The majority of destinations outside the mainland U.S. require a negative test for entry and proof of vaccinations, this includes U.S. Territories.
Cruise ships and airline travel will also require this.
Before you go on a cruise you should check on how successful your destination has been in reducing covid and what their infection and death rate is.
Many Caribbean destinations have worked hard to contain infection because their medical infrastructure is insufficient to care for mass outbreaks in their population. Plus, many destinations require that you wear a mask in all public places.
When you have cruise ship passengers inundation of small Caribbean islands, increasing their popopulation, daily, with 30,000 plus visitors, it pays to be safe and have these rules in place.
FL already has the highest # of Covid variants in the US. Let's not spread it further.

Aha! The lobbyists with the handfuls of cash at work again!

Cruising
 

[QUOTE=Stu from NYC;1929360]We are in as soon as they require vaccinations and we GET OVER THE MASK THING. They work and they will still be required in congregant settings. Do you realize that there have been huge reductions in flu, coughs, colds, and seasonal allergies because of COVID mask wearing?

Amazing, someone tries to do something good and is taken to task

If everyone complied and actually wore their masks, AND social distanced, we wouldn't be doing "this stuff" after a year. They urged people after the first couple of months to wear masks. Many people complied. Unfortunately, many people did NOT comply, and the virus continued to spread.

When you are that 1% who is affected directly by the virus, come back here and tell us how it's no big deal and the rest of the world should open.

Most cruise ships are registered in other countries. NOT America. In addition, if you're on a cruise going to south america, central america, the Bahamas, or overseas, you're not going to be IN America anymore.

So you can just stay home. And free up the room for someone who enjoys freedom of travel AND freedom of good health.

Despite GEagle's use of CAPs and BOLDS what he is telling you is not true. He continues, over and over to claim that a person who has received a full course of Covid vaccines
How can quote the actual truth then call it a myth shows and incredible mental block to evidence based medicine. He continues to admit that the vaccine has a failure rate but then says a recipient CANNOT spread Covid. While he may be a psychic and in the future there will be support for his prediction, he is wrong in his certainty.

The CDC has never said that a fully vaccinated person cannot spread Covid. In fact here is what it said on April 2, 2021
I cannot find a single highly respected authority who has said what GE claims. What is true, and entirely different from screaming CANNOT is that a fully vaccinated person is very unlikely to infect others. I am very unlikely to have a car accident today but I'm still wearing my seat belt.

I will post the link instead of telling you to accept my word about what a fully vaccinated person can do. CDC Link


This permission of course requires that everyone in the indoor space be vaccinated thus the cruise industry will need to see proof of vaccination for staff and passengers.

There is more which is specific to travel. Again the CDC Link for that with a longer discussion of travel safety issued on April 2, 2021

Even a poor reader can see that the CDC did not say a fully vaccinated person CANNOT catch or spread Covid.

In fact on Apr 8 the CDC updated a requirement, not a suggestion, that all air passengers flying into the US must have a negative Covid test within 3 days of boarding the return flight or you are to be denied boarding. Being vaccinated does not change this requirement. If the CDC believed that being vaccinated meant; as GE claims is well established; that you CANNOT spread disease they certainly would not have made this severe rule.

Been there, done that. And, as it is for 99% of the people who got it, not a big deal.

Not minimizing it, but there also is a limit to everyone's patience. If you are in the high risk group - protection should be primary to you - worrying about other's health has a very short attention span.

Although, there are stories like the 100% isolated family in the middle of New Zealand who caught Covid for no reason at all and with no contact.

I do not believe most of what I hear from “experts” or this site. Baloney. Cruise ships have always been diseased tin cans (norovirus). You can keep em.

Ridiculous to require a mask if everyone is vaccinated.

Here's a peek at St. Thomas, USVI info.


Why the Allure of the U.S. Virgin Islands Deep Into the Pandemic? – Skift

Annual cruise participants 2019 approaching 30,000,000....

If cruise ships are diseased tin cans....using the same logic what should cars be called?.....taking into account the annual deaths and the number impaired!

Nothing more than different strokes/risks for different folks....without having to be right or wrong....because who is(n't)?

I really am looking for a serious reply. 16 months ago you knew nothing about Covid. Somehow you likely formed an opinion which you believe is accurate based on something. What informed you? It wasn't TOTV and it wasn't "experts." So where did you get information you relied upon to reach your beliefs? How do you decide what experts you do believe in matters of science?

“To be clear, no federal law authorizes the CDC to indefinitely impose a nationwide shutdown of an entire industry,” DeSantis said in a press release. “This lawsuit is necessary to protect Floridians from the federal government’s overreach and resulting economic harm to our state.”

For all of you lovers of cruise ships, I admire your loyalty. I think we all hope for a return to normal as soon as possible. But, I would also urge all of us to take a deep breath and realize if we are patient a bit longer and do not jump the gun, we may have gain a stronger semblance of normality.

But, for those of you full of such aching for a cruise, I urge you to hold back a bit longer and with till there is an all clear. Walk with me in the following scenario. Suppose cruise ships start their rounds again and for some reason they do not require vaccination passports or are otherwise negligent in their cleanliness (needless to say, norovirus keeps entering my thought pattern). Perhaps someone slips through the cracks. Then what happens if there is an outbreak, either major or minor on board. What might be the reaction? Is it possible that the ship will be quarantined with guests confined to quarters. Some of you may love cruises but for whatever reason, perhaps economics, restrict your expense by taking an inside cabin (sans windows). How many days do you think you could stand being locked in that floating coffin before you start thinking it was foolish to take the cruise that early until things settled down? Such an early failure of a return to normalcy can delay us for far longer than if we simply bit the bullet for a bit longer.

It's just a thought.

Nevertheless, there are a lot of so-called "experts" on this thread who think that by bellowing their information a bit louder or through caps, they are more convincing. I view these individuals as well meaning, but with unproven credentials. Reading a CDC release and cherry picking the information is not expertise. Instead, I will wait for those who have epidemiological credentials of the highest calibre to guide me as to when it might be appropriate to start traveling or cruising again. Even then, I might add on a couple of weeks or months after the all clear. I don't think I'd want to take the chance, even as a fully vaccinated person of infecting others or perhaps getting sick myself. I care about others. We are all walking this planet together and I will not be subject to selfish whims.

We have come a long way and sacrificed a lot of good times to destroy what semblance of normalcy is growing.

I have seen this over 99% on TOTV many times. Where does your number come from? I'll present some numbers for your consideration

There are about 330 million living in the US
There have been 560 thousand Covid deaths out of 31,000,000 positive tests. So the death rate alone is 560000/31000000 which is already a 1.8% fatality rate. We know that some of those 31 million positive tests are repeats in the same person so the denominator of the calculation is somewhat falsely elevated. The fatality rate is actually higher than 1.8%

A fatality rate of 1.85 clearly on its own is much higher than under 1% you have reported. And you seem to believe by using the phrase "This virus is virtually no risk" that death is the only risky outcome of catching Covid.

10% of Covid patients, including both those ill enough to be hospitalized but also those with mild symptoms become "long haulers" which means they have life altering symptoms for months following the acute illness.

So we now are at abt 2% death and 10% long term symptoms, or 12% of those who get Covid get serious outcomes. Add the many patients who get really sick but do not get long term complications which includes most of those hospitalized and you have a large number of people, many many multiple of less than 1% for whom Covid is a serious medical disease. Somehow I think those who ended up in the hospital but not dead or long hauling would want to be included in the Covid is bad group, not the Covid is a low risk disease group. 2 million Americans have been sick enough with Covid to be hospitalized. That is 1 in 15 positive tests. Are you surprised that 7% of those with Covid get hospitalized? I was.

Maybe it is time to stop writing that Covid is no risk for 99% of the population. Everyone in the population is at risk with much lower risk numbers for children. Yes, I have used outcomes of those who got Covid to make a point, not percentages of the entire population. Why? If you know that 100% of the population has been at risk of the disease you can use the disease outcome as an estimate to how the disease would act in the whole population. But if you reject this thinking:

2 million hospitalized, 3 million long haulers, 1/2 million dead so that is already 5.5 million out of 330 million, or nearly 2% of just those seriously impacted.

The people who run the cruise industry by and large are pretty smart folks.

Their companies have now been closed for over a year and in a much weaker position than ever before.

They understand that if they start sailing and there are outbreaks of the virus they will be signing their death warrants.

Unless they require vaccinations plus covid tests before boarding no cruising for us and cannot imagine they would be foolish enough to take any risks.

Still wrong, no matter how loudly it is shouted. Thanks to blueash and others who have already responded with links provided to dispel this rumor. All my own reading & research on the CDC site and many others says that fully vaccinated people may still carry the virus and may still transmit it.
But definitively wrong?

Guess this means you will not be joining us on a cruise.

Nice try ladies and gentlemen, but that IS NOT what I said. I SAID that a fully vaccinated individual WHO ACQUIRED IMMUNITY COULD NOT acquire or spread the virus. For those with reading comprehension issues, that means I EXCLUDED the 5% that you are referring to.

Do I need to quote the CDC again????? Or is the paragraph above clear enough? OR SHOULD I SHOUT LOUDER????

Now that I explained why I am right and you are wrong-----I'll explain what you read on the CDC site but failed to understand.....and I'll just use an example to explain.

If 100 people are "fully vaccinated", SOME of them can still acquire and spread the virus, but likely will get less ill and are less likely to die. THESE are the 5%.

So yes, if you word it that way, fully vaccinated individuals can acquire and spread the disease.

But I was referring to the 95%. These people were fully vaccinated AND FULLY IMMUNE. So to shout it once again for those that are heard of hearing, THESE PEOPLE CANNOT GET OR SPREAD COVID. And once again, PERIOD!

I can't make it any simpler than that.

So thanks to those that tried to muddy the water with "their own reading" and then formed their own mutual admiration society thanking each other for their "contributions".

Try using color.

Unfortunately, some people are blind as well as deaf....:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

CDC Data Suggests Vaccinated Don’t Carry, Can’t Spread Virus

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky said that "vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick, and that is not just in the clinical trials but it's also in real world data,"

CDC: Fully vaccinated people don’t spread COVID-19

Data changes daily - don't shoot the messenger.

Also, 'fully vaccinated' means several weeks after the second shot. In reality, unless you have a comprehensive blood test, there is no way to tell if you are in the unfortunate 5% that the vaccine did not provide the immunity to.

That's why the vaccine isn't 100% effective - for the 95%, they are fully protected, for the 5%, they are not. The numbers, however, are low enough that an outbreak is extremely unlikely since 95% cannot carry nor get Covid.

So, for those of you who keep talking about protection from the vaccine, read this THEN do the math:

Covid-19 vaccines: CDC reports 5,800 Covid infections in fully vaccinated people

Did you see the numbers?

77 MILLION Vaccinated, 74 deaths - 0.0000961039% fatality rate
77 MILLION Vaccinated, 296 required hospitalization - 0.0005142857%
77 MILLION Vaccinated, 5800 with Covid-like syptoms - 0.0075324675%

These numbers are infinitesimal and, using the 5% that the vaccine was not effective on, we get this:

77 MILLION Vaccinated, 3.85 MILLION are unprotected because the vaccine did not 'take'

All true, and yet there are those with far less credentials telling me I am wrong. I just love social media----the only place you can google a few blurbs and then consider yourself an expert. No idea why I wasted 11 years to become a real expert.

Really? If you have the shots the govern says won't hurt you, keeps everyone safe and protects you, then why keep wearing a mask? If you are so worried maybe you should stay isolated until you feel safe.

There are those that believe a mask is the answer to the pandemic, right from the beginning , and continue to worship at the altar of the holy mask. You will never convince them otherwise.

However, there is some rationale for continued use of masks in the appropriate settings.
Right now there a basically four groups: Those that have been fully vaccinated and acquired immunity, those who were fully vaccinated but failed to acquire immunity (the 5%ers), those that had COVID and recovered and are therefore probably immune, and those that had neither the vaccine nor the illness. How do we know who is in which group and therefore do not need masks ever? So I think we are going to be dealing with masks for some time to come, until the vast majority of people have been vaccinated, or until the new case rate approaches zero.

Because, to the surprise of absolutely no one ever, there exist dishonest people in this world.

There exist people who WILL NOT vaccinate, who MIGHT be infected, and MIGHT be spreading the virus, who will claim they are vaccinated JUST so they don't have to wear the mask.

As long as those kinds of people exist, masking will continue to be an appropriate and socially acceptable garment to adorn your face while you are inside someone else's building other than your own.

It's called setting a good example for others, being a good neighbor, being civil, and respecting the needs of others.

Perhaps you hadn't learned about these things where you grew up but that's what my mama taught ME, and that's how I roll.

Here you're paraphrasing yourself from post #20: "If you are fully vaccinated you CANNOT get the virus, you CANNOT spread the virus, and you CANNOT infect others. Period. PERIOD!!!!! (This does not include the 5% who do not acquire immunity)." Fully vaccinated merely means that you have received the full course of whichever version of the vaccine you were given. It does NOT mean 100% immunity. Here is the quote from the CDC you're stuck on "All COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the United States are effective at preventing COVID-19 as seen in clinical trial settings." See 100% anywhere in there? Nope, me either.

Although you did change your phrasing somewhat in post #32 ("Again, a fully vaccinated and immune person CANNOT get and CANNOT spread COVID. PERIOD!!!!!"), it's still counter to what the 'efficacy' of the vaccine actually is (which you seem to believe is interchangeable with 'immunity'). Here is a link to a TIME article which explains what 'efficacy' & 'effectiveness' actually mean: Breaking Down What COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Means | Time The meat of the article ..."it’s important to understand what these companies were actually measuring to come up with their efficacy numbers. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers were measuring how well their vaccines protected against symptoms of COVID-19. So their vaccine efficacy numbers refer to how well they lowered people’s chance of getting sick with COVID-19. Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is 95% efficacious, meaning that for vaccinated people, it was 95% efficacious in protecting people from getting COVID-19 symptoms. It does not mean that 95% of people vaccinated won’t get COVID-19 and 5% will." Which is the same way I've read & heard it explained several times. There's more to this article but I don't want to be a spoiler. :icon_wink:

Maybe you need to do a little more reading & less shouting? :MOJE_whot:

Maybe you need a little more reading comprehension and less attempts at reading material that is clearly over your head. If you read the context, you would know that 95% was implied in everything I wrote.

Please stop trying to compete with me concerning medical issues, you're only embarrassing yourself. Absolutely amazing---an amateur layperson googles a few items and then wants to lecture an expert. Boy, I love the internet

...

Everyone should know the 95% immunity percentage by now.

My reading comprehension is just fine. Yours? Maybe a bit less. The 95% figure is, again, NOT the number of people who will get the virus. Please re-read the quote from the TIME article I referred to in post #68. It's very important that you understand this distinction.

OK, let's go back to my original suggestion (in post #11) & see what happens. Search for "can a vaccinated person infect someone else with covid."

Hit #1: Study asks if vaccinated people can still transmit virus, Fauci says | PBS NewsHour Read it if you want but the gist is that there is no definitive answer.

Hit #2: Can vaccinated people still spread the coronavirus? contains this "Many people think vaccines work like a shield, blocking a virus from infecting cells altogether. But in most cases, a person who gets vaccinated is protected from disease, not necessarily infection."

Hit #3: Bloomberg - Are you a robot? in part says this: "We think of vaccines as working by preventing the transmission of a disease. But that isn't necessarily the case.
“The short answer is we don’t quite know yet,” says Buddy Creech, director of Vanderbilt University's Vaccine Research Program."

Hit #4: Can vaccinated people still spread the coronavirus? Here's a quote, "1. Does vaccination completely prevent infection?
The short answer is no. You can still get infected after you’ve been vaccinated. But your chances of getting seriously ill are almost zero.
Many people think vaccines work like a shield, blocking a virus from infecting cells altogether. But in most cases, a person who gets vaccinated is protected from disease, not necessarily infection."

Hit #5: Can I infect someone after I’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine? - Mayo Clinic offers this: "Andrew Badley, M.D., COVID-19 Research Task Force Chair, Mayo Clinic: What we know the vaccine does is it prevents symptomatic disease. What we don't know if it does or not is to prevent infection. And if you are infected, but you don't get sick because of the vaccine, you can still replicate the virus and transmit the virus."

I can go on, but it would only be wasting everybody's time. Feel free to point out any errors in MY reading comprehension of any of these, or provide any other reputable sources to back your specious argument.

First thing you got right:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

I would stop right there, but you still don't understand. You have cherry picked quotes that are referring to the vaccinated population as a whole----so yes, there are vaccinated people who can acquire and transmit the virus---a small percentage of them. And yes, you are correct in pointing out efficacy and immunity are 2 different things, because that was the study design for these vaccines. Since a positive antibody test after vaccination is NOT a good measure of immunity, I can't think of a better study metric than symptomatic disease.

HOWEVER, the overwhelming majority of those vaccinated will acquire immunity and be unable to spread the disease----that is the whole point of a massive vaccination program, once you stop parsing words.

Also read between the lines. The vast majority of these researchers outside the pharmaceutical companies are dependent on federal funding, and the outcome the feds want at this time is continued mask wearing. You connect the dots.

At the end of the day - do we care?

Are we willing to give up our liberties to protect someone who is foolish enough to refuse the vaccine?

Saying that the vaccine isn't 100% effective - again, who cares?

Simple truth is - if you get vaccinated you are as protected as you can get.

I really don't see why we all spend the time quibbling about this. What's the end point? What are we trying to accomplish?

I had Covid. I got vaccinated as well. I chose life.

You can sit at home and do whatever it is to protect yourself because, as altruistic as I am, I can't fix stupid. And I am sure there are others that feel the same.

I think we can finally put this academic and semantic debate to rest. The CDC just announced that only 0.008% of vaccinated individuals became infected with COVID.

So, to repeat my earlier statements, these people cannot acquire and spread COVID. No need to even shout it anymore.

Final score: Medical professionals 1, amateurs with google, 0:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

And, of those .008%, I'll wager they were nearly all, if not all, in the 5% group that did not get immunity from the vaccine. So, 'fully vaccinated' only means you got the vaccine, not that it actually was effective on you.

Good posts, BTW. Glad to see clarity. Too many people are like mushrooms.

That is why the test for the virus and require vaccinations.

This is one if the very few comments that make sense and that we totally agree with. Also remember that there are new strains of virus that might be more deadly and perhaps resistant to the vaccines we have had. Caution is still needed.

100+ Forged Covid test certificates are being found by Customs Border Control at UK airports per day.
One of the big givaways on many of the forged certificates was, the forger had spelt Negative wrong!

There will always be new strains.

Just be careful and live life.