No masks required for crew

[mfs2k]

11 hours ago, SusieAV8R said:

Yes, Celebrity needs to get over the mandatory wearing of masks  There is no absolute safety, either on cruise ships or grocery stores.   AND cloth masks don't stop viruses from entering one's body!

Your mask protects me. Not you. 

[mfs2k]

7 hours ago, Moonarino said:

Way back in the spring of 2020 I found two conflicting articles on the NIH web regarding cloth masks. That was and is the gist of the problem (for all of us) right there, not to mention even earlier conflicting words.

In the Spring of 2020 there were no masks available to purchase. My friends and neighbors made cloth masks for us and we knew it wasn’t as good as a real mask but we wore them to protect others when out if that’s all we had. 
I had one N95 mask which lasted a year.  I kept it in a bag and wore it once a week when I went to the supermarket. 
I didn’t get Covid for the first two years. 

[RichYak]

2 hours ago, lawk said:

I continue to wear an N95 mask in public places. I will likely do so when possible on my cruise. It is my personal choice and just as I do not tell others what to do, I hope others are as courteous and do not make negative comments to me. 

No one here is being critical of those wearing proper masks like you do.

[Moonarino]

2 hours ago, mfs2k said:

Your mask protects me. Not you. 

Depends on who you ask. Seniors were and are advised by some to wear masks to protect themselves.

 

I used to wear N95 masks when mowing the lawn because I'm mildly allergic to grass molds, pollens, etc. That was until 2020 when (as you mentioned) it got to be so hard to find any masks at all. It didn't take long to use up my lawn-mowing stash of N95s, but then my lady found cloth masks (which I refused to wear) on Amazon and in some local stores I think.

 

I'm sure this was another reason cloth masks got to be so "popular" for a long while, because those could be bought (or made) when paper masks couldn't.

 

[Moonarino]

11 hours ago, NMTraveller said:

. . . If you are not wearing N95 why are you wearing one?

 

Back when so many were yelling "mask up or die!" (or at least "or stay out!") the availability of N95s had quickly dropped to zero, and people had to wear whatever they could get their hands on. This of course led to a general regression in knowledge (please forgive the harshness, call it tongue-in-cheek) to the extent that any mask was better than nothing. That thinking still pervades.

 

3 hours ago, lawk said:

I continue to wear an N95 mask in public places. I will likely do so when possible on my cruise. It is my personal choice and just as I do not tell others what to do, I hope others are as courteous and do not make negative comments to me. 

 

In this topic especially, one shouldn't take much of anything personally because this subject (and everything close to it) was so badly misinformed from the outset of covid and ongoing for 2 years. It piled up and piled up and piled up. (I remember when people generally knew what a natural vaccine was, and that it brought us an equivalent of "natural immunity" which was a very good thing to have.)

 

These days a lot of compassion toward our fellow humanity is called for, because for too long it's been so dee-ay-em hard to know what the real truth is.

[SusieV]

Confirmed from Solstice; masks no longer required as of Oct 1.

[wineoclock]

I wore a mask for the first time in months yesterday. I don’t usually. Was on the tube & rammed Like sardines. The smell was horrid. So fished in my pocket & luckily found one. Wasn’t due to covid that I wore one though just the smell was so awful. 

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

8 hours ago, SusieAV8R said:

(4) don't remove to eat or drink

 

So you protect yourself from the virus but you'll dehydrate and starve?

 

I'm not anti-mask...just trying to understand how you're supposed to exist without eating or drinking.

[pickle11]

9 hours ago, SusieV said:

Confirmed from Solstice; masks no longer required as of Oct 1.

Correct. On the ship now.  Very few crew members wearing them.  Probably more passengers are wearing them.

[pickle11]

On 10/3/2022 at 6:09 AM, mfs2k said:

Your mask protects me. Not you. 

No it doesn't.  Like my fart doesn't protect your nose.

[prmssk]

Does anyone know how often crew are tested these days? I hope the easing of mask restrictions which I think is great also means an easing of testing for crew. 

[lawk]

22 hours ago, RichYak said:

No one here is being critical of those wearing proper masks like you do.

I am concerned that the anti-mask rhetoric that is common on land will extend to the ship. That would make for a very uncomfortable cruise. I do not tell others what to do and hope for the same courtesy in return. 

[wrk2cruise]

I have worn a KN95 mask onboard for the 12 sailings since the restart.  Most of my sailings have been B2B so I was being extra cautious to not have to disembark for my subsequent sailing.   Only once very early on did one person approach our group "giving his opinion". 

 

Lately even though in the much smaller minority it seems to be taken very much in stride as it should be.

[yvonneh]

Yay! Can't wait to see all those smiles! 😃

 

[canderson]

2 hours ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

 

So you protect yourself from the virus but you'll dehydrate and starve?

 

I'm not anti-mask...just trying to understand how you're supposed to exist without eating or drinking.

By not doing so in the company of others.  Seems pretty obvious.

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

12 minutes ago, canderson said:

By not doing so in the company of others.  Seems pretty obvious.

 

So just stay home and isolated.

 

We all have to make choices and decisions. All of life is a risk - you can get hit by a runaway car while you're walking down the sidewalk, or you can do everything right health-wise and still end up with cancer. Each person can decide what they are comfortable with in all situations.

 

If someone is so freaked out that even removing their mask to eat or drink is an issue, cruising is not for them right now. If ever. Unless they're renting a private yacht where they supply the crew from people they know are 100% virus free. Then cruising would be ok I guess.

[canderson]

1 minute ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

 

So just stay home and isolated.

 

We all have to make choices and decisions. All of life is a risk - you can get hit by a runaway car while you're walking down the sidewalk, or you can do everything right health-wise and still end up with cancer. Each person can decide what they are comfortable with in all situations.

 

If someone is so freaked out that even removing their mask to eat or drink is an issue, cruising is not for them right now. If ever. Unless they're renting a private yacht where they supply the crew from people they know are 100% virus free. Then cruising would be ok I guess.

Just elaborating on @SusieAV8R 's list of best practices.  If someone wants to go the mask route with any expectation of actually minimizing exposure, each item is important. 

 

I'd add to that list by noting that the mask must be tightly fitted.  If normal breathing isn't causing the material to flex in and out, it probably has gaps that defeat the purpose.  

 

As for us, we mask nowhere that it isn't required.  So you're preaching to the wrong audience.  Understanding their proper use in order to be effective doesn't imply a belief that masks are always necessary.

[lawk]

2 minutes ago, canderson said:

Just elaborating on @SusieAV8R 's list of best practices.  If someone wants to go the mask route with any expectation of actually minimizing exposure, each item is important. 

 

I'd add to that list by noting that the mask must be tightly fitted.  If normal breathing isn't causing the material to flex in and out, it probably has gaps that defeat the purpose.  

 

As for us, we mask nowhere that it isn't required.  So you're preaching to the wrong audience.  Understanding their proper use in order to be effective doesn't imply a belief that masks are always necessary.

No one should be preaching. This is the rhetoric that has no place on a cruise message board where people are looking for information, not judgment. 

[mfs2k]

16 minutes ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

 

So just stay home and isolated.

 

We all have to make choices and decisions. All of life is a risk - you can get hit by a runaway car while you're walking down the sidewalk, or you can do everything right health-wise and still end up with cancer. Each person can decide what they are comfortable with in all situations.

 

If someone is so freaked out that even removing their mask to eat or drink is an issue, cruising is not for them right now. If ever. Unless they're renting a private yacht where they supply the crew from people they know are 100% virus free. Then cruising would be ok I guess.

 

Agreed.  

I was at a very busy casino recently and saw a woman with a mask and a face shield walking around the casino.  I was thinking: "If you're that afraid or vulnerable to the virus, perhaps you should restrict your gambling to a mobile app and not be in a casino with 5,000 other people.  

 

If you're really concerned about getting Covid right now, you may want to stay off cruise ships.

[prmssk]

23 minutes ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

 

So just stay home and isolated.

 

We all have to make choices and decisions. All of life is a risk - you can get hit by a runaway car while you're walking down the sidewalk, or you can do everything right health-wise and still end up with cancer. Each person can decide what they are comfortable with in all situations.

 

If someone is so freaked out that even removing their mask to eat or drink is an issue, cruising is not for them right now. If ever. Unless they're renting a private yacht where they supply the crew from people they know are 100% virus free. Then cruising would be ok I guess.

I think the point of this chain of comments wasn't to try and tell people they need to wear a mask.  The comment was about how to make masks truly effective for those that do wear them.  For those that choose (or are required) to wear a mask, you negate your goal of wearing a mask if you then take it off in a crowded room to eat and drink.  This is the part that has made me wonder throughout the restart about the effectiveness of passengers wearing masks when they then congregate in bars/lounges and the dining room maskless.

[RichYak]

13 minutes ago, lawk said:

No one should be preaching. This is the rhetoric that has no place on a cruise message board where people are looking for information, not judgment. 

Well now you're pulling one word out of context and ascribing rhetoric and judgment to a post that contains neither.

[lawk]

1 hour ago, RichYak said:

Well now you're pulling one word out of context and ascribing rhetoric and judgment to a post that contains neither.

I am out of this discussion now. The comments are uncomfortable. 

[canderson]

Cruise Critic has never been known as a "safe space".

[C4HCG]

16 minutes ago, lawk said:

I am out of this discussion now. The comments are uncomfortable. 

In case you call back, you said earlier that you hoped fellow cruisers wouldn’t make negative comments to you for wearing a mask. Only my opinion but I very much doubt they would, more likely to be sneered at for not wearing a mask by those who do. I certainly felt as though we got nasty looks from masked people on our recent cruises, especially when in lifts.  Didn’t take it personally though. I would have quite liked to have been challenged on why we weren’t wearing masks as we could have had a healthy and friendly debate on it, rather like we do here 🤔😁.

[Tulsacoker]

20 minutes ago, C4HCG said:

I certainly felt as though we got nasty looks from masked people on our recent cruises, especially when in lifts.  Didn’t take it personally though. 

I just look at my wife when I feel like we are getting dirty looks and say " I'm feeling a little bit better"