cowmilker

Okay, I watched that Step One video.  And maybe I'm weird, but I love it. We haven't seen it on stage yet, but this will be great.

 

We went to see PMJ here in KY a few years ago.  We would go again if/when they come back.  Golly, we loved it.  And yeah, we've played the YouTube videos a zillion times.

29 minutes ago, amyr said:

 DH and I tested negative, but decided to isolate just in case.  Two days later, we both woke up with symptoms and he tested positive immediately.  

We had a similar experience to yours.  Short river cruise on the Mississippi. We were tested three times (antigen testing) in the space of 7 days, all negative. We knew we'd been exposed (our waiter tested positive 3 days in).

We both began exhibiting symptoms (oddly, enough, slightly different in each of us) the evening after we left the boat.  It was right at New Year's. Nothing open.  We opted to simply go home after isolating the best we could. I called our family doc the following Monday morning and he laughed a bit.  He said, "You're fully vaxxed, boosted, stuck full of holes.  You are going to be fine.  If you're really curious, come down to the office and we'll do a PCR test" but by then we were, in fact, fine, with no need to do that and so we never really knew if we had it or not.

He said we should assume that we did, but it didn't change anything.

I bet there are a whole lot of vaccinated people who've experienced something similar.  Vaccinated people often don't have a large enough viral load to turn an antigen test positive.  As soon as they told us we'd been exposed, we started being very, very careful about masking everywhere. (Everyone had been a little bit lax because we'd all been tested prior to boarding.  Our bad. . .)

4 hours ago, CruisinShips said:

I was interested in hearing the reason as well.  The poster was the one who mentioned it, so it's not unreasonable to ask about it.

I think by "at home," the OP meant when they were out and about in their HOMETOWN, as opposed to wearing a mask when traveling.  I doubt they meant "inside their own home."

We mask here in our area and we are almost the only people who do.  I don't care. I bought these masks and I am gonna wear the hell out of them.  🙂

On 4/23/2022 at 2:18 PM, Fouremco said:

Quite honestly, I doubt very much that HAL or any other cruiseline is going to refuse you boarding if you took your test at the very beginning of the 72 hour period measured from embarkation time if they decided to go by sailing time.

The guy from HAL on the Facebook live video done the other day said specifically, and more than once, that IF you in good faith get tested, and for some reason, you screw it up, or you don't get your results back in time, or anything else happens, HAL will test you at the pier for free.  All that matters is that you do your best to get tested within the guidelines and that you can present proof that you did try.

He kept saying that they do not want for this stuff to become so horrible and difficult to deal with that nobody can enjoy their trip.

YES.  Thank you so, so much.  I have spent half a day trying to figure this out.  🙂  Done in less than five minutes.  It's so easy when  you know where to look.

Y'all, really.  If you want to see a small inside cabin, sail with American Queen on the Mississippi River in an inside cabin.  Seriously.  Think of a room the size of a queen bed, with shelving on the wall at the foot of the bed, and NO closet at all.  That's it.  The bathroom was decent sized, which means that it was almost as big as the room itself.

We are inside cabin people (have never booked anything else, and been upgraded a couple of times to an OV), but that inside on the AQ was too much even for us.  It was only for a week, and it was also half price, and I am glad.  Never, ever again.

My internet at home is pretty sketchy.  I say that because when I have tried using a VPN, it slows to a CRAWL.

I assume from that little unofficial test that VPNs suck up bandwidth.  

So I looked it up.  🙂  And the answer is yes, a VPN encodes data and that sucks bandwidth.  It uses between 5 and 15% more data.

That's why they banned it, I would guess.  Satellite internet is terrible at its best.  We had it here for several years and I did such a wonderful happy dance when we finally got regular internet (even as slow as it is) and could get rid of that awful dish in the yard that I swore at regularly.  But I did everything possible to limit my usage when I had satellite internet.  I feel for the tech people on cruise ships having to deal with it all the time.

On 2/21/2022 at 6:34 PM, rkacruiser said:

It takes the same amount of effort for me to leave home for a short duration vacation as it does for a longer vacation. 

Well, that's my point exactly.  It's a bunch of trouble for us, arranging for pet care (both dog and two cats), somebody to get the mail, making sure the lawn is mowed if necessary, and on and on.

We did a short Mississippi River cruise in December (gone a total of 12 days) and it was just a PITA. 

The only real difference I could see was that I didn't have to totally clean the refrigerator out before we left.

BTW, DH had to have an emergency root canal in Naples one time. We were on the Koningsdam and the guy at the front desk was just wonderful.  He made a ship-to-shore call ahead to Naples, got him an appt on a SATURDAY, wrote out the address and time so he could give it to the taxi driver, everything.

Being a very dutiful spouse (!!!!) , I opted to go to Pompeii (took a ship's tour so he wouldn't worry about me) and he went and had a root canal.

Our dentist checked it all out when we got home and it was fine.  

Furthermore, we saved enough money that it basically paid for his fare for the transatlantic cruise we took home.

But what really got me was our room steward.  Before Dave even got back, the guy knew what had happened.  He checked on Dave about every two hours all afternoon and well into the evening.  You'd have thought he had had major surgery.

It was our first cruise on HAL, and we've never stopped sailing with them.

But yeah, we always make sure we have a dental checkup just before we leave home.

 

We've never done anything but long cruises.  Our very first involved four B2Bs, including a transatlantic. 

When we did the Med, we sailed on 4 B2Bs, but they involved three different cruise lines.   LOL

It's too much trouble for us to arrange to be gone for short periods.  If we're going to fly someplace, we're going to be gone for a while.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/antigen-tests-and-omicron

Here we go.  There's a handy little image in the body of that article that illustrates the difference between the two types of tests.  Yes, the image predates Omicron (YLE says that clearly in the body of the article) but it's still useful to understand it all.

Of course, the problem is that folks get an idea stuck in their heads and that's the end of reasoning.

I know this stuff can be really difficult.  I bet I have explained, complete with diagrams, how the mRNA vaccine (that we got three times) works for my husband fifty times.  He believes me.  He trusts me.  He still doesn't really understand it.  But I bet he knows more than a whole lot of folks.  He at least does know what a spike protein is.  Sort of.  🙂
 

4 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

 We come to fins out even though a person is recovered these tests can pick up particles & we would have shown positive . Not sure about the PCR test 

 

It's the other way around, I believe.  The PCR test is very, very sensitive and will show a positive from dead virus particles even weeks after recovery.  The quick antigen test is not nearly as sensitive.  What a negative antigen test says is "You do not have enough virus in your nose right now to be contagious."  That's all.  That's why you can be exposed and have an antigen test the next day and test negative and then test positive three days later.  It can be frustrating for everyone involved.

We were also on Volendam for the SA Grand Voyage in early 2020.  Best trip we've EVER taken, period.

Regarding laundry, we did the entire trip without ever once using the ship's laundry.  I planned pretty carefully and we washed our clothes ourselves in the bathroom and hung them up to dry.  It worked fine.

Soon, we will reach the magic 4 stars and get free laundry, but until then, what I did worked.

And we did the trip in an inside cabin.  No problem at all.  I even got sick at one point and was confined to that cabin for a couple of days and that was no problem (I didn't even miss a port -- it hit during sea days).

I literally paced the promenade deck for hours daily.  I'd never cruise for a long time without a good place to walk.

Anyway, I highly recommend that South America trip.  It's simply magnificent.

"But when it comes to COVID we have not reached a level of acceptance even when it involves the relatively mild Omicron variant. "

It's still killing people at a very high rate.  Honestly, there is NO comparison to be made between flu (about 20,000 deaths annually) and Covid ( HUNDREDS of thousands of deaths annually).  Really.

And I have had what my doc believes was a breakthrough infection, in spite of being triple vaxxed.  The vaccines are pretty much miraculous, IMHO.  I will quite happily get a shot every few months if necessary for the rest of my life.

I share the concern that I don't want to be kicked off a cruise because of a positive test, and I honestly believe that we'll see a point where they stop doing testing.  When they have a drug to treat it, that reduces it to a minor inconvenience (maybe a couple of days of quarantine, the way the flu is treated on board), and IF they continue to require vaccinations, we should be good to go.

35 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

 Is Omicron more serious than Noro or Influenza? 

 

Far more serious, potentially.  Far, far, far, more serious.

That said, I believe that drugs like Paxlovid will change the game a bit.  At least, I hope that's the case.  If there is treatment like that which can be given on the spot in the same way they prescribe Tamiflu, we might see a return to something more acceptable in terms of risk.

This situation illustrates vividly my biggest fear right now with cruising.

We went on a Mississippi river cruise in December and tested negative three times, once just prior to boarding, again mid-cruise because we'd been exposed, and the day before disembarking in New Orleans.  We both developed symptoms, very mild, very vague, the evening after we left the boat.

We wondered (honestly still have NO IDEA if we were positive or not), but couldn't see any way at all to get tested (NO was beyond crowded).  We decided to just get home instead, which involved a run on Amtrak (in a roomette, so we were isolated) to our car and then a drive home.

After arriving home, I couldn't get in touch with our doctor for a couple of days because of New Year's, and when I did, he said that we should presume we had breakthroughs, understand that we'll never actually know for sure, keep monitoring our O2 sats, and otherwise do nothing unless those sats dropped, and then he'd meet us in the ER.  We were both actually on the mend by then.

Our situation was bad enough and we were basically in control of it.  The OP is more or less being victimized for reporting their symptoms.  I know this is not HAL's fault, or the CDC's fault, or anyone else's fault, but it sure is a problem.

Quick antigen tests are prone to negatives because they don't show positive unless/until you have a pretty decent viral load on board.  All a negative antigen test says is that you are not contagious RIGHT NOW (and probably for the following 12-24 hours).  It does not mean you don't have any virus at all.

Will do.  We are pretty excited too.  We haven't been anywhere since March 2020.

Okay, what is her first name?  We'll look for her, since I know what she looks  like.  🙂  We are looking forward to having FUN.  

BTW, we're on the Queen.  I think the Duchess is doing the same trip.  Is she on ours?

I think it's actually December 20 (pre-cruise night in Memphis is the night of Dec 19.)  My husband and I are going to be on that cruise. 

We'll be driving from our home in KY to Memphis, so no airport, but we'll look forward to meeting her at the hotel.

Tell her we are also excited, actually more excited than I would have believed possible over a week-long cruise not even leaving the country.  LOL I am just thrilled to get to GO.

Tell her that our names are Sally and Dave.  We'll find her.

We'll be getting off as you get on.  🙂

From what I could see on Youtube videos, the inside cabins are very small.  No, no room for any sort of table or chairs.  It looked smaller than any inside cabin we've had on a large cruise ship.

That said, we're booked in one for December 19.  It was a BOGO free deal, and it's only for a week (seven nights in that cabin). We'll be fine.  I didn't even price an upgrade, so I have no idea what the "savings" was.  There are lots and lots of tables and chairs elsewhere on the boat, and it's a shore day every day.  I doubt we do anything in the cabin but sleep and shower.

Let me explain this.

On my last cruise, I caught the flu.  I very dutifully went down to Medical and saw a doc.  I got a prescription for Tamiflu and I also was confined to my cabin and put on temperature checks twice a day until I no longer had a fever.  To go to Medical to get my temp checked, I was given a mask and required to wear it while in the hallway.

About 36 hours later (thank you, Tamiflu), I was declared good by Medical. They cleared me to leave my room.  I went ashore that day and never ran another fever.

HOWEVER, I had a lingering cough. I had that cough for about two weeks.  (This was a long cruise - 74 days).  It sort of sounded like I was ripping out my lungs.  Are you all suggesting that I should have remained in my cabin for two solid weeks just because I had a cough?

With benefit of hindsight, I probably should have worn a mask a lot of that time.  I didn't.  I honestly didn't think much about it because I'd been cleared by the doc.  I almost certainly was not contagious.  However, I suspect that the cough made other people uncomfortable.

That's what I was thinking about.  I'll never do that again. I'll have masks with me and I will wear one.  Maybe if I'd worn one from the beginning, in the auditorium, I never would have caught the damned bug in the first place.  (I am pretty religious about staying off the elevators and use the stairs, and I try to avoid close up contact with other people anyway, but the auditorium, well, it's hard to avoid folks.)

And hopefully, now I am done. 

14 minutes ago, Sir PMP said:

Don't you think that this a weird comment?

I'm not sure what is weird about trying to be thoughtful and considerate of other people.

I always know that I shouldn't comment on this board, ever. I know it and I still do it.

 

1 minute ago, Sir PMP said:

Why would you go to the theater while you coughing and sneezing?

Are you going to tell me that you have never, ever, once in your entire life left your home, or your cabin on a cruise, while you had a cold?  Really?  Never once?  You stay home, in your house, for the entire time you're contagious?  Always?

9 minutes ago, aliaschief said:

We will always have a mask with us and will cover if necessary. How many times have we felt uncomfortable pre Covid  in Show Room with folks coughing and sneezing!

You know, I think I will start making it a habit to wear a mask to the shows, period.  I know that I personally have been guilty of going to the auditorium with my kleenex clutched and coughing and sneezing and trying to not do that, but yeah, I'm guilty.

Never, ever again.  I have plenty of masks now and I will wear one, period.

Maybe that will mean that I can get through an extended cruise without having an upper respiratory infection (and without giving anything to anyone else).  It's a very small price to pay.