Will There Be Any Cruising At All In 2021?

[vpearlkc]

Since it seems more and more unlikely that cruising will resume in 2020 I wonder what the thoughts are for 2021?

 

We have decided to cancel our April Breakaway cruise because it will be towards the end of the 2020/21 flu/coronavirus season and don't want to sink $4500 on a long shot in December.

 

I do think that cruising may start getting back to the "new" normal in the summer of 2021 if we have an effective vaccine and or treatments in place or the 20/21 season is not too bad.

 

This is just my opinion but who knows? I sure don't.

 

 

[4774Papa]

1 minute ago, vpearlkc said:

Since it seems more and more unlikely that cruising will resume in 2020 I wonder what the thoughts are for 2021?

 

We have decided to cancel our April Breakaway cruise because it will be towards the end of the 2020/21 flu/coronavirus season and don't want to sink $4500 on a long shot in December.

 

I do think that cruising may start getting back to the "new" normal in the summer of 2021 if we have an effective vaccine and or treatments in place or the 20/21 season is not too bad.

 

This is just my opinion but who knows? I sure don't.

 

 

We booked a transatlantic cruise from Rome to Tampa, October 2021 and expect to take it.  Also, we plan two weeks in Italy prior to the cruise.

 

There should be a vaccine by then.  If not, immunity should be far more widespread.  At some point we  have to go on living.  We are in our early 70s, but have no underlying conditions and are very fit and health.  Go for it.

[JT1962]

No one knows at this point. We have a Southern Caribbean cruise from San Juan booked in November, but will cancel before final payment is due unless there is a major breakthrough on treatment or a vaccine by then. There are still too many unknowns at this point.

 

Our concern is more about getting stuck in quarantine on the ship for 2 weeks or more than actually getting the virus. We will not cruise again until there have been multiple ships sail for 2-3 months with no issues.

 

My best guess for when cruises will attempt sailing is August or September. The first cruises will probably be new 2-3 day cruises on 1-2 ships from each cruise line to their private islands. They will most likely be from Port Canaveral and passengers may be limited to local Florida residents. If all goes well they will slowly expand to other ports, ships and longer itineraries.

 

[tallnthensome]

We cancelled our August cruise on the Sun to Alaska. We (family of four) have an Encore cruise booked for April 2021 and one on the CCL Panorama for August 2021. I only have a couple hundred dollars in deposits into each but I too worry about making final payment in December in the midst of all this. Seems more likely that the August cruise would be a better bet. I got an Amazing deal on the Encore on an online pricing error and it would kill me to have to cancel it .....that’s if Covid 19 doesn’t kill me first ...... Watching closely what Oct-November bring at the end of the year health/virus wise. 

[sunny aurora]

1 hour ago, 4774Papa said:

We booked a transatlantic cruise from Rome to Tampa, October 2021 and expect to take it.  Also, we plan two weeks in Italy prior to the cruise.

 

There should be a vaccine by then.  If not, immunity should be far more widespread.  At some point we  have to go on living.  We are in our early 70s, but have no underlying conditions and are very fit and health.  Go for it.

 

 

The proper assumption, once you know the failure rates in drug development, is no vaccine.  I'm being optimistic with saying maybe 5% of drug leads are actually approved, it's probably less.  The other coronavirus diseases did have vaccine leads and they all failed.  The first lead was 15 years ago.  There is still uncertainty if you can keep immunity.  Never mind about half the cases are asymptomatic.  In reality, we will come to accept the risk.

[4774Papa]

1 hour ago, sunny aurora said:

 

 

The proper assumption, once you know the failure rates in drug development, is no vaccine.  I'm being optimistic with saying maybe 5% of drug leads are actually approved, it's probably less.  The other coronavirus diseases did have vaccine leads and they all failed.  The first lead was 15 years ago.  There is still uncertainty if you can keep immunity.  Never mind about half the cases are asymptomatic.  In reality, we will come to accept the risk.

A lot of money is being spent on vaccine development.  I hope you are wrong about the vaccine.  Here is a promising view.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/01/u-s-government-may-have-vaccine-by-january-says-dr-fauci-n387266

 

[4774Papa]

Sorry, I see that I should not have posted a news article.  The article says that our expert Fauci says we are likely to have a vaccine early next year.

[sunny aurora]

He knows as well as everyone else in the industry, on average, it takes over a decade to develop a vaccine.  The fastest ever was still about 3-4 years.    A major part of vaccine development is waiting to see if you can keep and maintain immunity.  That is why vaccine trials are so long.  The vaccine leads for covid-19 are only in phase 1 trials.  They don't even look at efficacy.  That's not look at until phase 2.  

 

Then comes the other issue, do you want to take a half baked vaccine?  Remdesivir for all its issues was in development for Ebola.  It failed and now we have a vaccine for Ebola which is the newest approved vaccine in the US.  We know the drug's safety profile.  The issue is that it's an intravenous injection and complex to manufacture.  Use will be limited to hospitals and other related facilities.  It's not safe to have regular people give intravenous injections.

 

I'm being pragmatic about my expectations.  

[Joanne G.]

There are multiple parts to the question of whether there will be cruising in 2021.  What will the cruise lines be doing?  What will pricing be?  What will the airlines be doing and what will their pricing be?   How many and which ports will be welcoming cruise ships?  And, most importantly, what will we all feel like doing?   I am in the process of deciding between a refund or a FCC for my canceled NCL cruise.   If I decide on a credit, I will look at 2022 itineraries, some of which are now out.   I will sit on an existing Carnival reservation for late summer of 2021, which I made long before this crises, and will decide about it at the time of final payment.   But I don't want to make any other plans for 2021 and risk more turmoil and cancelations - including flight cancelations. 

[cowboygene]

Looks like life as we know it over.

Bummer, I’m sending my new swim trunks back to Amazon 

[cruisequeen4ever]

I still have our Christmas cruise booked but am really worried it’ll be impossible. I feel fairly confident 2021 summer will be a go, but really, who knows at this point. 

[vpearlkc]

40 minutes ago, cowboygene said:

Looks like life as we know it over.

Bummer, I’m sending my new swim trunks back to Amazon 

 

Don't send em back. Never been there but hear that Virginia Beach is great. Just be glad you don't live here in Missouri and have to swim at Osage Beach on Lake of the Ozarks. 

[cowboygene]

We’re at our home in Florida..beaches just opened back up, we’re playing golf and enjoying as much of this new reality as possible.

i am optimistic life as we know it will return.

This is the fifth end of the world catastrophe I have lived thru

[vpearlkc]

6 minutes ago, cowboygene said:

We’re at our home in Florida..beaches just opened back up, we’re playing golf and enjoying as much of this new reality as possible.

i am optimistic life as we know it will return.

This is the fifth end of the world catastrophe I have lived thru

 

[ckmedsec]

Lets keep up HOPE.  

It will help get us through this.  I am not cancelling my cruise for the summer of 2021 and I hope NCL does not cancel either.

Keep well everyone.

[hamrag]

9 hours ago, JT1962 said:

.....My best guess for when cruises will attempt sailing is August or September.....

 

 

I also would guess Aug/Sep 2021.....like everyone else, my guess is speculation....only time will tell.

[spanishguy1970]

it depends on the economy, whether cruise lines survive, people don't lose jobs or have money to go on Vacation. IMHO

[pokerpro5]

They can't cruise again until they solve the problem as to what to do about dangerous infectious diseases breaking out onboard.

 

Up until 2020, it was assumed they could simply dock at the nearest port and get these people taken care of.

 

Now we've learned that's not true.  Ports will refuse ships with dangerous viruses on them!

 

Until this can be rectified, I can't see cruising starting again.  There is no easy solution to this.  The countries flagging these ships have already stated they do NOT want this responsibility.

[sanger727]

If there’s no cruising in 2021 you may as well kiss every company in the industry goodbye. I personally still think there will be cruising in some form in 2020. 2021 is a no brainer.

[Corliss]

Very interesting site that shows the virus transmission rate by states.  Click on the tabs that show the numbers by week starting with 4 weeks ago.  Dramatic improvement....very encouraging.

 

https://rt.live/

 

 

[Corliss]

A fascinating discussion from a Noble prize winner who thinks that "lock down" has been a big mistake, death projections for the virus have been grossly over stated and that the growth rate of the epidemic was never exponential.  Very much worth watching.

 

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

 

[8420PR]

11 hours ago, Corliss said:

A fascinating discussion from a Noble prize winner who thinks that "lock down" has been a big mistake, death projections for the virus have been grossly over stated and that the growth rate of the epidemic was never exponential.  Very much worth watching.

 

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

 

The author of the article is giving you the perception that lock-down is a big mistake.  Prof  Levitt seems to just advocate a smarter lockdown policy, and largely aligned with the global direction (WHO: test test test).  My understanding of his model is that he is proposing that after a first big bang infection (e.g. New York, Northern Italy etc), that a second wave or peak is unlikely.  I hope he is correct.

 

If you google you can find many other articles where there are more direct quotations, and not the author's interpretation:

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate

 

Broadly speaking, there is alignment on what we need to do to get out of this and begin cruising again - we need to reduce the R rate (the number of people one infected person infects) to less than 1, so the number of cases keep on decreasing and the number of cases becomes manageable for testing and contact tracing.  While the lockdown in New York and California is saving tens of thousands of lives, clearly in Idaho it is having a much smaller impact (as there are less cases).   However there is some evidence from other countries that the behaviors it drives (e.g. washing hands, hygiene) continue after the lockdown has been lifted, preventing a NYC scale outbreak in these areas.

[momofmab]

Of course everything on these types of posts is broad speculation but short of the development of an effective vaccine, I don't see how cruising can resume at any point.  I can't see a scenario in which NYC will allow any cruise ship docking with any chance that infected passengers (symptomatic or asymptomatic) will be walking the streets, spreading the virus once again.  Other port cities in the world will likely follow suit.  

 

More wide speculation puts an available vaccine at January 2021, others say it's years away (I tend to agree with the latter).  Knowing what we know about the spotty effectiveness of each years' flu vaccine, it's hard to believe that any vaccine that's ready as soon as January 2021 will be a slam-dunk in effectively protecting against COVID 19 with no drastic side effects.  It will take several seasons of COVID to see if the vaccine is indeed effective.  And then there's the issue of whether to require everyone to get it.  People who are anxious to get back on a cruise ship may willingly get the vaccination, but there will still be many people who choose not to (just like many people choose not to get the flu shot each year).    

 

And then there are the investigations underway by various governments as to whether certain cruise lines "lied" about knowing that the virus was on board, and cruised anyway when they should have shut down - infecting passengers and in some cases, letting infected passengers disembark, furthering the spread.  True or not, these factors contributed to the public perception that the cruise industry was the villain.

 

My piece of speculation is that there's a lot to be sorted out before cruising can begin again.  Late 2021 possibly, with a quick turnaround on a vaccine - but that's with a lot of hope & optimism.

 

 

[Georgia_Peaches]

16 hours ago, Corliss said:

Very interesting site that shows the virus transmission rate by states.  Click on the tabs that show the numbers by week starting with 4 weeks ago.  Dramatic improvement....very encouraging.

 

https://rt.live/

 

 

Interesting data.  Thank you for sharing.

[Georgia_Peaches]

Yes, I believe there will be cruising in 2021 with or without a vaccine.  There is no guarantee that a vaccine will eradicate the virus and if cruising waits until science knows for sure, then the cruise lines will sink.  I believe that we will learn to live with the risk of Covid-19 and once past this learning curve, we'll all just get back to living.