Mandatory vaccination

[armwinder]

I wonder if other cruise lines will follow this example. 

[complawyer]

hopefully, by the time most cruise lines get back on track and start sailing again, most people would have been vaccinated. we just got out 2nd shot yesterday, and are booked on the ncl jade for july 4th

[casofilia]

@armwinder

Being from New Zealand and having to travel to do the cruises we have booked the 14 days would be wonderful.   BUT airlines are likely to want 72 hours.

 

@complawyer

 

You are lucky; NZ will only start vaccination tomorrow.   Who knows when they will get round to "normal" people

[thepla]

I agree with a requirement how would children under 16 be handled?

Edited February 19, 2021 by thepla

[complawyer]

2 hours ago, thepla said:

I agree with a requirement how would children under 16 be handled?

again, hopefully when cruises start sailing, there has been enough vaccine to inoculate minors also

[Stick93]

It will be interesting to see if a large portion of people don’t get vaccinated and don’t care to cruise where these businesses thing their money will come from. Don’t care to argue about the vaccine, just a point of if they cannot fill ships will this impact what they will do. Whether one agrees or not many will not take this vaccine regardless of what restrictions are put on them. 

[BirdTravels]

Since the vaccines prevent you from getting moderately and seriously sick, the cruise lines can “hide” any onboard covid cases by not having them visible. 

[complawyer]

whether it's to enable someone to get on a cruise ship, or just taking precautions, i think it just makes really good sense to get the vaccination if it's offered. for my wife and i , it was a no-brainer. as soon as e got the opportunity to get we shot, we jumped on it.  the fact we have a cruise booked this july was an additional incentive to get the shot.

 

 i cant imagine anyone not wanting the vaccination if they get  the chance

[Trimone]

I agree totally with vaccinations, however I can see an issue, for example say you booked a cruise in 2019 for 2020, and it was cancelled, issued with FCC, now terms have changed, you are anti vaccine due to medical condition or just don’t trust the vaccine, you are technically unable to travel so does NCL credit your FCC back or do you lose it.

I personally have had my first vaccine, and have no FCC with NCL, I’m just asking the question.

[CILCIANRQTS]

9 hours ago, thepla said:

I agree with a requirement how would children under 16 be handled?

 

No shot = no sail.

There is no “right” to cruise, regardless of your age.

[BoozinCroozin]

I am ok with this as long as this pertains to "all guests" that are permitted to get them. Anyone under 18 is not permitted (one is 16). 

[hallux]

8 hours ago, complawyer said:

again, hopefully when cruises start sailing, there has been enough vaccine to inoculate minors also

At the moment, it's not just supply as it is also that they simply haven't completed testing.  Sure, there isn't even enough supply if the testing HAD been completed already.  Shoot - as an under-65 with no co-morbidity there isn't even an opportunity for me to book an appointment, and even if I could the appointment wouldn't be for MONTHS.  By the time they open appointments for my demographic I'll only have to fight with a couple million people across the entire state.

 

Personally, I don't think I'd step on a ship if I didn't have the vaccine on board (and I'm even "naturally" protected from having recovered) and I would appreciate if my fellow passengers were also vaccinated.  However - the research on transmission by a vaccinated individual is not yet complete, so even with the entire ship vaccinated there's a chance you could still get sick, however "weak" the symptoms may be.

[hamrag]

8 hours ago, Stick93 said:

It will be interesting to see if a large portion of people don’t get vaccinated and don’t care to cruise where these businesses think their money will come from...

 

From those who do get vaccinated! 😉

[denatravels]

1 hour ago, CILCIANRQTS said:

 

No shot = no sail.

There is no “right” to cruise, regardless of your age.

I agree that vaccines should be mandatory for adults but you can’t make vaccines mandatory for kids when they have not even been studied. 

[hamrag]

6 hours ago, Trimone said:

I agree totally with vaccinations, however I can see an issue, for example say you booked a cruise in 2019 for 2020, and it was cancelled, issued with FCC, now terms have changed, you are anti vaccine due to medical condition or just don’t trust the vaccine, you are technically unable to travel so does NCL credit your FCC back or do you lose it.

I personally have had my first vaccine, and have no FCC with NCL, I’m just asking the question.

 

That is indeed a very real scenario, which will doubtless play out....who knows the answer.

[DCGuy64]

8 hours ago, Stick93 said:

It will be interesting to see if a large portion of people don’t get vaccinated and don’t care to cruise where these businesses thing their money will come from. Don’t care to argue about the vaccine, just a point of if they cannot fill ships will this impact what they will do. Whether one agrees or not many will not take this vaccine regardless of what restrictions are put on them. 

Tons of people will sail, I have a feeling a lot of people who "claim" they won't get a vaccine will have an epiphany later on. Polls in the US, even among hospital workers, bear this out. I also think that the more vaccines are essential to daily life, the more the naysayers will give in. That's just my opinion, of course.

[ace2542]

They should also not issue a refund for anyone who doesn't want the vaccination.

[Stick93]

5 minutes ago, ace2542 said:

They should also not issue a refund for anyone who doesn't want the vaccination.

How about - don’t refund money of people who want to cruise but couldn’t because they cancelled - wait they did that already! 
I think they may want to encourage people to come back - keeping money doesn’t help them in the future. 

 

the real issue is many people who get vaccinated, and are of poor health will be told not to get on cruise ships. The cruise population has a very large population of older and obese people (not all but too many). Older people, obese and diabetic people have been hurt disproportionately over younger and healthy people (who have also been hurt but at a much smaller percentage). If you take the high risk and  scared people out of cruises and you may need the unvaccinated to get $$$ and make the share holders happy. 
 

on a side point the vaccines will be available for most people hopefully by the summer. Some countries even later. Then we will start the boosters for different strains - when will the cruising take place for those who are vaccinated after the 1st shot or after all the boosters. Also are they making the flu shot mandatory??
 

Cruising will not be happening for a while - possibly not until 2022. Nothing has changed in a year except the US has allowed ships back to their ports so people can see them. Othen that we aren’t close to starting up again so vaccines mean nothing today. 
 

 

[winterbliss]

42 minutes ago, denatravels said:

I agree that vaccines should be mandatory for adults but you can’t make vaccines mandatory for kids when they have not even been studied. 

We're talking Big Pharma, et al. Pregnant women.... children.... experimental vaccine for everyone! 

[macandlucy]

I'd sure hate to be one of the cruise line executives who has to make this decision.  I can see it more for bookings going forward, but any attempt to apply this retroactively, with respect to denying sailing to FCC holders who booked on no condition of a vaccine -- I don't know about that.

 

Personally, I would not cruise unless I had been vaccinated. And if I'm vaccinated, I don't care, on a personal level, whether everyone is vaccinated or not. With everything I am already doing, prevention-wise, plus a vaccine, that's more than enough layers of protection for me to feel it's safe enough. The around 90% protection from a vaccine, plus the distancing, hand hygiene and most importantly *effective* mask (95% effective against aerosols) I would wear brings the risk of infection to extremely low levels.

 

I hope, at some point soon, people are able to look at the actual risk level, and seriously, rationally and critically think about it. Even now, people are still focusing a lot on the statistical outliers and paying more attention to deaths than recoveries. Most people, even the highest risk people, recover from Covid. Most people recover at home.  New infections are dropping, deaths are dropping,  it seems to me that herd immunity, through prior infections and vaccines, is developing.

 

There's genuine light at the end of the tunnel -- it's time for all of us to start to recognize it, imo.

 

 

[Beach Life 1]

There's so many if's with the future of cruising.  What if,  you have a cruise booked for later this year (if it's  even is able to go) or next year, and you are booked, but  you were still unable to get a vaccine?  Will they give you your money back?   What if they only sail at 50% capacity, and people are already booked?   Who's reservations do they cancel?  There's just so many things the cruise lines have to work out.   Hopefully,  everything will fall into place, and we can get on living.

[graphicguy]

2 hours ago, BoozinCroozin said:

I am ok with this as long as this pertains to "all guests" that are permitted to get them. Anyone under 18 is not permitted (one is 16). 

Eventually, all (U.S.) citizens will have access to the vaccine.  All will be permitted to get it.  Depends on where you fall in the que.  

 

Agree though, just because you're young and may not be as susceptible as others, you can still be a carrier.

 

I'm thinking there will be no exceptions with the vaccine requirement, regardless of age or circumstance.

[DCGuy64]

21 minutes ago, macandlucy said:

I'd sure hate to be one of the cruise line executives who has to make this decision.  I can see it more for bookings going forward, but any attempt to apply this retroactively, with respect to denying sailing to FCC holders who booked on no condition of a vaccine -- I don't know about that.

 

Personally, I would not cruise unless I had been vaccinated. And if I'm vaccinated, I don't care, on a personal level, whether everyone is vaccinated or not. With everything I am already doing, prevention-wise, plus a vaccine, that's more than enough layers of protection for me to feel it's safe enough. The around 90% protection from a vaccine, plus the distancing, hand hygiene and most importantly *effective* mask (95% effective against aerosols) I would wear brings the risk of infection to extremely low levels.

 

I hope, at some point soon, people are able to look at the actual risk level, and seriously, rationally and critically think about it. Even now, people are still focusing a lot on the statistical outliers and paying more attention to deaths than recoveries. Most people, even the highest risk people, recover from Covid. Most people recover at home.  New infections are dropping, deaths are dropping,  it seems to me that herd immunity, through prior infections and vaccines, is developing.

 

There's genuine light at the end of the tunnel -- it's time for all of us to start to recognize it, imo.

 

 

This is something I strongly agree with, especially the penultimate paragraph. To be sure, Covid-19 has been devastating, but the response has been way overblown, in many cases. And I think history will show that there was a lot of overreaction (which is understandable given how quickly it spread and how many people died initially). The thing is, if we don't learn from our mistakes, we'll just repeat them. It's not that the wise don't make mistakes, but they do learn from them. Covid-19 is somewhat more deadly than the seasonal flu. A LOT more deadly. But deadly enough to warrant the virtual shutdown of the entire world for nearly a year? No. We all know of isolated instances of the common cold, norovirus, and seasonal influenza causing outbreaks onboard cruise ships. But they never caused a shutdown of nearly the entire industry for this long. Again, I think history will show that the response was not commensurate with the risk. I hope we learn from this and don't simply repeat the mistakes we made. The bright side is this: all of our speculation on Cruise Critic isn't going to be the deciding factor when it comes to what the cruise lines do. We can all armchair quarterback for as long as we like, but the big shots are going to make the call.

[njkate]

It's not just cruises, many countries cruise ships stop at MAY require vaccine for entry. It's a wait and see game right now

[Buford T Justiice]

I believe any vaccination proof will simply be self certification. Unless folks think that a random piece of paper from a city / town / county / state / province means something. Cruise lines don't have the manpower to do verification. Its simply a legal liability measure and perhaps a coming CDC directive to the cruise lines.