Posted on 07/20/2022 6:20:34 AM PDT by Capt. Tom
Cruise ship companies are thrilled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended its COVID-19 monitoring program that tracked how many COVID-19 cases were reported ship-by-ship. On Monday, the constantly updated spreadsheet was gone without a trace, replaced with this notice:
It is hard to make sense of why the CDC would pull back from a detailed monitoring program just as COVID-19 cases are again rising worldwide. (The World Health Organization says cases in Europe have tripled in the last six weeks, and hospitalizations have doubled.)
When the site took down the monitoring page, 93 of the 95 ships reporting to the CDC system had enough COVID-19 cases among passengers and crew to be “under observation” by the CDC. You can see a cached version of the CDC cruise ship monitoring page from July 18 here. Here is a screenshot of that cached dashboard, which shows almost all of the ships reporting COVID-19 data were under observation:
The CDC’s cruise ship status dashboard on July 18, 2022. (CDC)
This is what those colors used to mean:
Cruise lines will report COVID-19 data to the CDC, but the CDC won’t pass that information along to you. Instead, the CDC says, passengers “have the option of contacting their cruise line directly regarding outbreaks occurring on board their ship.” In other words, the CDC will still have the data that could allow the public to see the COVID-19 levels on each ship, but it is up to you now to call the cruise line and ask for it.
The CDC website says the now-closed system “depended upon each cruise line having the same COVID-19 screening testing standards, which may now vary among cruise lines.”
CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund emailed an explanation to The Washington Post:
CDC has determined that the cruise industry has access to the necessary tools (e.g., cruise-specific recommendations and guidance, vaccinations, testing instruments, treatment modalities, and non-pharmaceutical interventions) to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 on board.
Cruise lines generally require adult passengers to be vaccinated and provide a recent negative COVID-19 test before boarding. Cruise lines have varied requirements for children.
Andy Bloch, who is a master at turning data into charts, posted this. I link to his Twitter post and his exhaustive charts with one caveat: Even the highest COVID-19 numbers on the ships are still not as high as you will find in some counties and countries.
With no pesky COVID-19 data to plant doubts in people’s minds, cruise ship stocks rose fast on Tuesday.
The cruise industry argued that the CDC kept ships under scrutiny that far exceeded any monitoring for concert halls, hotels or convention centers. Earlier this year, the CDC made the reporting program voluntary. But, of course, a key difference is that people don’t live in concert halls for days and go home if they notice sick or reckless people around them.
The CDC’s decision to take down the cruise ship monitoring page also comes just as a new book called “Cabin Fever” by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin goes public. It tells the nightmare story of 1,200 passengers and 600 crew stuck on the MS Zaandam when COVID-19 spread through the ship like wildfire during the first weeks of the pandemic’s rage.
WHO warns of COVID hospitalizations rising now, worse to come in a few months The World Health Organization is warning that the newest variants of omicron are “super infectious” and that COVID-19 hospitalizations, which have doubled across Europe in the last few weeks, will grow worse soon.
The Associated Press reports:
WHO’s Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, described COVID-19 as “a nasty and potentially deadly illness” that people should not underestimate. He said super-infectious relatives of the omicron variant were driving new waves of disease across the continent and that repeat infections could potentially lead to long COVID.
“With rising cases, we’re also seeing a rise in hospitalizations, which are only set to increase further in the autumn and winter months,” Kluge said. “This forecast presents a huge challenge to the health workforce in country after country, already under enormous pressure dealing with unrelenting crises since 2020.”
Earlier this week, editors of two British medical journals said the country’s National Health Service has never before had so many parts of the system so close to collapsing.
Kamran Abbasi, of the BMJ and Alastair McLellan of the Health Service Journal wrote in a joint editorial that the U.K. government was failing to address persistent problems worsened by COVID, including ambulances lining up outside hospitals too overloaded to accept new patients.
We barely understand BA.5 and now BA.2.75 is on the way A coronavirus variant called BA.5 is now the dominant vaccine-escaping COVID-19 variant to infect people in America. But already, the WHO is tracking what could be the next problem: BA.2.75.
The variant has shown up in 15 countries and is on the move. It has been detected in seven U.S. states, including Washington, California, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.
The newest variant has gained the unofficial name “Centaurus,” after a Twitter user got the notion that the endless string variants that contain numbers and not a name are not being taken seriously enough.
Keep in mind that every person who gets infected with COVID-19 becomes a host, a potential incubator for the virus to morph again. So, the danger is not just that COVID-19 will make a person sick or cause long-COVID, but that every new case is a potential birthplace for a new threat.
Cruise lines will report COVID-19 data to the CDC, but the CDC won’t pass that information along to you. Instead, the CDC says, passengers “have the option of contacting their cruise line directly regarding outbreaks occurring on board their ship.” In other words, the CDC will still have the data that could allow the public to see the COVID-19 levels on each ship, but it is up to you now to call the cruise line and ask for it.
Ping to you.
I haven't heard of anyone dying from getting Covid on a Cruise Ship...But I'll check around.
Many of them dont report they are sick while on board but just get off when they return to port and go home ...
Do they die ???
maybe lots of them ...
“ Keep in mind that every person who gets infected with COVID-19 becomes a host, a potential incubator for the virus to morph again. So, the danger is not just that COVID-19 will make a person sick or cause long-COVID, but that every new case is a potential birthplace for a new threat.”
I am no epidemiologist, but that sound like a load of bunkum to me. Immune system?
I doubt it. The death stats have been consistent since it began to the present.
It was never about public health. It’s about control.
It is bunkum. The Covid hoax is based on layers and layers of deceit that have been used to create hysteria. The real problem is not Covid, it’s the vaccines, the illegitimate seizure of power by governments, and the conditioning of the people to accept political and public health lies.
The “case”, “infection”, and death stats have been fraudulently inflated since the March of 2020.
I’m sure hospitals inflated death numbers....The usual....follow the money.
Covid is over, dropping to less reporting helps move on. Democrats realize belatedly that their overt control of everything is hurting them. But still, as of last check, cruise lines are still requiring everyone to have the experimental vaccines, etc. So not much changed except the paperwork—less information to share.
They probably quietly bury them at sea
Who would want to voluntarily get caught up in a cruise ship quarantine? -Tom
Whatever happened to the flu? It doesn’t call, write, nothing.
The oceans were littered with the burning lifeboats full of corpses afflicted with COVID-1984.
Now if the cruise lines stop requiring covid vaccination and testing I might even take another cruise some day.
Correct, We were told that modifying mRNA vax was easy for new variants. So why no new vaxs for the variants? IMHO, it’s bec Big Phamra is flush w money from the boosters, why spend capital for variant vaxs.
Also FDA prob knows the vaxs don’t work and has back messaged Big Pharma to not forcing FDA into layering their prev lies with more lies.
Wife and I have done 25+ cruises, we are also waiting for the vax requirements to stop before booking.
We’ll take our nebulizer along for our H2O2 treatments and will take our Ivermetin pills.
I’m more worried about norovirus than covid. I can’t cure norovirus with my nebulizer.
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