I was happy to see our inept ,incompetent CDC singled out as a problem for the cruise lines.-Tom
I don’t think there’s any national or worldwide requirement to follow the CDC in setting out a cruise. These are voluntary choices these lines are using to attract US consumers to come back to cruising.
The biggest issue is there’s still a lot of debate how the disease spread so far on the Diamond Princess, especially the later cases of COVID that appeared. It appears it didn’t come from shared airspace as the cases were so far apart on board, but there were some common denominators in who was serving the cabins (and testing the passengers..)
How does this all roll out? CDC can’t issue guidelines about a threat they’re not sure is using what vector. Cleaning, washing hands, no buffet service? Maybe that might be enough, but the bread and butter of these cruise lines are the most likely to be the most susceptible to risk of death from COVID-19, the over 60 crowd.
The Petri dish known as a cruise ship is over. Nobody wants to be on a floating sewer with 5,000 other people feeding at the trough.
I’ve said from the beginning that the cruise line execs are stringing this out so that they can (mostly) legally get out of their stock positions. Without a vaccine, there can’t be a cruise business, that simple.