[Genuine Realist]

BTW, if I were in my early 30's, I'd go on the test cruise like a shot. Great food, interesting destinations, at pennies on the dollar. I'd take the risk. My understanding is that the risk is acceptable at that age.

FWLIW, nearly 40 years ago, my Stanford-educated grandmother received a windfall check and decided to take 20 of her relatives on a cruise down the Mexican coast.  I was 21, the cruise coincided with a week off during my last quarter in college.  I was expected to go.  Did my best to be a good sport and not to roll my eyes at what I thought was a geriatric-only exercise, and can honestly say I had one of the top five vacations of my life.  Would have been ever better had I been ten years older.  Great, great time.

Never been on another cruise for (obvious) sanitary reasons, but enjoyed the heck out of that one.

I have to admit to giving scandal a little bit with the reply, but there is some thought behind it.

Covid is not going to be eradicated. It's going to change from pandemic to endemic, sometime in the next year. But everyone on this board has been living with endemic flu risk all his or her life - the 'basic flu risk'. My impression is that people under 40 are living with the 'basic flu risk' right now. There's a high chance of infection, a much lower one of becoming seriously ill, a very, very low risk of death or permanent impairment.  (The loss of sense of taste and smell, as I have read, seems to be a symptom, and the senses recovered within a few days after the flu ends.) If I'm in my 30's and sizing this up as the basic flu risk, yeah, I'll take it. I may never get another chance. The fact that the other passengers are likely to be similarly lively and adventuresome spirits, the crew and the company going out of its way to make the experiment a success, and so on, adds to the positives.

This is what I meant by 'open the schools' as the Europeans - allegedly our superiors - have apparently done, regardless of the quantum of contagion. The kids are running the basic flu risk (in covid form), and we have never closed schools for that - not even in the mid 50's, when Asian flu targeted kids of elementary school age. But we are now.

Akiddoc, in his usual snotty literalism, misses the point of my RA point. Some sort of debilitation waits for all of us. On my 19th birthday, I had no idea that within three months something would happen that would severely hamper my athletic activity. It was a mild case, but the sort of running you have to do to play basketball or even tennis, was out of the question for decades, until methotrexate treatments came along. If I were in my 30's in relation to the cruise, I'd think about stuff like that. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. In the time of your life, live.

I'm in my 70's now, in a vulnerable group, and covid for me is NOT the basic flu risk. I act accordingly. I had thought (hoped) that by this time some nuance would have begun to develop, and the less vulnerable elements of the population begin to resume normal patterns of activity. I question the wisdom of that.

[Genuine Realist]

BTW, if I were in my early 30's, I'd go on the test cruise like a shot. Great food, interesting destinations, at pennies on the dollar. I'd take the risk. My understanding is that the risk is acceptable at that age.

FWLIW, nearly 40 years ago, my Stanford-educated grandmother received a windfall check and decided to take 20 of her relatives on a cruise down the Mexican coast.  I was 21, the cruise coincided with a week off during my last quarter in college.  I was expected to go.  Did my best to be a good sport and not to roll my eyes at what I thought was a geriatric-only exercise, and can honestly say I had one of the top five vacations of my life.  Would have been ever better had I been ten years older.  Great, great time.

Never been on another cruise for (obvious) sanitary reasons, but enjoyed the heck out of that one.

I have to admit to giving scandal a little bit with the reply, but there is some thought behind it.

Covid is not going to be eradicated. It's going to change from pandemic to endemic, sometime in the next year. But everyone on this board has been living with endemic flu risk all his or her life - the 'basic flu risk'. My impression is that people under 40 are living with the 'basic flu risk' right now. There's a high chance of infection, a much lower one of becoming seriously ill, a very, very low risk of death or permanent impairment.  (The loss of sense of taste and smell, as I have read, seems to be a symptom, and the senses recovered within a few days after the flu ends.) If I'm in my 30's and sizing this up as the basic flu risk, yeah, I'll take it. I may never get another chance. The fact that the other passengers are likely to be similarly lively and adventuresome spirits, the crew and the company going out of its way to make the experiment a success, and so on, adds to the positives.

This is what I meant by 'open the schools' as the Europeans - allegedly our superiors - have apparently done, regardless of the quantum of contagion. The kids are running the basic flu risk (in covid form), and we have never closed schools for that - not even in the mid 50's, when Asian flu targeted kids of elementary school age. But we are now.

Akiddoc, in his usual snotty literalism, misses the point of my RA point. Some sort of debilitation waits for all of us. On my 19th birthday, I had no idea that within three months something would happen that would severely hamper my athletic activity. It was a mild case, but the sort of running you have to do to play basketball or even tennis, was out of the question for decades, until methotrexate treatments came along. If I were in my 30's in relation to the cruise, I'd think about stuff like that. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. In the time of your life, live.

I'm in my 70's now, in a vulnerable group, and covid for me is NOT the basic flu risk. I act accordingly. I had thought (hoped) that by this time some nuance would have begun to develop, and the less vulnerable elements of the population begin to resume normal patterns of activity. I question the wisdom of that.