Port of Galveston says Carnival will be able to ask for proff of vaccine under the new Texas law

[cruisegus]

35 minutes ago, Liljo22 said:

Cruise Lines may threat all passengers as unvaxed to avoid this conflict.  

not for myself, I was socially responsible and was vaccinated.  Why would you punish me?  if your going to punish someone, it should be those responsible. 

 

Believe me this happened to me in the Army, when you punished the whole Company for the actions of one, the rest of the company took care of the issue themselves.  Not what we want to be happening here.  If your going to put un-reasonable restriction on someone, (ie masking and testing) it should be those that need the restrictions applied, not the innocent and socially responsible.

Edited June 10, 2021 by cruisegus

[firefly333]

1 hour ago, Keys2Heaven said:

And, from what I've read, children and those who can't be vaccinated for a particular reason would be exempt from the testing fees.
 

What would be the point of imposing fees and then waving them? You really think carnival would get into deciding who had valid reasons for not getting vaxxed and exempt them. .. I'd say this wouldnt happen. If there is a fee for tests and you dont have proof then you pay. KISS. 

[dandeck]

5 hours ago, TNcruising02 said:

Well, actually flying on an airplane for hours on end with untested people was the last place I wanted to be before getting vaccinated.  People can still fly untested and unvaccinated.  You could be sitting right next to a covid positive person for hours.  The list goes on with untested people everywhere.

 Cruising with TESTED unvaccinated people wouldn't cause me any worry.

 

Tested when, how long before boarding, which testing method?  One is much more accurate than the other, but takes days.  Plenty of opportunity for exposure while awaiting results...  Testing prior may be ok in some settings other than ships, but having been on numerous cruises, vaccinated passengers are a must.   Not to mention the horrible position the other passengers, crew, ports of call...Hell, the entire industry would be in if an outbreak occurred.  Simply no way to allow unvaccinated folks on board.  Just MHO.  

[dandeck]

1 hour ago, BlerkOne said:

Carnival mentions threshold termination

https://www.carnival.com/travel-alerts

 

 

Yet another HUGE reason to require all passengers be vaccinated!!  

[BlerkOne]

1 hour ago, Keys2Heaven said:

I look at it like this...we've been told that herd immunity is achieved somewhere around 70 - 80% from vaccinations or those who are naturally immune from previous exposure. So, a cruise ship sailing 95% vaccinated should have enough folks onboard to prevent a major outbreak.

Herd immunity is not a percentage of vaccinated, but related to how many people a covid person infects. Herd immunity can be lost if people don't follow basic instructions.

[Joe817]

1 hour ago, cruisegus said:

not for myself, I was socially responsible and was vaccinated.  Why would you punish me?  if your going to punish someone, it should be those responsible. 

 

Believe me this happened to me in the Army, when you punished the whole Company for the actions of one, the rest of the company took care of the issue themselves.  Not what we want to be happening here.  If your going to put un-reasonable restriction on someone, (ie masking and testing) it should be those that need the restrictions applied, not the innocent and socially responsible.

Amen Artillery!  I was at Ft .Sill way back then. Only in this case, the vocal minority may have a foothold on the majority. I pray reason will prevail. I agree with everything you say.  👍

[JMKreno]

1 hour ago, cruisegus said:

why should anyone be exempted from the fees if un-vaccinated, being un-vaccinated poses the same risk no mater who you are, period.

Uh, is this a serious response? If you have full access and ability to be vaccinated and refuse to it's your choice to suffer the consequences of that decision. If you have no ability to get a vaccine that is through no fault of your own why should you be punished? Also, if I did my civic duty of "not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" why then should I be punished for helping the collective good? Why should I carry dead weight of those riding my coat tails? 

Edited June 10, 2021 by JMKreno

[firefly333]

37 minutes ago, JMKreno said:

Uh, is this a serious response? If you have full access and ability to be vaccinated and refuse to it's your choice to suffer the consequences of that decision. If you have no ability to get a vaccine that is through no fault of your own why should you be punished? Also, if I did my civic duty of "not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" why then should I be punished for helping the collective good? Why should I carry dead weight of those riding my coat tails? 

I'm sure his was a serious response. If you dont want to pay for testing then it's your choice and you are denied boarding. So far only for july. 

[cruisingguy007]

2 hours ago, firefly333 said:

What would be the point of imposing fees and then waving them? You really think carnival would get into deciding who had valid reasons for not getting vaxxed and exempt them. .. I'd say this wouldnt happen. If there is a fee for tests and you dont have proof then you pay. KISS. 

 

I agree but I believe kids specifically, who are not yet eligible for a vaccine, will have their fees waived or subsidized by the others who choose to skip the vaccine and deal with the headache. One major line has already said on record that kids will not have to pay. I suspect the others will follow suit.       

[firefly333]

5 minutes ago, cruisingguy007 said:

 

I agree but I believe kids specifically, who are not yet eligible for a vaccine, will have their fees waived or subsidized by the others who choose to skip the vaccine and deal with the headache. One major line has already said on record that kids will not have to pay. I suspect the others will follow suit.       

As I said july only. Families are already booked and carnival has to par down to 5% unvaccinated. We dont even know there is a fee. So far there is a form to fill out to be part of the allowed 5%. For july.

 

No one knows how they will be picked or what the other protocols will be. This isnt a long term plan, this is july for Galveston submit your name to become part of the 5%. They will tell you the protocols. If you already have issues with paying for a test to board, idk. Glad I'm not carnival. 

[mpdog42]

16 hours ago, jsglow said:

I can assure you that the speed limit on the road adjacent to your residence wasn't established via a Federal, State, or even Local VOTE of the governing body.  It was set via delegation to the Transportation Dept.  And the officer that writes you a ticket is reliant on that.  👮‍♂️

What????

[ontheweb]

9 hours ago, bamaone said:

What is the threshold?

I've been asking the same question for quite awhile. Is it a specific number, or a percentage? Is there a separate threshold for passengers and crew?

[Joebucks]

14 hours ago, ProgRockCruiser said:

Of course the cruise lines want to go the fully vaxxed route (or have all of the CDC roadblocks removed and cruise without any restrictions/social distancing regardless of vax status).

 

More of the ladder. Most cruise lines don't want to mandate anything. (Except for those who cater to much older crowds and longer itineraries) The reason most do, is path of least resistance, at least from the CDC. 

 

12 hours ago, dandeck said:

Who in their right mind would board a cruise ship where the vaccine is not required??!   We have been on tons of cruises.  Diamond.  No way in hades are we boarding unless required.  Cruise ships are the LAST place you wanna be if not vaccinated.  

 

I was on one of the last cruises. Cruises were halted the day I got back. COVID was alive and well. You'd think it was a completely different planet judging by the panic you see here on CC. Few really cared. No one got sick to our knowledge. This was also before we knew much of anything about the virus or had any immunities in place. Couple that with normal life returning all around us. The current panic is one we have created.

[ontheweb]

 

It looks like Carnival intends to go the vaccinated route for Galveston despite what the new Texas law is and what the governor has said. They think they have found a loophole in the law.

 

Despite new law, Carnival moving forward with vaccine requirements in Galveston | Local News | The Daily News (galvnews.com)

[ProgRockCruiser]

1 hour ago, mpdog42 said:

What????

Local speed limits (like in residential neighborhoods) are often set by the governing Traffic Dept, in accordance with an overarching policy that was voted on and passed by the local Government (city or county council, whatever).

 

Changing the speed limit on a local city street is not something typically voted on at county/city council meetings.  They are perhaps "voted" on my some committee or sub-committee, but are not passed as grandiosely as a "law", but rather something that is managed in compliance with the bylaws.

 

For highways, even those are usually managed by a governing board, vs a local government.  A section of toll road here in the Orlando area recently had a speed limit change:

 

"Board members with the Central Florida Expressway Authority voted unanimously to increase the speed limit"

 

Not passed as a "law", simply in compliance with the various paper trails that stem from the much braoder actual "laws" in the books.

 

The only time local government councils get involved, as far as I have observed, is if there is a concern about a speed limit needing to be lowered/adjusted, or other traffic control measures, and they then vote on asking the traffic dept to do a study, report findings, and enact whatever is deemed appropriate (perhaps via a sub-committee).

 

The speed limits are set by implementation of one or more laws, but not in such detail as being an actual individual "law" for each specific speed limit zone.

Edited June 10, 2021 by ProgRockCruiser

[Joe817]

4 hours ago, ontheweb said:

 

It looks like Carnival intends to go the vaccinated route for Galveston despite what the new Texas law is and what the governor has said. They think they have found a loophole in the law.

 

Despite new law, Carnival moving forward with vaccine requirements in Galveston | Local News | The Daily News (galvnews.com)

Another encouraging article. Thanks for posting otw! 👍   How in the world did you come across this article with you living way up there in New York?

[naxer]

13 hours ago, bamaone said:

I tried to search for CDC cruise termination threshold  but I couldn’t find any information or examples.

Taking a shot in the dark, it will always have an element of fluidity.  That is probably one of the things complicating the work of the cruise lines and the CDC.  How large is the ship? how big is the quarantine section? how many people are unvaccinated? how many people have it? how sick are they? who has been in contact with whom? where is the cruise in the itinerary?  Is panic setting in?  The benefit of vaccination is that it lessens the chances of the extenuating circumstances coming into play for a difficult decision. If I never have to be affected by the phrase "abundance of caution" again, I'll be happy.

Edited June 10, 2021 by naxer

[ontheweb]

21 minutes ago, Joe817 said:

Another encouraging article. Thanks for posting otw! 👍   How in the world did you come across this article with you living way up there in New York?

Easy, google is your friend.

[cyclist_guy1]

29 minutes ago, Joe817 said:

Another encouraging article. Thanks for posting otw! 👍   How in the world did you come across this article with you living way up there in New York?

new york has better access to google 😀

[Keys2Heaven]

14 hours ago, cruisegus said:

why should anyone be exempted from the fees if un-vaccinated, being un-vaccinated poses the same risk no mater who you are, period.

You should address this with the cruise lines then. This isn't my opinion.

[Keys2Heaven]

13 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

Herd immunity is not a percentage of vaccinated, but related to how many people a covid person infects. Herd immunity can be lost if people don't follow basic instructions.

But that isn't what's been communicated to the public. We've constantly been told that herd immunity is reached when a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated or has been previously exposed and now has antibodies.

[ProgRockCruiser]

5 minutes ago, Keys2Heaven said:

But that isn't what's been communicated to the public. We've constantly been told that herd immunity is reached when a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated or has been previously exposed and now has antibodies.

Naturally, it has been somewhat simplified in the mass media descriptions.

 

Herd immunity works by having a significantly large portion of the population vaccinated or otherwise immune such that the disease doesn't have viable vectors from host to host, and dies out, except in small pockets which may maintain the viability of the disease indefinitely.  But it takes time after reaching the "threshold" of the useful amount of herd immunity - the disease still spreads among the non-immune, just slowly, and at a rate of less than one new infection per infection.

 

And it is a not an on/off switch: if a reasonably "complete" herd immunity model is achieved at 80%, then at 75% there is still some slowing down of the disease vectors compared to, say, 65%.  And at 90% or 95% coverage, the herd immunity factor is even stronger, and wipes out the disease even faster.

 

But if you have outside sources of possible hosts that are not immune entering your community, some possibly actively infected, then your herd immunity is compromised continually.

 

Herd immunity concepts don't really apply to short-term subsets of populations that happen to be co-located, like 3000 people on a ship.  Herd immunity is a longer term whole-community model.

 

If herd immunity in the general populace is effective at, say, 80%, it doesn't mean that a cruise ship with 80% immunized will have zero cases.  It means if you kept that specific sub-population isolated from the rest of the world for a reasonable amount of time in disease-vector timelines (say a few months), and minimized interacts as much as possible, it would likely die out (but it would still likely infect some of the 20% originally not immunized).

 

[ontheweb]

17 minutes ago, ProgRockCruiser said:

Naturally, it has been somewhat simplified in the mass media descriptions.

 

Herd immunity works by having a significantly large portion of the population vaccinated or otherwise immune such that the disease doesn't have viable vectors from host to host, and dies out, except in small pockets which may maintain the viability of the disease indefinitely.  But it takes time after reaching the "threshold" of the useful amount of herd immunity - the disease still spreads among the non-immune, just slowly, and at a rate of less than one new infection per infection.

 

And it is a not an on/off switch: if a reasonably "complete" herd immunity model is achieved at 80%, then at 75% there is still some slowing down of the disease vectors compared to, say, 65%.  And at 90% or 95% coverage, the herd immunity factor is even stronger, and wipes out the disease even faster.

 

But if you have outside sources of possible hosts that are not immune entering your community, some possibly actively infected, then your herd immunity is compromised continually.

 

Herd immunity concepts don't really apply to short-term subsets of populations that happen to be co-located, like 3000 people on a ship.  Herd immunity is a longer term whole-community model.

 

If herd immunity in the general populace is effective at, say, 80%, it doesn't mean that a cruise ship with 80% immunized will have zero cases.  It means if you kept that specific sub-population isolated from the rest of the world for a reasonable amount of time in disease-vector timelines (say a few months), and minimized interacts as much as possible, it would likely die out (but it would still likely infect some of the 20% originally not immunized).

 

Thanks for the explanation of a term that is casually thrown around but not really well understood,

[BlerkOne]

37 minutes ago, Keys2Heaven said:

But that isn't what's been communicated to the public. We've constantly been told that herd immunity is reached when a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated or has been previously exposed and now has antibodies.

In a nut shell, herd immunity is when each case of covid, spreads to less than one person, on average. When that happens the number of cases approaches zero, although it may never reach zero.

 

Once reached, herd immunity can be lost if enough people are careless and each case results in more than 1 new case, on average. Then the total number of cases increases.

 

When someone gives a percentage of vaccinated, they are estimating based on a number of assumptions.

[Eli_6]

Honestly, I think Carnival is probably going to use the five percent almost entirely on children baring some exceptional circumstance simply because if they do contract the virus, it is rarely severe in them and transmission from child-to-child and child-to-adults has been found to be extremely low even when physical distancing is not possible.

 

A North Carolina study, found low transmission in schools and no instances of child-to-adult transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during a time when community transmission was high. Zimmerman KO, Akinboyo IC, Brookhart A, et al. Incidence and Secondary Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Schools. Pediatrics (2021). Students were required to wear masks, and the schools implemented handwashing, daily symptom monitoring and temperature checks, contact tracing, and 14-day quarantine for close contacts. Ibid. Students did not maintain a 6 feet distance. Ibid.

 

In another study of the 94 pre-K–12 schools in the Chicago Archdiocese, the largest private school system in the United States, the positivity rate for students and staff participating in in-person learning was half that of general community spread where masks were used and was only 0.2 percent.  Yung CF, Kam KQ, Nadua KD, et al. Novel coronavirus 2019 transmission risk in educational settings. Clin Infect Dis. (2020). 

 

Several other studies also showed almost no spread by young children where:

 

-Gold JA, Gettings JR, Kimball A, et al. Clusters of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Elementary School Educators and Students in One School District — Georgia, December 2020–January 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021;70:289–292. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7008e4external icon.
-Ohio Schools COVID-19 Evaluation Research Team. Ohio Schools COVID-19 Evaluation Final Report. January 2021. https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/responsible/schools/OSCE_evaluation.pdfpdf iconexternal icon.
-Hershow RB et al. Low SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Elementary Schools – Salt Lake County, Utah, December 3, December 3, 2020–January 31, 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021; March 19, 2021.

 

In terms of safety, under 12 unvaccinated kids are a very low threat to other cruisers.