Heart Conditions Banned from Cruising

[whitecap]

26 minutes ago, J8T said:

I was tol by princess on 4/23 that the chronic condition sentence was removed so that they could work up detailed list to include when re-inserted. here is the form which celebrity is going to use....possibly what CLIA is suggesting

Physician-Fit-to-Sail-Form -m celebrity.pdf 49.27 kB · 3 downloads

Well after reading this form I can see the Class Action Lawsuits being filed.  Age discrimination, making someone, because of their age, go to and pay for a visit to his or her physician to have this form filled out even knowing they have no medical condition.  Will they also discriminate against those that travel to the United States from Asian countries who have been hit hard with this virus?  Will they discriminate against those of a certain ethnicity who were hit hard?  Will the airlines follow this type of discrimination?   

[AF-1]

Good Monday Morning.  After reading some of the above posts;  I still remain optimistic that cruise ships will sail again; and that senior citizens will sail also.  Have a wonderful and positive day. 

[whitecap]

Just now, AF-1 said:

Good Monday Morning.  After reading some of the above posts;  I still remain optimistic that cruise ships will sail again; and that senior citizens will sail also.  Have a wonderful and positive day. 

AF-1, I love the positive attitude!  I too believe that cruises will begin again in the not too distant future and that "everyone" will be allowed back aboard their favorite ships.  

[AF-1]

whitecap,  thanks for the positive outlook.  Hope to be out there sailing soon.  

[LDVinNC]

I hope the ships will be sailing soon, too.  But if that form that J8T posted goes into effect, they will be sailing with very few people over 70.

 

I think the only way most doctors would sign that form would be if it said something to the effect of "as of this date, this person is fit to cruise".  That second paragraph is problematical.

[MissP22]

I hope they open up soon. I'd really like to see some test sailings before the fall season begins to see how many cases (or not) of the virus show up and just what physicians form Princess will be using. 

[Gibby]

Although they may need to “Poke a hole” into your heart for ablation, that is not the treatment. This is so they can gain access to the Left Atrium of the heart (if needed). The ablation itself is actually a “Burn” (hot or cold) such that the heart tissue scars, and it is that scar that is meant to block the random electrical pathways that initiate or propagate the AFib.

 

I have had 2 of them, so even though I am not a doctor (don't even play one on TV), I have a bit of experience with AFib (too much I think sometimes). But just about a year from the second ablation, and looking forward to getting my medical clearance for my Pilots license (yes, you can still fly planes with AFib, it just needs to be controlled). As for Cruising, the Doctor actually recommends it for the relaxation.

[whitecap]

2 minutes ago, LDVinNC said:

I hope the ships will be sailing soon, too.  But if that form that J8T posted goes into effect, they will be sailing with very few people over 70.

 

I think the only way most doctors would sign that form would be if it said something to the effect of "as of this date, this person is fit to cruise".  That second paragraph is problematical.

The second paragraph I would describe as "discriminatory".  The COVID virus is a respiratory virus yet this form leaves out asthma, those who may have had a lung removed, smokers and alcoholics, just to name a few.  And now that it has been shown that animals, such as dogs, can carry the virus, will all those with certified "service animals" have to have the animal examined by a veterinarian?  A new report this morning indicates that the "poor community" has been very hard hit with numerous deaths, so will the cruise line make passengers produce their tax return to prove their income level?  I would be both very disappointed and surprised if the cruise industry ever adopted this policy.

[swoopy2110]

Just came to look for the answer to this exact question.

 

I have a-fib. I am 29. I have had ablation twice. Other than a-fib I am healthy. I am not on any medication (no blood thinner, beta-blocker etc.).

 

I am due to cruise in January 2021. Based on the OP, at the minute I would be denied boarding. My heart has behaved itself perfectly fine for 14 months now.

 

The health advice / rules will change a lot between now & January 2021. At present I am not concerned. I do not consider my life condition as 'severe'. My life is not affected in any way. Many people have arrhythmia issues.

 

Time will tell

[AF-1]

swoopy2110;  you are correct in assuming things will change.  I would not worry about being denied boarding.  Until the cruise lines get back up and running and until all the medical staff figure out exactly who and what should happen;  it doesn't pay to raise you blood pressure worrying about what will happen.   Too many fear factors right now; and it makes people very nervous. Me I will wait until everything shakes out and then proceed. Have a nice Monday

[whitecap]

1 minute ago, AF-1 said:

swoopy2110;  you are correct in assuming things will change.  I would not worry about being denied boarding.  Until the cruise lines get back up and running and until all the medical staff figure out exactly who and what should happen;  it doesn't pay to raise you blood pressure worrying about what will happen.   Too many fear factors right now; and it makes people very nervous. Me I will wait until everything shakes out and then proceed. Have a nice Monday

I'm with AF-1.  We are booked for a Jan 31st cruise and looking forward to it.

[AF-1]

Let me say one more thing about health conditions etc.  My wife and I are booked on Sky Princess doing the New England and Canada Cruise.  Round trip from New York.  The ship never leaves sight of the east coast.  So if you have a heart condition, diabetes, asthma, etc;  and have some sort of reaction;  the ship is so close to port; they just dock and let you off.  Not a big deal.  The only issue I see is the west coast to Hawaii.  This is the longest and largest trip with no land.  So if someone had a severe medical issue; it would be more difficult to get them off the ship since you are halfway to Hawaii or the West Coast.  Other than that,  I see no reason the cruise lines would deny boarding based on age or health issues.  Now if you show up to the port and they take your temp and it's above normal;  well, that could be an issue.  I stand by my original post.  I am not worried about cruising in Oct; nor am I worried about being denied boarding.  Cheers

[Ombud]

4 hours ago, J8T said:

I was tol by princess on 4/23 that the chronic condition sentence was removed so that they could work up detailed list to include when re-inserted. here is the form which celebrity is going to use....possibly what CLIA is suggesting

Physician-Fit-to-Sail-Form -m celebrity.pdf 49.27 kB · 25 downloads

Thanks!! Renews my hope that I can sail for decades to come

[swoopy2110]

1 hour ago, AF-1 said:

swoopy2110;  you are correct in assuming things will change.  I would not worry about being denied boarding.  Until the cruise lines get back up and running and until all the medical staff figure out exactly who and what should happen;  it doesn't pay to raise you blood pressure worrying about what will happen.   Too many fear factors right now; and it makes people very nervous. Me I will wait until everything shakes out and then proceed. Have a nice Monday

 

😄You too. There is a lot of instant reaction ongoing at the moment and a lot will change in time.

[whitecap]

The CLIA (Cruise Line International Association) posted a proposed health questionnaire on their web site on April 21st.  It has nothing to do with chronic illnesses.  

cruising.org:.webloc

[suzyed]

2 hours ago, swoopy2110 said:

Just came to look for the answer to this exact question.

 

I have a-fib. I am 29. I have had ablation twice. Other than a-fib I am healthy. I am not on any medication (no blood thinner, beta-blocker etc.).

 

I am due to cruise in January 2021. Based on the OP, at the minute I would be denied boarding. My heart has behaved itself perfectly fine for 14 months now.

 

The health advice / rules will change a lot between now & January 2021. At present I am not concerned. I do not consider my life condition as 'severe'. My life is not affected in any way. Many people have arrhythmia issues.

 

Time will tell

All these discussions re. Covid-19,  assume it's going to be around forever.  And while it may be an issue for a while, eventually we will have a vaccine and/or treatment plans in place and it will be no more of an issue for travel than the norovirus, flu, etc.  
No one is cruising right now anyway...and I doubt we will be before the fall or even beginning 2021.
To my thinking, we have to do a better job of screening for respiratory illness at the beginning of the cruise.  Allowing someone to just fill out a form that says they feel fine is not enough.  Tempertures are a good indicator but they don't go far enough.  If a person is coughing, sneezing, etc. they should be sent to the medical center for clearance.   If they somehow "slip through" but then are observed coughing/sneezing, they need to be reported to the medical staff for further evaluation. 
Since we were just discovering ALL the various symptoms associated with Covid-19 within the last month or so...I think there were indeed folks who "slipped through" on our recent cruise who had the covid-19 and thus caused the spread throughout the ship.   "Just a cough" was all we kept hearing....

Edited April 27, 2020 by suzyed

[suzyed]

2 hours ago, AF-1 said:

swoopy2110;  you are correct in assuming things will change.  I would not worry about being denied boarding.  Until the cruise lines get back up and running and until all the medical staff figure out exactly who and what should happen;  it doesn't pay to raise you blood pressure worrying about what will happen.   Too many fear factors right now; and it makes people very nervous. Me I will wait until everything shakes out and then proceed. Have a nice Monday

I absolutely agree!

[Pierlesscruisers]

On 4/26/2020 at 6:23 AM, Ride-The-Waves said:

.... Questioning why others do things is always wrong.

 

Sometimes it may be wrong, sometimes it isn't.  Maybe the questioner is trying to learn more about something for a reason (e.g. In this case if I were a doctor maybe I would want to know why somebody wanted to practice medicine on a cruise ship because there was no advantags(s) to doing so that was obvious and I was curious about what I wasn't seeing.  I would think that it might be more accurate to say that questioning why others do things is sometimes wrong rather than always.

 

Tom

[Pierlesscruisers]

On 4/26/2020 at 9:58 AM, nini said:

 

Doctor of osteopathic medicine

 

A doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) is a physician licensed to practice medicine, perform surgery, and prescribe medicine.

Information

Like all allopathic physicians (or MDs), osteopathic physicians complete 4 years of medical school and can choose to practice in any specialty of medicine. However, osteopathic physicians receive an additional 300 to 500 hours in the study of hands-on manual medicine and the body's musculoskeletal system.

Osteopathic physicians hold to the principle that a patient's history of illness and physical trauma are written into the body's structure. The osteopathic physician's highly developed sense of touch allows the physician to feel (palpate) the patient's living anatomy (the flow of fluids, motion and texture of tissues, and structural makeup).

Like MDs, osteopathic physicians are licensed at the state level. Osteopathic physicians who wish to specialize may become board certified (in the same manner as MDs) by completing a 2- to 6-year residency within the specialty area and passing the board certification exams.

DOs practice in all specialties of medicine, ranging from emergency medicine and cardiovascular surgery to psychiatry and geriatrics. Osteopathic doctors use the same medical and surgical treatments that are used by other medical doctors, but may also incorporate a holistic approach taught during their medical training.

 

Interesting!  Never knew all that.  Thanks for providing the info.

 

Tom

[gmjc2]

7 hours ago, J8T said:

I was tol by princess on 4/23 that the chronic condition sentence was removed so that they could work up detailed list to include when re-inserted. here is the form which celebrity is going to use....possibly what CLIA is suggesting

Physician-Fit-to-Sail-Form -m celebrity.pdf 49.27 kB · 4 downloads

Thanks for the link. I sent it to another thread that discusses medical issues for the future.

[gmjc2]

2 hours ago, whitecap said:

The CLIA (Cruise Line International Association) posted a proposed health questionnaire on their web site on April 21st.  It has nothing to do with chronic illnesses.  

cruising.org:.webloc 317 B · 6 downloads

I can't open this ,could you copy and paste the importent parts please?

[whitecap]

12 minutes ago, gmjc2 said:

I can't open this ,could you copy and paste the importent parts please?

Try this one.  If it doesn't open, just go to their web site Cruise Line International Association.  

883060277_Physician-Fit-to-Sail-Form-mcelebrity.pdf

Edited April 27, 2020 by whitecap

[jagoffee]

I seriously doubt whether individual cruise lines will be using these type of documents.  Too much liability IMO.  If there is criteria developed for Vulnerable Individuals once the No Sail Order has expired or rescinded, it surely will be a common set of items.  Probably along the lines that it is recommended that people with certain conditions should not “chose” to cruise. Why would anyone believe that individual cruise companies would would have he best skill set to develop the criteria?  I do not want Corporate lawyers making or influencing those decisions.

 

 

If an individual cruise line was to independently develop a list of 12 conditions for not cruising, what happens if someone with condition 13 or 14 goes on a cruise and dies?  Is the cruise line responsible for not including it on the list?  Who wants that kind of responsibility?

 

Cannot legislate away individual accountability.  If it is too much of a risk for a Vulnerable Individual to cruise, then they should not cruise.  The CDC or some other qualified agency should develop the criteria IMO.  People cruise all the time with health issues, which is why they have morgues on cruise ships.  

 

My comments do not apply to any sickness that is contagious; screening for contagious or sick people upon boarding is appropriate and should be a requirement IMO.
 

All the various documents and policies gives us something to take about, since we cannot cruise.
 

 

 

 

 

[gmjc2]

1 hour ago, whitecap said:

Try this one.  If it doesn't open, just go to their web site Cruise Line International Association.  

883060277_Physician-Fit-to-Sail-Form-mcelebrity.pdf 48.88 kB · 7 downloads

That is the Celebrity form that I posted earlier. Did they get confused?  

[greenie082756]

DH and I are just going to wait and see what the future holds.

We love cruising and like everyone else I am hurting for a cruise vacation.

 

When I first heard and read about the possibility of not allowing those with chronic conditions on a ship my thoughts 

were this is just preliminary.  The first few months that the cruise lines start up again I would expect a much more

stringent boarding process.  The reason being is that nobody knows what the limits of this virus is and I agree that those with chronic diseases might just want to wait and see what happens.  The form from what I understand should stay current. The old paper forms that we all had to fill out were a joke. Now that they will scan us for fever I feel better that those boarding will be healthier than before - maybe. I do not have a problem with being scanned for a temperature  or filling out the health form. 

 

I myself am a managed Type 2 diabetic. I was diagnosed over 20 years ago. I also have some other issues that have been managed by shots and pills. Because I know that it is very important that I have my medications to keep it managed I make sure I carry and extra 2 weeks past the disembarkation day. 

 

I think once this all starts up again it will be acceptable to most everyone.