Are you afraid of the coronavirus in your next cruise?

[larrywizzit]

14 minutes ago, Christine13020 said:

Be careful, this guy is not an epidemiologist. The practice is fundamentally unsafe. 

No. They are academics though. Their major point is that the practice will continue (black markets) except without regulation. So it's more of behavioral economics take than that of epidemiology. I am pretty sure at this point we get that it's infectious.

Knee jerk reactions to contain it might lead to more harm than good.

[KnowTheScore]

1 hour ago, larrywizzit said:

Except because of the incubation period, it takes 14 days to determine if one is in fact 'healthy'.

 

Hence the quarantine.

 

 

Yep but the point being made is those people should taken off and far away from the confirmed infected people and infected environment and placed in their own separate quarantine areas for 2 weeks until cleared.   It's despicable that everyone is being forcibly cooped up in an environment with infected people on board.

 

 

 

 

[chengkp75]

4 minutes ago, KnowTheScore said:

 

 

Yep but the point being made is those people should taken off and far away from the confirmed infected people and infected environment and placed in their own separate quarantine areas for 2 weeks until cleared.   It's despicable that everyone is being forcibly cooped up in an environment with infected people on board.

 

 

 

 

Except for the fact that being confined to their cabins, there is no recirculated AC as you claim.  And, I'm sure the public space AC units are having their sanitizing mats changed frequently to take care of recirculated air.

[KnowTheScore]

1 hour ago, Smiffy30 said:

YI'm going on a cruise next Friday to Mauritius and I'm getting myself in a panic over it my husband has a low immune system which doesn't help... I'm thinking of cancelling it but know I will loose my money really don't know what to do for the best 

 

 

It's not really a difficult choice to make in reality.  Money is just money, bits of cash.   Your health is priceless, your life more so.

 

Even if you are lucky enough to not have Coronavirus on board the likelihood is that lots of ports are going to refuse you entry just because someone on-board has basic cold/flu symptoms.   Do you really want to shell out all that money for a cruise that could easily see lots of missed ports?  

 

I'm cancelling an up-coming cruise that I have booked and already paid for.  It smarts but the choice is clear for me.  I'm not putting myself in peril for the sake of a few £000 and I'm not prepared to take that risk just for the sake of a cruise that may largely be just a cruise at sea as port after port is missed.  I'm also cancelling other cruises booked for later in the year because I predict this whole situation will get far worse before it gets better.    Something else strikes me too.   Cruise line will lose $million as a result of all of this and lots of people like myself will cancel their cruises in droves imho.   Thus if you have any forward booked cruises and will only lose say a £50 deposit by cancelling, I'm willing to bet that if you cancel and then look at ticket prices nearer the time they will be astronomically cheaper as the cruise lines will be desperate for the custom.

 

 

 

[taglovestocruise]

600 dead from Coronavirus worldwide,  26,000 dead from this years flu. Worry about the flu.. happy cruising. 

[larrywizzit]

2 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Except for the fact that being confined to their cabins, there is no recirculated AC as you claim.  And, I'm sure the public space AC units are having their sanitizing mats changed frequently to take care of recirculated air.

Well.....There has to be some air exchange going on. But the point is being missed that this is the decision of the Japanese health authorities. They are the ones that have decided on this course and the cruise ship companies cannot legally do otherwise.

[chengkp75]

16 minutes ago, larrywizzit said:

Well.....There has to be some air exchange going on. But the point is being missed that this is the decision of the Japanese health authorities. They are the ones that have decided on this course and the cruise ship companies cannot legally do otherwise.

Yes, there is air exchange.  Fresh air is brought into the ship and supplied to the cabins, and the bathroom exhaust takes an equal amount of air back to the outside.  The air being controlled by the cabin thermostat controls air that is recirculated within that cabin.

[Christine13020]

35 minutes ago, larrywizzit said:

No. They are academics though. Their major point is that the practice will continue (black markets) except without regulation. So it's more of behavioral economics take than that of epidemiology. I am pretty sure at this point we get that it's infectious.

Knee jerk reactions to contain it might lead to more harm than good.

As is doing nothing. Next one may get you or a family member.

[larrywizzit]

3 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Yes, there is air exchange.  Fresh air is brought into the ship and supplied to the cabins, and the bathroom exhaust takes an equal amount of air back to the outside.  The air being controlled by the cabin thermostat controls air that is recirculated within that cabin.

That makes sense. My clients are in HVAC and I understand that commercial buildings use the same concepts. I think most people are used to residential homes, where topologically the whole thing is a single entity.

[Jacob Cavalier]

Yes I’m very nervous. Thinking of cancelling. 2 cruise ships currently in quarantine, one on the way to Japan now going to be denied entry due to suspected cases on board and several passengers from a ship in New Jersey taken to hospital for tests. My husband is very prone to chest infections after even a cold so I’m very sore concerned about corona virus. Also don’t fancy risking being held in a cabin in quarantine.

[Gershep]

1 hour ago, Hlitner said:

So consider your action to put off booking future cruises.  This Corona Virus situation will eventually stabilize and no longer be an issue....just like the old Sars bug.  But you will never have any guarantee that there will not be another virus outbreak and/or a major flu epidemic which has killed a lot more folks then Corona Viruses.  If one were to follow your logic they would never book another cruise or even book another land trip.  Lets face it.  Most of us book cruises and trips far in advance with zero knowledge of what the world situation will be at that future time.  It is just part of life.

 

Hank

I didn't ask or tell any one to follow my logic, I just posted what I was doing. Two years ago I was on a cruise where passengers were quarantined with the flu. Fortunately I didn't get the flu while onboard but did get it once I got home even though I had the flu shot. Hence why I am not booking at the moment, not that I needed to explain to you.

[KnowTheScore]

2 hours ago, Hlitner said:

If one were to follow your logic they would never book another cruise or even book another land trip.  Lets face it.  Most of us book cruises and trips far in advance with zero knowledge of what the world situation will be at that future time.  It is just part of life.

 

Hank

 

It's your logic that is badly flawed here.

 

When the Coronavirus situation abates then the current medical protocols being enforced will also abate.   So when people present with cold/flu symptoms on-board, as they have done for years on end, nobody will give a flying fig about it and ports will happily let people disembark whether healthy or coughing and sneezing.

 

TODAY, whilst the crisis is in full swing it is different.  Today you will be refused permission to disembark if someone shows with cold/flu symptoms.  That's the crucial difference.   That's why people at the moment, will cancel cruises because they don't want to pay £000s just to go on a cruise at sea being refused entry to ports on the itinerary.

 

When the Coronavirus situation is behind us, things will revert to normal and one will be able to expect a normal cruise experience.  Until of course the next super big emerges and the whole system starts again and the medical protocols are implemented again and thus we stop cruising again.   Yes it will be cyclical but it in no way means people need to never cruise again.  It just means people need to make fairly easy assessments of the likelihood of significant impact to their cruises and to decide whether they want to shell out £000s for that impacted experience.  It is what it is.

 

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by KnowTheScore

[navybankerteacher]

1 hour ago, taglovestocruise said:

600 dead from Coronavirus worldwide,  26,000 dead from this years flu. Worry about the flu.. happy cruising. 

Of course that 26,000 flu dead out of a world population of 7,000,000,000 means 1 in every 270,000.   The 600 corona dead - almost all out of the Wuhan are  population of 11,000,000 - means 1 out of every 18,500.  A more than ten times higher fatality rate.

 

If you are going to seek comfort from statistics, you should try to understand those statistics.

 

  

[Toofarfromthesea]

15 hours ago, dethman said:

have 8 more days to cancel my 3/16 cruise on costa smeralda for only a 50% penalty instead of 75.  will see how this plays out but i don't really feel like getting stuck on a ship without being able to get off ports or have the possibility of being in quarantine.

 

I saw a medical guy on TV talking about how these viruses do not thrive in warm humid conditions and that this will die down around April.  He also expected that by the fall we will have a vaccine, in case the virus re-emerges.  Our next cruise is Nov. so I expect a lot more clarity by the time of our final payment.  I don't envy you your decision since you are on the border of when it will die down.  One positive is that by the time of your cruise they will be much better at dealing with any problems compared to the first ships, which had to be have been taken unawares.

[George C]

Not afraid a little concerned , seems easy to spread certain illnesses on a cruise, got a few emails from celebrity on it cruising next week out of Miami. 

[Toofarfromthesea]

1 hour ago, navybankerteacher said:

Of course that 26,000 flu dead out of a world population of 7,000,000,000 means 1 in every 270,000.   The 600 corona dead - almost all out of the Wuhan are  population of 11,000,000 - means 1 out of every 18,500.  A more than ten times higher fatality rate.

 

If you are going to seek comfort from statistics, you should try to understand those statistics.

 

  

 

I don't know where that 26,000 number comes from, but in 2019 there were 57,000 deaths from flu in the US.

 

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/04/us-flu-still-elevated-dropping-deaths-high-57000

 

If we are going to talk about statistics we should start with correct statistics.  Our flu deaths rate are approximately 3x the coronavirus death rate *so far*.  Obviously that will change as there are more deaths in Wuhan and elsewhere.  But we still need to know the correct numbers when making comparisons and assessing risk levels.  

[chipmaster]

On 1/30/2020 at 12:42 PM, librarygal said:

The coronavirus

It scares me to death.  I would not want to be trapped on any closed place without easy access to a hospital or my home with this going around.  Right now 7000 passengers are waiting for permission to leave the ship in Italy because some passengers may be sick with the virus.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/01/30/coronavirus-costa-cruise-ship-passengers-held-onboard-amid-tests/4618718002/

 

What are your thoughts about cruising during the internationally spread?

 

Every cruise for the most part is the gathering of a few thousand people who then live, eat, touch things like elevators, hand rails restroom doors, buffet tongs, maybe even fecal mixing in the bathroom, LOL for weeks.  We really get intimate don't we!

 

Now add to the fact we come together from all over the world,  with likely many hundreds if not thousands having traveled thousands of miles thru airports and foreign countries.    Expect to bring more than their different culture and language and stuff.

 

The good thing is your body if you are health and vibrant been exposed to most of those things and your immune system can roar into action to fight it.    Some like SARs, MERs and this new Coronavirus have never been seen by human immune system so it is still a new and unknown how this will end.  The chinese numbers aren't good, huge number of ill, 2% death rate and the recovery rate while climbing is strangely not as high as I'd expect given the two months it's been going on, no wonder the hospitals in Hubei are totally overwhelmed.  I am also very suspicious of the accurace of cases, deaths and recovery.  

 

The only real test case is the Princess cruise which is a really controlled group, large enough sample size and enough history to trace the introduction to likely a single person to gather data on transmission and recovery and death ( hopefully 0 ), if 0 it would be shocking given the Chines numbers and scale, I'm also going to wager we'll see a lot more cases on the Princess and much longer quaratine, simply doesn't correlate with what the Chinese have published or how they've locked down 60Million, expect the 3K on Princess to be locked down for a while longer.

 

Now will it stop me from cruising, dang if I had one planned I'd cancel, no vacation is worth that much to me.  But in the future, those risk for flue, nora and colds have always be the same, very high risk.    There is a reason that when you go to the Far East those who are sick wear masks to protect the non-sick, now they all wear it out of caution and fear, but of little effectiveness

[KnowTheScore]

@chipmaster

 

The reported rates for Coronavirus mortality and number of cases will most certainly be understated and overstated in that order.  The mortality rate of 2% is based on deaths per number of KNOWN cases.  The fact is that many people will have the virus that don't know they have it and many will have the virus but think they just have a regular cold/Flu/ILI illness.  None of those cases will be reported and thus the number of stated cases in the media is almost certainly UNDERstated.  There will in truth be far far more cases.   Which means the stated mortality rate of 2% is OVERstated.  It will actually be much less than that.

 

As for comments about whether it will stop you or others cruising, well as with most opinions posted here on this topic you have neglected to mention the bigger problem which is that regardless of the virus just about every cruise is now going to be adversely impacted because of the mandated protocols currently in place which will imho see people miss lots of ports on their itineraries because people will quite normally present with ordinary cold/flu symptoms, but no-one will know if it is Coronavirus until they are tested.   It is this fact, not the fear ot risk of getting Coronovirus that will see lots of people cancel cruises imo

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by KnowTheScore

[ilikeanswers]

5 hours ago, larrywizzit said:

Oddly, someexperts are saying otherwise (http://theconversation.com/why-shutting-down-chinese-wet-markets-could-be-a-terrible-mistake-130625)

 

' A permanent shutdown of “wet markets” would affect patterns of food consumption in ways that are unknowable but potentially harmful to public health. It would deprive Chinese consumers of a food sector that accounts for 30-59% of their food supplies. Due to the large number of farmers, traders and consumers involved, the abolition of “wet markets” is also likely to lead to an explosion of an uncontrollable black market, as it did when such a ban was attempted in 2003, in response to SARS, as well as in 2013-14, in response to avian influenza H7N9 '

 

The big problem is the lack of regulation of these markets in terms of health and safety . One doesn't need to outright ban the markets but health and safety needs to be enforced. Japan,Taiwan, Malaysia all have live animal markets yet they don't have epidemics cropping up every few years and that is because these countries highly regulate their markets and enforce hygiene standards. China has the ability to enforce but they lack the will, just have to hope they learn their lesson second time round🙄.

[navybankerteacher]

3 hours ago, Toofarfromthesea said:

 

I don't know where that 26,000 number comes from, but in 2019 there were 57,000 deaths from flu in the US.

 

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/04/us-flu-still-elevated-dropping-deaths-high-57000

 

If we are going to talk about statistics we should start with correct statistics.  Our flu deaths rate are approximately 3x the coronavirus death rate *so far*.  Obviously that will change as there are more deaths in Wuhan and elsewhere.  But we still need to know the correct numbers when making comparisons and assessing risk levels.  

That 57,000 is the whole year’s toll in a population of 300 million plus.  The Corona virus is just over a month old - and the 300 plus deaths were in a population of just over 10 million.

 

It may not spread, and fatalities may not continue to grow - but for a virus which, apparently in the last six weeks, jumped from one species to another, it seems to be thriving — and even if it’s death rate is 1/3 that of the flu - if it’s infection rate turns out to be more than six times that of the flu (not inconceivable - as there seems to be no natural immunity and no vaccine) there will be greater impact.

 

I am not predicting any such thing - but people who take comfort in partial statistics should look at the whole picture.

[keywest1]

16 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Yes, there is air exchange.  Fresh air is brought into the ship and supplied to the cabins, and the bathroom exhaust takes an equal amount of air back to the outside.  The air being controlled by the cabin thermostat controls air that is recirculated within that cabin.

I always admire your voice of reason, which is backed by knowledge and experience.

We have a cruise coming up on Feb 29.  If this were last year, I would have no qualms about going.  However, our 32 y/o DD returned from our last cruise with extensive clotting in her upper arm, and has been diagnosed with a genetic disorder that

can also affect her immune system.  She's determined not to wrap herself in bubble wrap, and while I admire that, there is a 

point where common sense has to come into play.  We have insurance, but it's doubtful that we could collect on a maybe.

If it comes down to it, I'm willing to lose the money.  Guess we'll just wait and see how it goes.

[K32682]

Three ships affected.  Hundreds of cruise ships still plying their trade around the world. I hope certain posters keep up the hysteria and convince everyone to CANCEL ALL CRUISES!!! regardless where in the world they are going.  If they do then those of us who are more level-headed and less easily frightened can enjoy fewer bothersome crowds and lower prices.  

[Aplmac]

Found this on "social media"

 

(Graphic showing)

HollandAmericaLine's Westerdam this afternoon as displayed onboard.

 

Over the past week, she departed from Hong Kong on 1st Feb,

was denied entry in the Philippines (Manila) on 3rd Feb,

then stopped at Taiwan (Kaohsiung) on 4th-5th Feb.

 

After another refusal entry by Japan (Ishigaki) on 7th Feb,

she had to make a U-turn and sail to Southeast Asia

to look for a suitable port as replacement for disembarkation.

 

It is reported that the Philippines and Malaysia

also start to ban all cruise ship visits due to the fear of coronavirus.

Hence her remaining possible choices would only be Vietnam,

Thailand or Singapore.

 

Passengers onboard are still not yet informed about the details.

 

[milolii]

Since Monday , The Diamond  Princess is under quarantine, with 63 or 64 passengers, including one crew member  taken off for treatment who tested positive.  2600 passengers and 1000 or so crew. These passengers are confined to their staterooms. Inside cabin passengers are allowed outside one hour a day under strict  supervision. This is truly the worst cruise ship situation. This is the largest population of positive cases outside of China. 
 

There is a Chinese ship quarantine at Hong Kong. not much more information in  this cruise. 
 

the HAL Westerdam  continues it sailing after picking up  passengers/crew in Hong Kong now looking for a port to disembark.  All ports canceled.  Recent posts suggest the HAL/captain is close to closing a deal. Passengers NOT confined to cabin. 
 

RCL Anthem of the Seas with about 5000 passengers is still docked in New Jersey after arriving yesterday.  Several Chinese nationals  transported  for suspectious   symptoms over an abundance of caution. Other Chinese Nationals transported to Liberty Airport for flight home.  Her sailing scheduled for yesterday was postponed  until today. 
 

 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by milolii
Spacing

[milolii]

Passengers on the “Westy” as they call it, report generous compensation both Refund/future cruises credits.  But criticize  HAL for picking up Passengers/crew in Hong Kong. 
 

Diamond Princess passengers also report generous compensation.  CEO Jan  Swartz reportedly at the  port city now.  
 

Both report excellent treatment and praise the crew,  with a few hiccups on the Diamond the first day or so.