Four days in
But…who on earth would want to go on a cruise now? And what cruise line would want to risk it?
These people and this cruise line:
One of the first cruise ships to ply through Caribbean waters since the pandemic began ended its trip early after one passenger fell ill and is believed to have Covid-19, officials said on Thursday.
The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the US, according to Sue Bryant, a cruise ship reporter who is aboard the ship.
She told the Associated Press that one passenger became sick on Wednesday and forced the ship to turn back to Barbados, where it had departed from on Saturday. However, the ship had yet to dock in Barbados as local authorities tested those on board.
Gee maybe they’ll get to be quarantined for weeks on the ship.
Bryant said passengers were required to have a negative PCR test to enter Barbados and underwent another test on the dock administered by the ship’s doctor.
“We all felt very safe,” she said, adding that the ship had been implementing strict hygiene protocols. “Yet somehow, Covid appears to have got on board.”
The fact that they all felt safe is not relevant. A virus doesn’t ask if people feel safe or not, it just does what it does.
Waters around the Caribbean have been largely bereft of cruise ships this year, with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspending cruise ship operations at US ports in mid-March. The no-sail order expired on 31 October.
And some fools rushed to take the risk.
and those waters have undoubtedly been healthier for it, unlike the idiots on the SeaDream. You just can’t save some people from themselves.
Where did I just see that? Oh, right:
How dare we question their self-identification as not having COVID?
Ah well, the cruise business took a bit of a nosedive. But the vaccine should fix it; till the next surprise global pandemic.
In the mean time, we will just have to make do with a Joanna Lumley travelogue on TV. Samarkand, anyone?
The very question I was asking myself. Back in February the Diamond Princess was the “country” with the second-highest number of cases (after China). The first wave of infections in Australia were due to a cruise ship. Likewise in southern Chile (but not in Santiago, where the early cases occurred in Las Condes, the wealthiest part of the city, brought by people returning from holidays in Italy).
My wife and I have decided that if the Pfizer vaccine becomes available we shall decline it. Not only has it been rushed through without normal testing, but in any case the risks involved in using mRNA as vaccine haven’t been seriously assessed. The other day Axel Kahn (a very distinguished biologist) was asked on television if he would take the vaccine. What was interesting was what he did not say: he said he would be very enthusiastic about receiving the Chinese vaccine (of conventional type, not mRNA), but he kept silent on his opinion of the Pfizer vaccine.
Re: the Pfizer vaccine (and other COVID-19 vaccines). The speed of development, with the risk of cutting corners and skimping on the testing, is definitely an issue. Safe and effective and fast? Pick two. :-) Realistically, can’t do all three.
Re: mRNA based vaccines. Research on those has been going on for over a decade. I periodically come across journal articles about them, when either just browsing or searching related topics. Mind you, the articles I see are on the basic research end( because of my field of work).
Very recently found this:
http://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243
It’s a review, a few years old. It’s open access. I just started reading it, so can’t comment yet.