the refund capacity.  Personally I'm in the middle of both attitudes.  Hoping it goes because of all the perks etc attached which won't be transferred to a new booking using an FCC (I think)...but very much doubting as airlines and ports aren't likely to be receptive to travel until next year.  My bigger concern is the airfare already paid for this cruise;  if it goes under I lose it...if I wait for them to cancel I get a credit...again, if the airline goes bankrupt there's no hope of remuneration at all (in my mind).  How do others see it...sorry...hope you can understand my gibberish explanations.

If it was me, I would wait until August and assess the situation then prior to final payment date. If the long term situation looks bleak, I would then cancel and take a hit on the small deposit. Airfare - money is gone so take a chance on them cancelling - at least you might get something you can use in the future.