jfunk138

1 minute ago, Stallion said:

Covid is decreasing where the vaccines have been widely injected

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Not true, example:   Seychelles.  They have passed Israel and are #2 in worldwide vaccination behind Gibraltar.  Gibraltar has the second highest death rate on the planet (2,791/Million).  But Seychelles is catching up fast (565 cases/Million 7 day rolling average).


World Vaccination leaders:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-12-25..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_vaccinations_per_hundred&Metric=Vaccine+doses&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=ISR~SYC~ARE~GBR~BHR~USA~GIB~FLK~CYM~CHL~SMR

 

5 minutes ago, Tom-n-Cheryl said:

 

What definition of "long term testing" would satisfy you in this case ... 1 year, 2-3, 5+ ? (While Rome burns)

 

BTW - the vaccine (ones in use in US) have an excellent safety record - and nothing is a zero risk. Perhaps we need more than a hundred million+  people to make a good call. 😉 

 

 

How about Pfizer's definition of "long term testing":

"Estimated Study Completion Date:  April 6, 2023"

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728

It is truly amazing how science evolves around Covid. 

100 years of research after the 1918 Spanish Flu and not a single study was able to find community level masking of healthy individuals was useful.  But mere weeks into this pandemic, we strapped a piece of cloth to a mannequin and sprayed mists out of the mouth and concluded they worked.  I wonder why nobody thought of this in 100 years?  All these years of flu, and we could have just strapped a piece of cloth to mannequin and solved it!

Years of development on vaccines for horrible diseases like chikungunya, dengue, and ebola and they are only starting to near approval.  But Covid vaccine in mere months:  "Fully tested"¹.  Only a troll or bot would be suspicious of these miracle timeframes.  Name calling is clearly the best outreach to those that might be concerned.

¹ "The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is an unapproved vaccine that may prevent COVID-19. There is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19."

https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download

35 minutes ago, ProgRockCruiser said:

Is it because currently the vaccine is listed as emergency use only under the pandemic?  What happens when (if) it gets full approval?

I think many underestimate how far away "full approval" is...

"Estimated Study Completion Date:  April 6, 2023"

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728

1 minute ago, cruisingguy007 said:

 

Europe is different than the USA. Different set of rules. It's not as simple as it sounds here. I can see how one could think that though. It's much more involved than many speculate and would require ongoing costs to manage, secure, and update, plus the legalities are a different ball of wax. 

Its some irony that in the land of GDPR, it's easier to share and access private health information.

3 hours ago, asalligo said:

205,000 deaths out of 18,552,365 cases is still barely over a 1 percent death rate. 

Some useful perspective on the India situation:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_vaccinations_per_hundred&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=GIB~FLK~ITA~IND

Though I have quite a few shares of stock (mostly purchased at a much lower price), I don't share the same optimism at its current price.  It was trading in the low 40's in late 2019.  Since then it's been diluted TWICE.  Even if they went back to full capacity immediately, it's still only a low $30's stock.  Unlike Disney, they don't have a booming content empire to fall back on while travel is running at reduced capacity.  And let's face it, full capacity is a long way off.  Much of the crew has been sent home.  When bringing them back remember, the crew comes from countries where Covid is raging right now, so putting these people on a ship is going to be challenging.  

Assuming there's some variation of a vaccine requirement, 50% of their customer base is currently ineligible, with probably some ceiling around 30% (or more) of their previous base simply being ineligible as we approach peak "acceptance".

This is not a recipe for a return to old share price levels.

29 minutes ago, kdr69 said:

Would that not be the Food and Drug Administration that gave the emergency use and also approves regular usage?  Not sure if that is in CDC's mandate to give vaccine approvals?

Sure.  Would that not be the CDC stepping on the FDA's toes to "mandate" a vaccine that the FDA has been unwilling to approve?  I'm just not sure how it would work for the CDC to override the FDA's authority by mandating something that had not even been approved.

21 minutes ago, Buckeyefrank100 said:

Point taken, but honestly how many people know of the VAERS website for submission of side effects.  I'd be willing to bet the skew is heavily towards unreported side effects as opposed to the other way around.

When you file a VAERS report there are numerous reminders that filing false information is a federal crime and there is an entire federal agency that will hunt you down if they suspect you are submitting false information. 

For this reason, you are definitely correct that underreporting is an issue.  A person who is not certain their blood clots were related to the vaccine might be very hesitant to face the scrutiny of federal inspectors.

1 hour ago, Buckeyefrank100 said:

I can't find it now, but there's an official website tracking the side effects of the vaccines and there are a lot, including potential deaths, spontaneous abortions, etc. 

That website is VAERS:

https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

There are already thousands of adverse events reported and there is a long lag time between report and when they become searchable in this system, so you are only seeing what has been reported through ~March.

1 hour ago, OceanZena said:

This is great news especially coming from the CDC. My only concern is this is dated April 5. Has it been updated since? 

April 5th is a microsecond ago in slow moving CDC time.  I don't think they would change their mind in 20 days given the time it has taken to get this far.

That said, in general, folks here seem to be far too confident in the CDC's ability to mandate the vaccine.  They aren't even willing to sign off on full approval, are they really going to put their bureaucratic rears on the line and mandate something they won't yet even approve beyond emergency use?  Going on a cruise is no "emergency" in their mind.

Surprised nobody posted this yet:

https://news.yahoo.com/cdc-guidance-says-cruise-ships-154352815.html

"CDC guidance says cruise ships won't need to mandate vaccines"

Apparently Arnold Donald and CDC are on the same page.

16 minutes ago, OceanZena said:

That's because it's been what the lying media has been force feeding them to continue dividing us and they swallow it. I despise politics and do not like discussing it, but all I will say is that the above couldn't be further from the truth as far as i'm concerned and it's really sad if there are people who actually think this about those of us who are hesitant of the vaccine. In fact it's downright ignorant. 

Go back and read through some of their posts... the political undertones and the assumptions about who is hesitant and why.  Diversity and inclusion...

52 minutes ago, OceanZena said:

Yet when a poster says things like "I hope they don't let you on the ship" or "I won't sail if you people are on board" it implies insult and makes it sound like we're lepers lol. Had the poster clarified their statement with what you explained, above I would have understood their reasoning better. 

I think there are a few posters that think of the unvaccinated as lepers.  Some of these folks also think that a person's choice of whether to be vaccinated also reveals who they voted for and look at the "other side" with disgust:  deplorables and neanderthals.  "I'm not cruising with THOSE people!"

6 minutes ago, harkinmr said:

Read the last sentence.  Mid-summer is July.  The cruise lines need to step up to the plate at this point.  They've been given a platform.  Work with the CDC within the framework.  Don't just sit back and whine about how hard it is to comply.  The CSO is not going anywhere, that's pretty clear, so take the opportunity you've been given.  

I'm still missing the part where "having a meeting" equals "support for cruising in July"...

26 minutes ago, harkinmr said:

Yup.  Try paying attention to something other than CC.  CDC met with the cruise line execs on April 12th.  Working group in progress.  

 

The CDC issued the following statement to Cruise Week this morning: "Experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and White House staff met with cruise industry leaders and executives to discuss the Framework for Conditional Sailing Order (CSO) on Monday, April 12, 2021. Cruise industry leaders were able to provide input into the phases of the CSO, expressed frustration with the requirements, discussed the incorporation of vaccination requirements into restarting passenger voyages, and expressed the need to establish a working group with industry and CDC to work forward to resume cruising as soon as possible. Cruising will always pose some risk of COVID-19 transmission, and COVID-19 vaccines will play a critical role in the safe resumption of passenger operations. Cruise travelers represent a global population, and as more people are fully vaccinated worldwide, the phased approach of the CSO also allows CDC to incorporate these advancements into planning for the safe resumption of cruise ship travel. CDC is committed to working with the cruise industry and seaport partners to resume cruising following a phased approach required by the CSO. CDC and DHS senior leadership will begin meetings with cruise industry leaders starting this week. The objective of the meetings are to mutually review the top priority issues of the cruise industry to work out implementation details of the CSO, including the impact of vaccines and other scientific developments since the CSO was issued in October 2020. This goal aligns with the desire for the resumption of passenger operations in the United States by mid-summer, expressed by many major cruise ship operators and travelers."

This meeting was discussed here on CC.  There was no mention of CDC supporting a July time frame and more foreign port sailings announced after...

41 minutes ago, mredandchis said:

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I am vaccinated.  And a line, lets say Carnival, says vaccination is not required, then non vaccinated people, lets say, that would normally sail on Norwegian or RC would flock to Carnival and upset the herd immunity hence causing some sort of major issue on a cruise..  This is my concern,  But yes that would be when I would decide that it wasn't worth the risk on Carnival and head to another line.  But you had asked for a concern with covid and cruising and that is my only concern. If the ship could maintain herd immunity then I have no issue.  

I think its safe to say that a vax optional cruise would end up with a large contingent of folks with natural immunity from prior infection.  The folks that are least afraid of Covid are frequently those that have already had it.

1 minute ago, jedi bobs said:

I was wrong about that, but the point is still the same with this new law it will make it impossable to cruise out of Flordia if contries require proff of vacanation, and I hope all cruise lines pull out of flordia over this.

 

What's more likely to happen is that it will put pressure on countries NOT to require it.  These tourism dependent nations are not going to turn away all that business.

In the battle of Florida, population 21.5 Million, vs Bahamas, population 0.3 Million, Florida is likely to prevail.

3 minutes ago, jedi bobs said:

Becuse of the new proposed law banniing any busness including cruise lines from requiring proof of vacinaton or reciving a $5000 fine per person per violation, will mean all cruise lines will pull out of Flordia even if CDC allows crusing.  The reason is this, the Bahamas require all cruise passangers be vacanated, and without proof they will not be able to enter the bahamas so there goes the bahamas as a destanation, if other contries follow suit the cruise lines will not be able to go anywhere.

Not sure where you are seeing that Bahamas is requiring travelers to be vaccinated?  RCL might be requiring it for their cruises departing there but there is no vaccination requirement to enter Bahamas itself.

Perhaps the cruiselines are already feeling the bleeding to restriction-free, already open all-inclusive land based resorts?  They cannot yet make any promises about restrictions, but maybe by including the extras they hope to capture some bookings before folks send their deposit money to the all-inclusive resorts?

16 minutes ago, mredandchis said:

not the breakthrough cases,  Those are a fact.. was referring to vaccinated people shedding the virus.  I see I wasn't clear as I wanted to be.  I dont feed trolls,  I attempt to simply carry on simple conversations and debate a bit. 

I generally agree with much of what you say here... But hundreds of those thousands of cases did turn into hospitalizations.  You don't get sick enough to be hospitalized and not shed the virus.   

Many on both sides of this debate are WAY too optimistic about how well the vax works.   At this point, we've only had a large number of people "fully vaccinated" for a short period of time.  As that time increases and these folks get more exposed, this number of breakthrough cases is going to grow rapidly.

1 minute ago, mredandchis said:

Obvious?  So far all the experts have found zero cases.  I am not saying they wont eventually find one but it is going to be rare.  

Not sure if you are just feeding the troll, but there are indeed already thousands of confirmed breakthrough cases:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/19/cdc-says-there-have-been-less-than-6000-breakthrough-covid-cases-among-fully-vaccinated-americans.html

1 hour ago, firefly333 said:

I saw you also wouldnt wear a mask on a cruise. I'm so tired of masks, but it seems a feel good thing.

 

There isnt any proof those vaccinated can pass it on. I'm in the group chafing at wearing a mask when I'm 2 months past vaccinations. Dallas has no stores around me not requiring them. I cant boycott shopping. Need to eat.

 

I think if the so called experts have their way we will be wearing masks for a long time. Obviously this is new and it's just their guesses and cya time. Not science. I will cruise though, but I hate masks as much as you. It's so stupid. My mask is decorative only lol. And I dont care. It's stupid to wear one. 

 

I dared to say we will have more doses than people wanting them on rcl boards and so many attacked me saying there is no proof doses will start to fall off...thread got locked I was attacked so much. I said give it a month. There is even a name for it. Cross over, where doses start outnumbering people wanting them. 

I'd suggest to try shopping without a mask, you might be surprised how successful you are.  I'm in Maskachusetts and the only place I wear a mask is grocery shopping and even there I wear it below my nose and nobody says a thing.  Liquor stores, restaurants, etc. no mask, no problem.  If anyone asks, say you forgot it.  They will either give you one or tell you to try to remember next time...

2 hours ago, Tink10 said:

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I'd be the first in line to book with the line that didn't require vaccines or masks or tests. 

+1

11 minutes ago, ledges1 said:

Did anyone hear Jim Cramer on Squawk on the Street this morning. He stated that he was worried about the cruise line industry and said "I think the CDC wants to put these guys out of business".  Interesting comments to say on national TV. What do you think about this statement. There are a lot of supporters of the CDC on this site.

There's no doubt the CDC has a political "bone to pick" with the cruiselines.  The cruiseline industry does not play nice with the "US is the center of the universe" paradigm that US bureaucrats like to believe.  Much of how the cruiselines operate(foreign flagged ships, international crews) is intentionally to avoid US laws and rules.  I suspect their "lobbying" expenditures at the CDC are also minimal.  Other than Scott Gottlieb, they haven't paid the big "consulting" fees to various former CDC staffers and their unemployable offspring, which certainly enrages the political hacks at the CDC.  The airlines "paid the toll" with that ridiculous "study" that found minimal Covid spread on aircraft.  Cruiselines have so far not done the same.

In terms of "put these guys out of business", I think there's more to the cruiselines than US homeports.