Norovirus: inevitable on crowded cruise ships?

[trilinearmipmap]

Jim you have made some interesting points and I agree with some of them.

 

Strange as it may seem, there are hundreds of extremely smart and very highly paid experts sitting in Cruise Line Offices all over North America, having many urgent meetings about how to reduce and minimize the damage being done to their Billion Dollar companies by these NLV Outbreaks that occur like clockwork every year.

Yes and if a cruise line is like any other organization, there are managers higher up who probably ignore their own experts' advice.

 

Many of these people are far more experienced and educated than we are; some of them are far smarter than we are. If fixing the problem was as simple as many Cruisecritic posters would like to think, doesn't it seem likely that one of these Cruise Line geniuses would have already come up with these simple solutions, saved millions of dollars for his company, and become an even more highly paid superstar in the Cruise Industry? It's just not that easy.

I can't agree, the purpose of a discussion board it to discuss things, if we never discussed anything because the experts know better then life would be pretty boring.

 

 

Even when we offer to give a full refund to anyone with symptoms, they still conceal the truth because they don't want to lose their vacation and also cannot get a refund on their air tickets

Offering a refund is a good idea, I would be likely not to cruise when sick if I could get a refund even if I had to take a loss on my airfare. Without a refund I doubt there are many who would cancel their cruise because of this illness. Does anyone know if Royal Caribbean offers refunds to patients with symptoms of stomach flu?

 

 

The only surefire way to prevent onboard infection is to administer those expensive NLV tests to every pasenger before boarding

Actually no, even if an instant test were available, it would have a false positive and false negative rate. Not to bore anyone with statistics but given a low enough prevalence of the virus in the population, even a positive test result could mean that more likely than not the person does not carry the virus.

 

It seems there is some frustration with the criticism of cruise lines' actions. It was not my intent to criticize but to ask questions and suggest answers. No harm is intended, I am cruising in April and I want to enjoy my cruise, that's all.

[Jim Gallup]

There is another very disturbing health trend I have noticed on Cruise Ships around North America over the past 2 years. Part of my job involves ensuring that all the public toilets on my ship are properly maintained, stocked, and cleaned. Every day without fail I walk into a public toilet (male) to find a passenger with a plate of food, eating in a public toilet. Absolutely revolting.

What is this all about?

Aside from the disgusting thought of eating like this, if you want to contract NLV, this is just about the best possible way to do it. Is this some new American trend or habit? Why would anyone want to do such a ridiculous thing? Were these people raise by wolves?

 

When we have cruisers on an upscale cruise line behaving like this, there is no chance to avoid illness on a ship.