What's the definition of insanity?

[BostonCard]

Yeah, maybe cramming hundreds of people in an enclosed ship during a raging pandemic will work better this time... not.

BC

[82lsju]

Yeah, maybe cramming hundreds of people in an enclosed ship during a raging pandemic will work better this time... not.

BC

while I'm not going cruising anytime soon, the ship was pretty small as cruise ships go, it had 53 passengers (passenger capacity 112) plus the crew, I would imagine a bigger ship would be much worse.....

[chrisk]

Royal Caribbean is now recruiting volunteers for test cruises on social media. It is working with the CDC for the protocol for these cruises, which they must conduct before resuming regular operations.

[Goose]

Royal Caribbean is now recruiting volunteers for test cruises on social media.  It is working with the CDC for the protocol for these cruises, which they must conduct before resuming regular operations.

Are you sure they haven't go a contract to test a vaccine? It isn't a "challenge trial" per se, but it is the next best thing. Stay out 3 or 4 weeks so everybody gets exposed.

[Genuine Realist]

Royal Caribbean is now recruiting volunteers for test cruises on social media.  It is working with the CDC for the protocol for these cruises, which they must conduct before resuming regular operations.

Are you sure they haven't go a contract to test a vaccine? It isn't a "challenge trial" per se, but it is the next best thing. Stay out 3 or 4 weeks so everybody gets exposed.

I'm a little more charitable. These industries are in terrible trouble and trying anything.

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.

[dabigv13]

Think of perhaps never being able to smell or taste normally again. Worth rolling the dice for a weeklong cruise? Not on my risk/benefit matrix.

[Genuine Realist]

Think of perhaps never being able to smell or taste normally again. Worth rolling the dice for a weeklong cruise? Not on my risk/benefit matrix.

I had my first attack of rheumatoid arthritis. It's a mild case, but there are all kinds of things I couldn't do until treatments came along in my early 50's. Your body is going to fail you, sooner or later, in all kinds of ways. 

I'd open the schools, too.

[akiddoc]

Think of perhaps never being able to smell or taste normally again. Worth rolling the dice for a weeklong cruise? Not on my risk/benefit matrix.

I had my first attack of rheumatoid arthritis. It's a mild case, but there are all kinds of things I couldn't do until treatments came along in my early 50's. Your body is going to fail you, sooner or later, in all kinds of ways. 

I'd open the schools, too.

You didn't make a choice to get RA. I have no idea why that is an equivalent situation in your mind.

[fullmetal]

RA is also not contagious to those around you.

Anyway, the cruise industry is rotten, and unless they overhaul their internal ethics (and also stop being breeding pools for norovirii/coronavirii), I won't risk giving them money.

[2006alum]

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.

Speaking as someone in his 30's w/ no underlying health conditions that would complicate my treatment, I think this is the definition of insanity. I value my health much more than a mediocre all-you-can-eat buffet.

[Mick]

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.

[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.

[Mick]

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'. 

I never had a flu shot until I was 30.  When I was 29, I was laid up for two weeks with the flu.  Really knocked the stuffing out of me.  I've had flu shots every year since, and have never had the flu again over the past three decades.  I have friends who are convinced that it is 29 consecutive years of coincidences and that vaccinations are a complete scam.

[BostonCard]

We used to have family reunions on cruises when I was growing up, and it was a lot of fun.  There are major issues, however, including the fact that it is a floating petri dish (not just COVID-19, but also GI outbreaks), and the fact that cruises are not environmentally benign to the places they visit, and that the economic and legal model cruising companies use is flawed.  That being said, I was supposed to have gone on a cruise in the Eastern Adriatic (Greece and the former Yugoslavia) back in April.  Needless to say, this didn't happen.

Assuming that the vaccine is 90% efficacious as the preliminary data in Pfizer's case has shown, I think at that point the risk drops to be low enough that cruising can resume, but it seems ridiculous to try to do it before a vaccine (and making sure that passengers are vaccinated).  Even after that, I think the cruising industry is going to have to be examined and their regulatory and tax status (in no man's land) will have to be re-evaluated.

BC

[lex24]

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'. 

I never had a flu shot until I was 30.  When I was 29, I was laid up for two weeks with the flu.  Really knocked the stuffing out of me.  I've had flu shots every year since, and have never had the flu again over the past three decades.  I have friends who are convinced that it is 29 consecutive years of coincidences and that vaccinations are a complete scam.

I generally get a flu shot and did this year.  I ocassionally get a”flu”.  Or flu like symptoms.   My understanding is that the flu shot only works against what they consider to be the most virulent strains. In November 2019 I was really sick. 104 fever chills aches etc. lasted days. Was tested for flu and pneumonia.  Had neither. Dr said it’s just some virus.

[BostonCard]

The flu vaccine covers a number (3 or 4) strains each year.  Vaccine makers basically have to guess which strains will be prevalent and sometimes they guess wrong.

BC