Will Cruise lines stipulate which vaccines are acceptable for travel?

[rl787]

 

Over the past few weeks there have been rumblings about the efficacy of certain vaccines. There seems to be some concern that the 4 Chinese vaccines generally including Sinovac may only have an efficacy of about 50% and also the reliability of Russia’s Sputnik 5 is still basically unknown.

Do you think this may become an issue for travel and also how do you feel if fellow passengers and crew have not had one of the more widely recognised vaccines that are thought to have an efficacy at around the 90% mark?

[klkaylor78]

Few thoughts on this topic -

First is the math behind efficacy that has been reported poorly/and understood even worse. If a vaccine is 50% efficacious for the prevention of  hospitalization and the incidence of the disease is 1% then the following is true. If you are the only one vaccinated, no one is pre tested, and get on a ship with 1000 folks - the 10 folks on board have the disease. If you encounter one of those that has the disease and enough virus spreads to you  then you have a 50% of being fine or minimal illness and 50% chance of getting sick and needing hospitalization. If 90% effective then you would have a 90% of being fine or minimal illness.  

So after immunization with a vaccine with 80-90% efficacy then I am happy going anywhere. Life has some risk but you have to remember that first you have to meet up and spend some time with someone with covid. Given that only 10 out of a thousand have the virus that would normally be a low probability but confined the ship it is more like 100% that you will encounter and spend time with an infected person - given that they get on. I am willing to accept that risk.  I think differently about with a 50% efficacy vaccine. I would need the ship to be very careful about letting on sick people - ie. two tests 4 days apart and isolation until we all prove negative. One problem with this simple math is that covid does not have 100% penitence - it is directly correlated with age.  Young folks same amount of virus no disease - old, diabetic, obese, 100% disease (get sick) and a high risk of death. 

 

Unless the vaccine is proven to stop a carrier state- which is presently not the case - then the vaccine is all about me not getting ill.

 

So for me vaccines are optional - I would like lots of folks to get it to reduce the spread but it is really about you not getting sick. I would like the ship - only because we are in close quarters for long duration to do a rapid antigen test right at boarding to try and eliminate the 10 sick folks to improve all of our trip.  The down side of this is that at a 95% sensitivity that is is possible that one false negative (infected person testing negative rather than positive) getting on board.  However if the test is also 99% sensitive then there will be about 10 false positive and those folks will either miss the trip or have to be quarantined.  

 

I am not a fan of cruses, business, airlines using vaccination as a entry ticket but if they do I don't care which vaccine folks get as it is them that are at risk with a low efficacy vaccine. Secondly the tighter you make the rules the more likely people break them - false vaccine certificates are all ready available.

 

 

[Navis]

On 4/12/2021 at 4:12 AM, rl787 said:

 

Over the past few weeks there have been rumblings about the efficacy of certain vaccines. There seems to be some concern that the 4 Chinese vaccines generally including Sinovac may only have an efficacy of about 50% and also the reliability of Russia’s Sputnik 5 is still basically unknown.

Do you think this may become an issue for travel and also how do you feel if fellow passengers and crew have not had one of the more widely recognised vaccines that are thought to have an efficacy at around the 90% mark?

I think this could end up being a port by port issue, unfortunately. About 5 days ago, Barbados updated their entry requirements (effective 5/8/21). They have not updated guidance for cruises per say by that have for all air travel arrival. 
 

They have created 2 paths of entry. One for fully vaccinated and one for non vaccinated. In the presentation they include a definition of “fully vaccinated” which calls out only the “big 4” we have heard about. 
 

I also found it very interesting that they also have these provisions that state if you are arriving from a country with a high exposure to COVID variants they can override your vaccination status and make you follow the unvaccinated path.

 

It will be very interesting to see what happens with cruises because even with vaccines ... Barbados is still requiring pre arrival and post arrival neg tests and tracking bracelets for your quarantine period (up to 2 days for vaccinated folks and 7 for non vaccinated).

[klkaylor78]

Several countries (the US not included) have removed testing requirements for those who are fully vaccinated- read 2 wks post last required vaccination. 

One major difference between now and the Spanish  Flu pandemic is that a case is now defined as a positive test rather than a sick person and we know that not all that are inoculate with the virus become sick.  

Politics of "we have less cases" is driving the world perception of countries rather than less deaths or a better overall outcome - GDP, unexpected v. expected death, etc.  Sadly politics have overruled science - the leader of this failure is our own Fauci sadly enough.

I do agree that the rules of the nation that you are to visit can directly effect cruising but more important that that is the rules of the origination and termination ports are critical as those are the concrete parts of a common carrier cruise contract.  You have to start and end at the points the folks contracted for or provide compensation.  The intermediate stops are up to the cruise line and more of a "satisfaction issue" than a legal requirement

 

[cruiseej]

On 4/13/2021 at 5:56 PM, klkaylor78 said:

If a vaccine is 50% efficacious for the prevention of  hospitalization and the incidence of the disease is 1% then the following is true. If you are the only one vaccinated, no one is pre tested, and get on a ship with 1000 folks - the 10 folks on board have the disease.

 

The math is probably worse than that. I just read about an ongoing study of people's blood samples which shows, in preliminary results, that many more people had (and have) COVID than the active test result numbers show:

 

The authors estimated that as of mid-July, for every confirmed case of COVID-19, an additional five people had been infected but not diagnosed, give or take. Some may have been unaware of infection due to a lack of symptoms, while others may have suspected they had it but failed to get tested.

 

So we have more people on the ship with COVID, most not knowing it, but able to spread it. All the more reason for wanting to have a vaccine with as high an efficacy as possible. And why ongoing testing, social distancing and masks in places with lots of people are all still going to be needed until the number of cases in all the places we travel in the world is far, far lower.

 

There are concerns and uncertainties all around as cruising aims to restart. Some of those people with COVID will be tested before leaving home and be weeded out, to their surprise and massive disappointment. Some will be "caught" at the entrance, with a positive pre-boarding test. Imagine people flying to embarkation destinations unknowingly having COVID, only to be turned away and denied boarding -- and then needing to find a way to get home knowing they are COVID-positive? How many people who are fully vaccinated and "have proof" will feel relatively invincible and be even more upset if a pre-boarding test shows they have the virus? Will there be time for multiple tests at embarkation, to try to rule out false positives from ruining expensive and highly anticipated vacations? With all the layers of protection in place, what will happen if on day 5 of a 14-day cruise, a passenger isn't feeling well and tests positive? Can the cruise go on with that passenger isolated, or does the cruise essentially get cut short, passengers get somewhat locked down, and the ship heads back to its starting or ending port without any further stops? Many questions we still don't have all the answers to…

[klkaylor78]

I have to agree that there are more questions than we have answers  

Covid is the first disease that a positive "culture" with or without symptoms became a case-crazy but true. Lab tests for the presence of a bacteria or virus were done to confirm symptoms not diagnoses the disease.  I am not sure that the presence of a virus in your nose while you are asymptomatic is important except for the question of spread. 

While both social distancing and masks have been proven in the lab (artificial droplet and aerosols) ex vivo testing neither have been proven in vivo (in live humans) so the actual value of either in the transmission of virus disease is up for debate. Personally I think they reduce the amount of virus spread from sick or carriers but do little to protect you if you walk through a cloud of virus.

We presently do not screen for asymptomatic carriers of norovirus, MRSA, influenza (pick a strain), SARS, yellow fever, or even malaria - all which have a wide range of infection or case fatality ratios.  Why now Covid 19?  We have not cared about measles vaccination - yet in the very young or very old can be quite serious so should we mandate measles vaccine before a cruise?

Covid is a bad disease for the old, and those that are obese, diabetic or have cardiopulmonary disease.

If I was one of those three I would get vaccinated then avoid all of the high risk activities. For those of us under 40 - Covid has a lower case fatality ratio than the flu - so to each there own - vaccinate or suffer the illness with the same risk as those choosing to get a flu vaccine. For those 40-65 vaccinate would be my best recomendation then let us choose our risks.  

The governmental paternalism mixed with politics has skewed the response and information so much that we no longer are making scientific choices but avoiding political blow back. 

Life without risk is not possible.

 

 

[alwaysonaship]

This is a very interesting post. We very much want to get back on a Seaborn ship, but just cannot do it even though we are fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. 
 

I think we will just wait and see how these first cruises go.