rabidstoat

According to the American Diabetes Society, 10.5% of Americans have diabetes.

Oh, and according to the American Heart Association, almost half of Americans have heart disease of some type: https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/01/31/cardiovascular-diseases-affect-nearly-half-of-american-adults-statistics-show

Ministry of Transport statement on the denial:

"The Braemar cruise ship carrying five persons who have tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus will not be permitted to dock in The Bahamas and passengers and crew will not be allowed to disembark. This decision is based on consideration for the protection of the health and safety of the Bahamian people and residents of The Bahamas. The Bahamas Maritime Authority (BMA) has been in constant communication with the owners of the Braemer, which is a Bahamas-flagged ship. The BMA has reaffirmed to the Braemar that should it arrive in Bahamian waters, The Bahamas will do all that it can to provide humanitarian assistance. This may include providing fuel, food, water and other supplies as needed by the vessel. The BMA continues to monitor the well-being of passengers and crew with updates at regular intervals. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the people who have contracted the coronavirus and who are at immediate risk.”"

7 minutes ago, dockman said:

just saw this on NCL jewel roll call....can anyone verify if correct?

 

 

Posted  4 hours ago

French Polynesia ports now closed to all cruise ships.

Now cruise companies are canceling all cruises for 60 days no matter where to.

Does not look good now !!!

Cruise Critic posted an article earlier today about port closings: https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5097/

I'm confused on what it means but here is what it says about French Polynesia: "All cruise ships will enter French Polynesia exclusively through the port of entry of Papeete in Tahiti. Ships that have been granted first berth exemptions for the outer islands will be canceled."

1 minute ago, CruisinNewbie11 said:

I am 71, leaving in 10 days, I never got any email.  Did you receive this in your regular email or on the NCL website messages?  I just checked both, nothing.  

I would give it a day or two, you can't get it filled out until within 7 days of your cruise anyway. 

6 minutes ago, nextcruiseis said:

Read carefully: "...free of ANY severe or chronic illness...."       

That's what I'm wondering. High cholesterol? High blood pressure? Arthritis? Early onset dementia? Diabetes? Allergies?

It's age discrimination, but not illegal age discrimination.

I mean, heck, there's a whole cruise line based around age discrimination: Virgin Voyages doesn't allow anyone under 18 on board.

1 minute ago, Susandt said:

yes but there are tons of different professions that fall under that

"But the form is signed by my dog's veterinarian, and she's a medical professional!"

18 minutes ago, roger001 said:

I thought about wishing them well with a 100 shares at $15.  However my financial guru nephew says he sees chapter 11 with the next 60 days.  With that all stock trading is frozen and stocks become basically worthless.  Shareholders are about the last debts to be paid by the court and all money is long gone by then.  Too chancy at the moment. Hope that is all wrong.  

I've bought 10 shares of NCLH at $15, and 10 shares of RCL at near its low. CCL didn't hit my limit order threshold yet, but I have an order in for 10 shares of that if it gets low enough. I figure at least one of them will survive!

Sigh, duplicate, my connection is bad.

Though NCL dropped from $18.48 to $18.20 while I was posting this. 

I am watching cruise stock prices continue to plummet. NCL is down below $18.50, an almost 70% drop year to date. 

7 minutes ago, bornthisway said:

I'm beginning to wonder, why is it only Princess cruise ships that are having these issues and are at the forefront of the all the news stories.  Are there other cases on other cruise lines?  Maybe I just missed this....

 

I think it got on one ship and then staff transferring between ships before it was detected spread it to other ships.

49 minutes ago, newcruiser1956 said:

Silly question but the passengers that are being help in quarantine,  who is paying for it?  Are they able to have family send things to them that they need?  How does this forced quarantine work??

For the Diamond Princess, the government covered the costs. They were able to have family ship things, though not drop things off. It took an extra day to get to them as it had to go through security.

They got food dropped off for three meals a day. Since they were on base the only thing they could order for food were grocery delivery (they had jack-and-jill style rooms, the ones I followed, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom) or Dominos pizza. This was Lackland AFB in Texas. They did get Whattaburger to make a special delivery to everyone there, though!

I bought a few shares of RCI just on Thursday, and I've already lost a lot percentage-wise. 

I think the cruise lines would tend to not charge, and the US would tend to try to get people back. There's precedent for charging for flights home, but I've not heard of them charging for quarantine. I think they would tend not to, you want to encourage people to quarantine, and it's not like it'll be a billion people. But who knows. It's all fluid.

16 minutes ago, Named-Tawny said:

 

This would fall under trip interruption insurance.

You'll need to check the policy, a lot are reporting that their insurance won't cover epidemics/pandemics. This may be doubly true if it's a US company as there's a US State Department travel advisory advising US citizens not to travel on a cruise ship.

Also, the US has been quarantining people at no cost and flying them back from overseas (for Diamond Princess) or across the US (for non-California residents on Grant Princess) at no cost. But their travel advisory talks about how "While the U.S. government has evacuated some cruise ship passengers in recent weeks, repatriation flights should not be relied upon as an option for U.S. citizens under the potential risk of quarantine by local authorities." I take this to mean the flights not be available, or it might be like Wuhan they charged people for the flight back. Heck, I suppose they could start charging for quarantine facilities if people were traveling against a State Department travel advisory, who knows.

That's two months away, two months ago a lot of things were different. Even if people knew the status now there is no way to predict what it will look like in two months. You're best off being flexible with a 'wait and see' approach, I think.

2 minutes ago, paper1122 said:

the section of the state department website that this comes from is “travelers with special considerations “ 

 

Although it is clear they are saying they don’t guarantee repatriation

which would apply to everyone.

I think the 'travelers with special considerations' means that a cruise ship passenger is someone with a special consideration.

Other pages in that section are about adventure travelers, older travelers, travelers with pets, LGBT+ travelers, etc.

55 minutes ago, Annies88 said:

Thank you so much for the update. I personally had no thought to cancel. The bf’s mom is freaking out that we are going next week. I imagine they will make up time for the late departure. How crowded is the ship?

The US State Department has a new advisory out, advising US citizens not to travel on cruise ships: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/before-you-go/travelers-with-special-considerations/cruise-ship-passengers.html

That said, it's an advisory, not a ban. If the cruise is still on it's your personal risk assessment, not others' (unless they're paying for it).

I would expect them to catch wind of the advisory and freak out more, though, if you're from the US.

4 minutes ago, paper1122 said:

This applies to at risk individuals, not all cruisers

What, the US State Department advisory? It seems pretty clear it is an advisory for all people, regardless of age: "U.S. citizens, particularly travelers with underlying health conditions, should not travel by cruise ship."

This, however, is not a ban on cruise ships. They're not saying that you can't go, they are just advising you not to go. It's still a personal decision for people to make, until and unless the cruise lines themselves start to shut things down or an actual ban is put in place.

Also from the advisory: "While the U.S. government has evacuated some cruise ship passengers in recent weeks, repatriation flights should not be relied upon as an option for U.S. citizens under the potential risk of quarantine by local authorities.  "

The Royal Princess closure has a dedicated thread, BTW:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2740136-royal-princess-update/

Given that Princess has had two ships quarantined in the last month, I think that the phrase 'out of an abundance of caution' will come into play in their decision-making, and understandably so.

2 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Pence said The US will have over 1 million of them on Monday. With many millions coming over the next 2 weeks. 

This is good, though they still could run into snafus, I suppose. I mean, they said they'd have a million today and they don't. But Pence seems like he's trying to be transparent, or as much as he can be with the uncertainty.

They'll still have to train people to administer tests and need labs and staff to run them. I think I read that the US actually has a lot of lab capacity for this, but I might be mis-remembering.

1 hour ago, Sunshine3601 said:

Just saw that too!    Scary time for everyone onboard.   They are all in my thoughts and prayers.     

Can't wait to see what Pence says about this latest event tomorrow.   

I am 90% certain we will cancel our cruise for later this month but will wait till 2 or 3 days before to make our final decision unless it is made by RCL or others.    Not doing anything about the other 5 cruises we have booked for 2020.    I am hoping that by spring/early summer this all is behind us.   I feel really bad for all the travelers with plans for spring break and Easter / Passover they all have some tough decisions to make especially if they fall into the high risk category.     The virus doesn't scare me it is getting quarantined that I would hate.

I've got three cruises booked in 2020: May, August, and November. Only May falls in the window, and I have no idea what I'm doing about it as it depends on how things progress. I'm in my late 40s and reasonably healthy, so not in a super dangerous category. But it's not like I want to be quarantined for weeks on end either. 

I suppose if we're at the point where cruises are routinely quarantined for weeks on end we'll be at the point where cruise lines will be shutting down, though. That seems untenable. 😞

26 minutes ago, zalusky said:

My wife is a kidney transplant patient so yea thats a problem but the next big problem is meds.  Lets say you go on a cruise and bring along enough meds for a say a week and then you get quarantined for much longer.  Sounds a real pain especially if your ship is quarantining out at sea.  I wonder how many of the people on the Diamond or the Grand ran out of meds or are having difficulty in this area.

Currently cruise lines are advising people on medication to bring an extra two week supply. If I had something super-important I'd probably bring an extra month supply at this point.