4-2-2021 CDC has issued new guidance

[John99]

Video from Ben and David from England.  Ten minutes long.  Interesting comments about the CDC.  Some of their comments are spot on!  Enjoy!  

SHOCKING CRUISE NEWS: Still No Cruising in the USA - YouTube 

 

[Biker19]

6 hours ago, A&L_Ont said:

Get on that flight to Nassau or St Maarten and show them how it is safe to cruise by boarding a ship sailing from an island.

That has been shown since cruising started in other places in July last year. As CEO Fain says, you are safer on a cruise ship than on Main St.

[HMR74]

On 4/2/2021 at 7:38 PM, sandebeach said:

Saw this posted on another site. 

Thanks, cause I was looking for cliffs notes.

What I compare this to is the CDC is in a lawsuit with a bad hand, (if you can't dazzle them with brilliance,  baffle them with BS) and submit to the other side, the cruise lines a zillion pages of questions for "discovery" and document requests.

Just bury the cruise lines for requests that cannot be easily responded to .

 

Te question is why is CDC going out of its way to do this, while ignoring the numbers of immigrants crossing the border with covid and other potential diseases, not even checking people and then releasing them or sending them all over the country.

 

Kind of like a Tom Clancy Thriller. For real.

 

What happened to Freedom of Choice?  How much longer can the cruise sector stay in business without the very lucrative US market.

 

 

 

 

[HMR74]

2 hours ago, PelicanBill said:

Here's the most interesting part of the shoreside technical instructions I read:

 

The agreement must specify procedures:

• to avoid congregating of embarking and disembarking travelers,
• to ensure disembarking and embarking passengers do not occupy the same enclosed or semi-enclosed areas (e.g., gangways, terminal waiting spaces, check-in areas) within the same 12-hour period, and

That pretty much kills same day turnaround of a ship, and prevents a 7-day itinerary departing the same day of the week.  Embarkation will have to be the day after the ship disembarks. 

 

Thoughts?

 

This is why nothing i happening.

If you have ever dealt with OSHA, EPA  IRS at the big  business level, you understand that they take outrageous positions  from the get go.

Same with CDC. They get paid no matter what and the cruise lines, in this instance see the cash position clock ticking and the CDC using that leverage. 

The cruise lines cannot afford to sail at 60% occupancy, having a down day every week, expanding medical facilities. And the paperwork. They already had very good but not perfect procedures in place and now there is upgraded ventilation and will  be testing and vaccines required is likely.

My wife used to work at a small place, and that had to do MSDS (now MDS) where the staff went from zero to now 4. At a company with 25 people. The job of big govt appears to be to get in the way. of free enterprise. 

 

Here is the deal, do the test cruises asap and see what   is observable Do the cruise lines have their stuff reasonably together. If yes, let them cruise, If borderline let them cruise.

If the cruise lines screw up and problems are more than just randomly scattered around (there is no such thing as perfect) then the public, us, will not cruise and we do the dirty  work of the CDC.

Other wise all this is speculation on everybody's part with biases added.

So lets say the cruise lines sail from the Caribbean  and have little or no issues in June and July.

Will the CDC let them sail.

 

How about data coming out of Asia or UK or this summer with Med.How about how the Novo or Novel crisis was and is handled.

 

 

 

We are going to know a lot sooner than Nov 1 if the cruise lines wil l be able to deliver a safe and very good experience.

 

Now, If I can just get people to stop coughing and sneezing at me.........anywhere I go.

 

Oh, by the way, the trials for the vaccines, and I have had my 2 shots, in anticipation of EUA, not the full two years,  was complete last November.. Here we are and we cannot even get to a trial on cruising. So if you are angry at people who are anti vax, hold off til the final results are in, including true effectiveness and no after effect.

 

If you want to test the vaccines, which were 95% effective at the start, do a controlled experiment and take only  vaccinated guests and crew  on board with full occupancy for a 14 day trip sail to nowhere cruise  with old style muster and normal seating in MDR etc and theater--and we will see how effective they really are.

 

Or ask the question of have EUA can be grated at lower than 95% effectiveness, yet expect cruise lines to be perfect.'

 

Time to think out of the box folks, not just to support the cruise industry but to get back to the consumer being the ultimate arbitrager of whether products and services  succeed or not. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by HMR74

[smokeybandit]

2 hours ago, PelicanBill said:

Here's the most interesting part of the shoreside technical instructions I read:

 

The agreement must specify procedures:

• to avoid congregating of embarking and disembarking travelers,
• to ensure disembarking and embarking passengers do not occupy the same enclosed or semi-enclosed areas (e.g., gangways, terminal waiting spaces, check-in areas) within the same 12-hour period, and

That pretty much kills same day turnaround of a ship, and prevents a 7-day itinerary departing the same day of the week.  Embarkation will have to be the day after the ship disembarks. 

 

Thoughts?

 

That's only in the case of disembarking after an outbreak

Edited April 4, 2021 by smokeybandit

[HMR74]

6 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

That's only in the case of disembarking after an outbreak

that's why there need to be cliffs notes, that are clearer .

 

When will CDC say what we can do?  Judge and Jury?

 

[smokeybandit]

It was a poorly laid out document.

 

Item 6 days there needs to be an agreement in place on what happens if there's an outbreak

 

Item 7 expands on what that agreement needs to take into account.

 

*however* I could be wrong and Item 6 may have no bearing on Item 7.

 

And if I'm wrong (which, is entirely possible since some 9th grader clearly wrote the document) then Item 7 is entirely stupid and was written in April 2020.

[PCHENG]

2 hours ago, PelicanBill said:

Here's the most interesting part of the shoreside technical instructions I read:

 

The agreement must specify procedures:

• to avoid congregating of embarking and disembarking travelers,
• to ensure disembarking and embarking passengers do not occupy the same enclosed or semi-enclosed areas (e.g., gangways, terminal waiting spaces, check-in areas) within the same 12-hour period, and

That pretty much kills same day turnaround of a ship, and prevents a 7-day itinerary departing the same day of the week.  Embarkation will have to be the day after the ship disembarks. 

 

Thoughts?

 

I am actually not as concerned about these two requirements.  With cruising expected to resume with reduced capacity of 50 percent or less, there will be less people getting on and off ships.  Right now most people are off the ship by 10 a.m., and the new passengers start to board around noon.  If we extend the debarkation till noon and postpone all aboard till 7 p.m., that should be enough time (coupled with the reduced passenger count) to space people out and avoid congregation.  The ship will sail a few hours later than usual, but can make up lost time along the way.  

 

As for the 12 hour limit, it is possible to direct traffic such that embarkation and debarkation passengers don't occupy the same space.  Correct me if I am wrong, but the 12 hour restriction is for the terminal building, not the ship itself.  I don't think it is too difficult to designate separate gangways and route the passengers.  In fact most cruise terminals are already doing that since embarkation passengers go to check in and waiting area while debarkation passengers go through customs and baggage retrieval.  In my past cruises I don't see the new passengers until I walk out the cruise terminal and reach the parking garage.

 

 

[bmblob]

1 hour ago, HMR74 said:

Kind of like a Tom Clancy Thriller. For real.

I am a fan of thriller novels by Tom Clancy et al, Lee Childs, Michael Crichton, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, John Grisham, etc..., and what is happening now - you couldn't make this stuff up.  Everything has become surreal.

[Iamcruzin]

11 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

I don't recall the CDC shutting down international cargo operations.

Cargo is essential. Leisure travel isn't.

[HMR74]

 

[PelicanBill]

8 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

That's only in the case of disembarking after an outbreak

 

Read it carefully. There is nothing leading into that section that says that is for outbreak management. It is a general requirement of the shoreside agreement.  If they intended it to be for a returning outbreak ship that is not stated at all.  The purpose statement is for the simulated and all restricted cruises that may follow.

[PelicanBill]

7 hours ago, Iamcruzin said:

Cargo is essential. Leisure travel isn't.

And cargo does not have the risk of dumping a thousand infected people into the country, all scattering randomly throughout on commercial transportation.

 

There is still a strange opinion here that cruise travel is somehow not leisure, and low priority. That it somehow has a large economic impact on the US.  It simply doesn't and cannot be a priority for the CDC.  The most impact is on small port towns in Alaska, which are not going to die on the vine since they survive half the year without port calls.  

 

The CDC's point of view is there is still a risk of a Diamond Princess event happening. And with less than 1/4 of the population vaccinated they cannot have any other opinion.  If a cruise line submits a plan that says sailings are restricted to vaccinated persons (all adults for now!) they might be given more leeway for that. But no cruise line has done so!  The cruise lines continue to play the victim and have not done enough to convince the CDC they are ready.  The healthy sail report was nowhere close to convincing. 

 

If 80% of the population gets vaccinated and transmission drops below 0.5% we will see a different situation from the CDC.  We won't know until July or August.

 

 

[B Midged]

17 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

 

So, which is it?  And, if they didn't do those "surprise inspections" as per the VSP, which was worked out in conjunction with the cruise lines, they would resort to their original mandate of performing a full sanitation inspection and health interview with passengers and crew before anyone is allowed to disembark, every time the ship entered the US. 

 

I guess reading comprehension isn't what it used to be.  I said that the CDC can control state to state travel only if the Secretary of HHS (not the CDC director) considers the states to not be doing an adequate job.

 

Sputnik is not approved by WHO, and many countries, including most of the Caribbean, do not recognize it.

 

But, heck, I guess I shouldn't argue with an armchair epidemiologist.

An armchair epidemiologist and a glorified mechanic walk into a bar.....

[smokeybandit]

1 hour ago, PelicanBill said:

And cargo does not have the risk of dumping a thousand infected people into the country

 

Neither does cruising. Never has, never will

[Goodtime Cruizin]

8 hours ago, Iamcruzin said:

Cargo is essential. Leisure travel isn't.

Wrong. Leisure travel is considered essential by the CDC. 

[Iamcruzin]

6 minutes ago, Goodtime Cruizin said:

Wrong. Leisure travel is considered essential by the CDC. 

I can't find anything to support your statement.

[PelicanBill]

16 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

 

Neither does cruising. Never has, never will

It happens all the time with rhinovirus and norovirus, and Covid-sars-19 is far more contagious and deadly.  that is the position of the CDC.  The Diamond Princess was super close to a disaster. The CDC flew a team there to manage the situation on how to return people home. This is the medical opinion of the world's leading infectious disease experts. 

[Iamcruzin]

1 hour ago, PelicanBill said:

And cargo does not have the risk of dumping a thousand infected people into the country, all scattering randomly throughout on commercial transportation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They also fail to recognize all of the local everyday business that have suffered this past year all over the world such as bars, restaurants and entertainment. They are still struggling over a year later. So forgive me if I'm don't have sympathy for the guy selling puka shells and caftans in the Caribbean. I'm sure he is still in business selling to those on land trips.

[smokeybandit]

1 minute ago, PelicanBill said:

It happens all the time with rhinovirus and norovirus, and Covid-sars-19 is far more contagious and deadly.  that is the position of the CDC.  The Diamond Princess was super close to a disaster. The CDC flew a team there to manage the situation on how to return people home. This is the medical opinion of the world's leading infectious disease experts. 

 Norovirus outbreaks are very rare, come on. Even the CDC admits this.  And norovirus is much more contagious because of multiple means of spread. Diamond Princess only had a couple hundred people on board that even suspected they had covid, despite the average age on board being 69. And this was at a time when no one knew anything about covid.

 

 

[clearlake_cruiser]

Some of the people posting are ridiculous and nasty. I'm up to 41 "ignored users" now.  WOW 😣

[franncos]

Here is the reality. CDC has no intentions of lifting the no sail  order  until Nov 30th at the earliest. All this is just a stalling tactic to make it look like they are helping the cruise lines,  in reality they are not  doing a dam thing for cruise lines.

[Goodtime Cruizin]

56 minutes ago, Iamcruzin said:

I can't find anything to support your statement.

Try harder.

I imagine that about 75% of air travel is for 'leisure' purposes. Business travel is still way, way down form 2019, while 'leisure' travel is close to the same level these days. 

[smokeybandit]

4 minutes ago, Goodtime Cruizin said:

Try harder.

I imagine that about 75% of air travel is for 'leisure' purposes. Business travel is still way, way down form 2019, while 'leisure' travel is close to the same level these days. 

 

It was closer to 90% pre-covid

[Iamcruzin]

3 minutes ago, Goodtime Cruizin said:

Try harder.

I imagine that about 75% of air travel is for 'leisure' purposes. Business travel is still way, way down form 2019, while 'leisure' travel is close to the same level these days. 

I agree but where does it say that the CDC considers cruising essential? That was the basis of my original comment. The CDC is still issuing a travel advisory.