COVID on cruises - and everywhere else

At least 100 cases of COVID have been reported on the Pacific Explorer cruise ship this week, despite the fact that all passengers and crew were required to have been fully vaccinated and test negative for COVID before boarding. 

A nurse who was on the cruise blamed the passengers for “playing up” and flouting measures that were supposed to have protected them from infection. She told NCA NewsWire how hand sanitizer was kept in public areas on-board, with crew handing out “fresh masks”. However, some pesky passengers just hopped in elevators with callous disregard for advisories to keep to a maximum of six people riding at a time. 

“This morning, we hopped in the lift and a lady jumps in – on the phone, no mask, yelling at the top of her voice, and then more and more people are piling in,” she said. 

All COVID-positive passengers have been confined to designated cabins marked with red tags on the doors to keep crew from entering. Passengers who want to be spared the experience of isolation after disembarking will have to provide a negative rapid antigen test. That test can be expected to help about as much as it helped before everyone boarded at the start of the cruise.

And just as it helped a week ago on another cruise ship, the Coral Princess – 115 crew and 14 passengers (so far) have tested positive. Vaccines and negative COVID tests prior to setting sail didn’t help there either, and according to the cruise company, staff are regularly tested for COVID. 

In a remarkable display of intelligence, Australian President Marguerite Fitzgerald said, “We believe and the health authorities have also said that most of those guests probably brought COVID with them onto the ship when they embarked in Brisbane.” Rather than catching the virus from the bed sheets? Perhaps.

She added that, “We knew this was going to happen ... no one expected that we'd keep COVID off ships. It was just about managing it.” Which begs the question: Why insist on vaccination and testing? Unvaccinated people are still not permitted to go on cruises, regardless of medical exemption or confirmed previous infection. And even the boosters didn’t help on the Coral Princess, as several passengers confirmed: “Everyone on the ship is at least double vaccinated with boosters.”

Prof. Peter White, an expert in infectious diseases, told ABC News that “we’re going to see more of these [outbreaks], unfortunately,” adding that, “SARS-CoV-2 is probably the major risk to cruises now…” More than hitting icebergs, for example, though the risk of dying from COVID for a young healthy person is probably less than that of being on the Titanic II. 

White admitted that despite the strict COVID protocols enforced, the virus just can’t be stopped “in such settings.” In which settings, then, can it be stopped? Right now in England, for example, 1 in 15 people has COVID. 

But Fitzgerald was less pessimistic. She said that the health measures implemented were working, citing the “low” number of passengers infected as evidence. 

As the Coral Princess sailed into Sydney, crew were all masked.

Coincidentally, because the CDC is guided by science alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (there’s a reason why it’s called the CDC and not the CDCP) has ended its COVID program for cruises just this week. 

“CDC has worked closely with the cruise industry, state, territorial, and local health authorities, and federal and seaport partners to provide a safer and healthier environment for cruise passengers and crew,” the federal agency’s website stated in an update. “Cruise ships have access to guidance and tools to manage their own COVID-19 mitigation programs.”

CDC is American. In the UK, they’re having none of it. “Independent SAGE,” the Orwellian-named health advisory organization, published a letter in the British Medical Journal excoriating the British government for relying on “personal responsibility”.

“The government has ignored the published scientific advice from their own advisory group, SPI-B,” they wrote, referring to the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (more on them in a future article – stay tuned).

“This stresses that people can keep themselves safe only when they are given clear information about what the risks are, how to identify them, and how to mitigate them.”

The results of the cessation of government spoon-feeding have been “predictable,” they continue. “Levels of infection and hospital admission have remained consistently high over the past year. The issue is not merely that there have been multiple peaks associated with waves of new covid variants, but that even the troughs of the waves in the past 12 months have been much higher than before.”

So it wasn’t vaccine failure – it was the failure of the government to micro-manage the population.

But not to worry, because “we can do better”! How? Via “measures to suppress infection and reduce disruption.” Thankfully, “measures that are required to suppress transmission are far less draconian than in the past because most of the population has some degree of immunity.” Interesting how “95% efficacy” has become “some degree of immunity,” but no comment on that from SAGE.

It gets better, because the new-old measures won’t just protect from COVID – they’ll also “protect and promote [general] health and wellbeing in the longer term.”

The measures are:

1. Clear and consistent messaging concerning covid risk and risk mitigation, reinforced by public statements by those in positions of authority;

2. Increased efforts to promote vaccine uptake, among all age groups, and with particular emphasis on groups among whom uptake has been low, in particular ethnic minority communities. This should be coupled with a clear long term plan to address waning immunity and immune escape by new variants;

3. Installing and/or upgrading ventilation/air filtration in all public buildings, with schools an urgent priority over the summer holidays;

4. Provision of free lateral flow tests to enable everyone to follow existing public health guidelines;

5. Financial and other support for all workers to self-isolate if infected;

6. Systematic promotion of the use of FFP2/FFP3 masks in indoor public spaces and public transport when infection rates are high;

7. Increased support for the equitable global provision of vaccines and anti-virals. 

SAGE then gallops to its triumphant conclusion:

“If implemented, these measures will make it possible for people to make informed decisions that will reduce the risk of illness to them, their families, and the communities in which they live and work. By reducing infections they will also reduce the disruption to the lives of individuals and society.”

As we said at the beginning of this article, some people, no matter how SAGE, will never learn.

A study from almost half a century ago could have put them straight. An outbreak of virus on a remote base in Antarctica sickened half the people there, six out of twelve. Nothing out of the ordinary, except the twelve men had been isolated there for 17 weeks before anyone fell ill.