Are we seeing the end of cruising?

[tntornadox]

3 minutes ago, By The Bay said:

"There are several reasons why herd immunity isn’t the answer to stopping the spread of the new coronavirus:

1. There isn’t yet a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. Vaccinations are the safest way to practice herd immunity in a population.
2. The research for antivirals and other medications to treat COVID-19 is ongoing.
3. Scientists don’t know if you can contract SARS-CoV-2 and develop COVID-19 more than once.
4. People who contract SARS-CoV-2 and develop COVID-19 can experience serious side effects. Severe cases can lead to death.
5. Doctors don’t yet know exactly why some people who contract SARS-CoV-2 develop severe COVID-19, while others do not.
6. Vulnerable members of society, such as older adults and people with some chronic health conditions, could get very sick if they’re exposed to this virus.
7. Otherwise healthy and younger people may become very ill with COVID-19.
8. Hospitals and healthcare systems may be overburdened if many people develop COVID-19 at the same time."

Source

 

I get and understand everything here. My point is people are going to go on about their lives whether the doctors want them to or not. People will get sick, many will die. But a growing percentage of the population (whether it's wise or not) seem to be done with quarantine. And in so doing will spread it around until eventually we've all had it. I understand immunity isn't guaranteed but if there is no immunity why hasn't there been recurrences on a large scale in countries that are now on the other side of this thing? Italy is reopening its economy as we speak and has shown no spike in cases.

[travelhound]

1 hour ago, tntornadox said:

 

I get and understand everything here. My point is people are going to go on about their lives whether the doctors want them to or not. People will get sick, many will die. But a growing percentage of the population (whether it's wise or not) seem to be done with quarantine. And in so doing will spread it around until eventually we've all had it. I understand immunity isn't guaranteed but if there is no immunity why hasn't there been recurrences on a large scale in countries that are now on the other side of this thing? Italy is reopening its economy as we speak and has shown no spike in cases.

Ultimately, herd immunity may be the only way out of the immediate crisis.

[dog]

3 hours ago, Coral said:

Through all this - I have realized I am no longer a die-hard cruiser. My thought was if I get on another ship or my next ship, it maybe a river cruise (I loved my last river cruise). 100 people is fine for size for me. I have no desire right now to get on a ship with 4000 other people.

Will you use your FCC from Princess if you ever get it?

[dog]

I have 2 cruises booked for 2021. Not sure if I will go ahead with them. Too much unknown and I am not going to worry about losing my $4500 in FCC from Princess. Our health & safety come first. 

[Pierlesscruisers]

3 hours ago, By The Bay said:

Therefore, the majority do get drunk?

 

No, that was a typo. <g> Sorry 'bout that. Should've read only the minority get drunk.

Tom

Edited May 9, 2020 by Pierlesscruisers

[caribill]

7 hours ago, weberman said:

 

Lazarus makes some interesting points! I had a bout of Norovirirus on one of my cruises and it was terrible.

 

 

 

Yes, Norovirus is bad for those who get it. After the common cold, per the CDC it is the second most common illness in the USA with around 20,000,000 cases a year in the USA alone. https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/trends-outbreaks/burden-US.html

 

Yes, some of those 20,000,000 cases do occur on a cruise ship, but:

 

In the US, the world’s largest source of passengers, from 2008 to 2014, 74 million passengers sailed on cruise ships in the Vessel Sanitation Program’s jurisdiction. Only 129,678, 0.002 percent of passengers met the definition for acute gastrointestinal illness and only one in 10 were part of a norovirus outbreak. Ashore in the US the rate is 6.0 percent.

 

In February, 45 voyages arrived in the Port of Sydney bringing almost 140,000 people. The average rate per cruise of gastrointestinal illness was 0.19 percent or 1.9 case per 1,000 people. The incidence ashore is over three times this.

 

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/a-cruise-liner-captain-s-perspective-on-recent-events

 

Note that over the seven years the CDC says around 140,000,000* million people in the USA had the norovirus.   *20,000,000 a year

 

Yet cruise ships get the publicity when over that same period there were 130,000 people had gastrointestinal illness on cruse ships and not all of those were caused by norovirus.

[Coral]

7 hours ago, dog said:

Will you use your FCC from Princess if you ever get it?

Good question - that assumes I will eventually get it!

 

Right now I am feeling no. We will see how I feel a year from now.  

[Coral]

7 hours ago, dog said:

I have 2 cruises booked for 2021. Not sure if I will go ahead with them. Too much unknown and I am not going to worry about losing my $4500 in FCC from Princess. Our health & safety come first. 

I am not going to worry about losing my FCC either. This trip was over my 50th and hit some ports I would never hit on land vacations. For that reason it was appealing. Though my best memories of vacations have been on land trips.

[Musky Ike]

We will cruise Princess again if possible, if for no other reason than to use up all the darn FCC and gift cards.

[AF-1]

Is Princess extending cruise credit dates?  Is it for 12,18, or 24 months?  

[PrincessLuver]

10 hours ago, tntornadox said:

 

I get and understand everything here. My point is people are going to go on about their lives whether the doctors want them to or not. People will get sick, many will die. But a growing percentage of the population (whether it's wise or not) seem to be done with quarantine. And in so doing will spread it around until eventually we've all had it. I understand immunity isn't guaranteed but if there is no immunity why hasn't there been recurrences on a large scale in countries that are now on the other side of this thing? Italy is reopening its economy as we speak and has shown no spike in cases.

 

It is estimated that 70% of a population has to be infected to achieve herd immunity.  Since COVID-19 is said to be 10 times more deadly then the seasonal flu the death toll would be staggering for the US to obtain herd immunity without doing anything else.  

 

Vaccines help accelerate herd immunity by basically infecting the population in a safe way.  Some countries that are doing opening of their economies are seeing spikes already in cases again such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Sweden.  Also, already in state like Georgia where the economy is open they have had a 40% increase in COVID-19 cases recently.  Other states are not reporting the full extent of COVID-19 cases and deaths in their state to keep people in the dark.

 

There are still places in the US where people are following their state guidelines and sheltering at home.  Polls show that most Americans support going slow and not everyone is bothered by doing what is asked of them to help the broader community as a whole.

 

The US is not like countries that have had success in successfully surpassing COVID-19.  We have not had a strict shelter in place policy for the whole nation.  We do not have a vast and extensive testing program to know what is really going on.  We do not have a tracking program to identify cases quickly and let other know they have been around someone who was infected.  The way we are acting seems like we are telling people to put on a blind fold and that it is OK to cross the freeway safely now and you will not get hurt and make it to the other side of the road unscathed.

 

We do have a lot of COVID-19 deniers in this country and an incoherent approach to dealing with this virus.  People can hope all they want that COVID-19 is going to go away all by itself but we are probably a long way from returning to normal as our cases continue to rise and death tolls increase daily in the US.  We will see if the 200,000 a day cases and 3,000 deaths a day materialize by June 1 if we continue to do less and less as projected by some.  I for one do not want to play Russian Roulette with my life.

 

I am sure other countries are really going to want tourists from a country that does not seem to take COVID-19 seriously and has not been successful in containing COVID-19.  Cruise on!!

 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by PrincessLuver

[Coral]

1 hour ago, AF-1 said:

Is Princess extending cruise credit dates?  Is it for 12,18, or 24 months?  

I wouldn't know. Mine hasn't been posted yet.

[dog]

1 hour ago, AF-1 said:

Is Princess extending cruise credit dates?  Is it for 12,18, or 24 months?  

My FCC expires Dec 31/21

[HappyInVan]

11 hours ago, tntornadox said:

I understand immunity isn't guaranteed but if there is no immunity why hasn't there been recurrences on a large scale in countries that are now on the other side of this thing? Italy is reopening its economy as we speak and has shown no spike in cases.

 

Because it is still early? Because they are reopening slowly? Because distancing is still required?

 

There's a number of people still talking about herd immunity. Boris Johnson used to be a believer. Until he was told that herd immunity could cost 400k UK lives.

 

Boris tried to U-turn. Too late. Death toll over 30k and still rising. Translated to a population the size of USA (330m), that's 150k dead and still rising. 

 

For perspective, that's far more than the combined death toll from foreign wars since WW 2. How many years of traffic fatality? How many years of firearm deaths in the USA?

 

There's a lot of bravado talk of saving the economy. But, once the disease digs into a community, everyone will be sheltering at home. So much for the economy.

 

What about cruising? Say goodbye to cruising until there is a vaccine.

 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by HappyInVan

[ontheweb]

11 hours ago, By The Bay said:

"There are several reasons why herd immunity isn’t the answer to stopping the spread of the new coronavirus:

1. There isn’t yet a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. Vaccinations are the safest way to practice herd immunity in a population.
2. The research for antivirals and other medications to treat COVID-19 is ongoing.
3. Scientists don’t know if you can contract SARS-CoV-2 and develop COVID-19 more than once.
4. People who contract SARS-CoV-2 and develop COVID-19 can experience serious side effects. Severe cases can lead to death.
5. Doctors don’t yet know exactly why some people who contract SARS-CoV-2 develop severe COVID-19, while others do not.
6. Vulnerable members of society, such as older adults and people with some chronic health conditions, could get very sick if they’re exposed to this virus.
7. Otherwise healthy and younger people may become very ill with COVID-19.
8. Hospitals and healthcare systems may be overburdened if many people develop COVID-19 at the same time."

Source

Just dealing with point #8. The Governor of NY state begged for a naval hospital ship for NY City as the predictions for the need for hospital beds was so dire. He got it, and a few weeks later it was gone as it was not needed at all, having sat there basically unused. And remember this is in the epicenter for the entire world for the virus at the present time.

[AF-1]

46 minutes ago, CarelessAndConfused said:

 

Sail by 5/1/22.

 

 

Thank you.  Have a nice weekend

[travelhound]

My family plans to cruise again next winter.  Hopefully we will be able to use our refund and FCC on a Princess cruise.

[HappyInVan]

55 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

Just dealing with point #8. The Governor of NY state begged for a naval hospital ship for NY City as the predictions for the need for hospital beds was so dire. He got it, and a few weeks later it was gone as it was not needed at all, having sat there basically unused. And remember this is in the epicenter for the entire world for the virus at the present time.

 

To jog your memory, the hospital ship was intended to be used for non-covid cases. In the end, it was not needed because many sick people choose not to go to hospitals. Or, ambulances were not available. Resulting in more deaths from cardiac failure etc. 

 

BTW, there is a study of 'excess deaths' in Italy etc. It estimated that the extra community death was two to four times higher than the official covid number.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lbsbusinessstrategyreview/2020/04/06/how-many-people-have-really-died-from-covid-19/#68a1363d67f7

 

Let's do some numbers for the analytically-challenged.

 

New York state (pop 20m) did lock-down and was able to keep the covid death toll to 21k. San Francisco (881k) went into a stricter shelter-in-place and had 32 deaths. Lets use that as the worst and best scenarios.

 

Governor Cuomo cites one anti-body study as estimating that 14% of the state had been infected. Assuming that 56% infection is needed for herd immunity, that extrapolates up to 84k deaths. Scaling up to the entire population of the USA, that's 1,386,000 deaths in America.

 

Let's scale up for San Francisco;  that's 11,982 deaths. That's a different of 115x (1,374,000 deaths).

 

I hope that when you talk about herd immunity, you understand the implications.
 

Edited May 9, 2020 by HappyInVan

[PrincessLuver]

57 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

Just dealing with point #8. The Governor of NY state begged for a naval hospital ship for NY City as the predictions for the need for hospital beds was so dire. He got it, and a few weeks later it was gone as it was not needed at all, having sat there basically unused. And remember this is in the epicenter for the entire world for the virus at the present time.

 

New York asked the Federal Government for assistance and POTUS dispatched the USS Comfort to NYC as a form of help.  The USS Comfort was sent to treate non-COVID-19 hospital cases.  Because NYC hospitals were so overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases they were not dealing with basically non-COVID-19 cases.  Hence the ship was really not helping to begin with in dealing with COVID-19 cases so it was really useless so to speak of for NYC's needs.  

Edited May 9, 2020 by PrincessLuver

[gmjc2]

10 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Yes, Norovirus is bad for those who get it. After the common cold, per the CDC it is the second most common illness in the USA with around 20,000,000 cases a year in the USA alone. https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/trends-outbreaks/burden-US.html

 

Yes, some of those 20,000,000 cases do occur on a cruise ship, but:

 

In the US, the world’s largest source of passengers, from 2008 to 2014, 74 million passengers sailed on cruise ships in the Vessel Sanitation Program’s jurisdiction. Only 129,678, 0.002 percent of passengers met the definition for acute gastrointestinal illness and only one in 10 were part of a norovirus outbreak. Ashore in the US the rate is 6.0 percent.

 

In February, 45 voyages arrived in the Port of Sydney bringing almost 140,000 people. The average rate per cruise of gastrointestinal illness was 0.19 percent or 1.9 case per 1,000 people. The incidence ashore is over three times this.

 

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/a-cruise-liner-captain-s-perspective-on-recent-events

 

Note that over the seven years the CDC says around 140,000,000* million people in the USA had the norovirus.   *20,000,000 a year

 

Yet cruise ships get the publicity when over that same period there were 130,000 people had gastrointestinal illness on cruse ships and not all of those were caused by norovirus.

The most importent point here is that people do not die of Norovirus!!!

[gmjc2]

1 hour ago, ontheweb said:

Just dealing with point #8. The Governor of NY state begged for a naval hospital ship for NY City as the predictions for the need for hospital beds was so dire. He got it, and a few weeks later it was gone as it was not needed at all, having sat there basically unused. And remember this is in the epicenter for the entire world for the virus at the present time.

It was needed but red tape and CDC  recommendation  not to use it for Virus patients. So the " other than virus" patients were not transfered there due to all kinds of screw ups. Pardon my french! Including insurance hold ups for ambulance trips!!

[gmjc2]

"Until the cruise lines can guarantee that you will not have a chance of getting deathly sick on a ship."

 

There can be no such guarantee!   We take our chances and act with caution that's all we can do!

[ontheweb]

1 hour ago, PrincessLuver said:

 

New York asked the Federal Government for assistance and POTUS dispatched the USS Comfort to NYC as a form of help.  The USS Comfort was sent to treate non-COVID-19 hospital cases.  Because NYC hospitals were so overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases they were not dealing with basically non-COVID-19 cases.  Hence the ship was really not helping to begin with in dealing with COVID-19 cases so it was really useless so to speak of for NYC's needs.  

If the hospitals really had the number of cases from this new virus that were predicted, they would have needed the ship. But they did not nearly have the number predicted even though NY City and its suburbs are the epicenter of the pandemic.

 

There are still cases that hospitals are needed for even with non-emergency surgeries put off. For example, child births, broken bones, and others. If the hospitals had needed the outrageous number of beds for the coronavirus that were predicted, there would have been a great need for that ship.

[DaveSJ711]

5 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

If the hospitals really had the number of cases from this new virus that were predicted, they would have needed the ship. But they did not nearly have the number predicted even though NY City and its suburbs are the epicenter of the pandemic.

 

There are still cases that hospitals are needed for even with non-emergency surgeries put off. For example, child births, broken bones, and others. If the hospitals had needed the outrageous number of beds for the coronavirus that were predicted, there would have been a great need for that ship.

 

You seem to want to minimize the virus's impact on NYC and New York State hospitals.  Why is that?  Gov. Coumo and the medical leadership in NY would certainly disagree with you.

[PrincessLuver]

34 minutes ago, DaveSJ711 said:

 

You seem to want to minimize the virus's impact on NYC and New York State hospitals.  Why is that?  Gov. Coumo and the medical leadership in NY would certainly disagree with you.

 

I agree.....it is truly amazing that we now have so many people in the USA denying that COVID-19 is really a very serious disease and that the medical community is just inflating the numbers to get more money for them.  

 

One of many probable reasons why daily COVID-19 cases and death totals will just keep climbing in the USA and probably cause the return of cruising to be even less likely in the future.

Edited May 9, 2020 by PrincessLuver