See, you are now trying to make a point different than what is intended. Florida isn't trying to tell any company what they "can do", "you must do this", they are telling them what they can not do ( discriminate ) because it would violate the basic freedom of choice held by the individual not the conglomerate. Any way you look it, you come back to one very basic concept and that is "show me your papers". Do we do that for TB, a highly contagious disease? Will you now have to also prove you don't have TB if you have to prove you don't have Covid? What if we now have to submit to a temperature check every flu season since many, many people die from the flu every year?
Originally Posted by HedonistForever
I can see your point of view as applied to, say, blacks and Republicans. Although not to registered Democrats. Just kidding Democrats.
Businesses should have the right to serve who they want to serve. If they don't want to sell to you because you don't have a COVID vaccination or a TB test or because you refuse to submit to a temperature test, then that's their right in a free society.
The very first cruise with everybody on board being vaccinated, ended up with two passengers testing positive on board. The cruise went on, everybody kept eating dinner together and going to shows, the ship did not become a death cruise. So if in the foreseeable future, the cruise industry will have to survive on the people who love cruising so much that after being vaccinated, they will still cruise and those like my friend who is vaccinated, says he will never cruise again unless the ship is allowed to bar anybody not vaccinated. OK, scratch him, fuck him. If you can cruise without asking for papers fine. If you can't, you can't. Life will go on and I honestly believe cruising will go on and from Florida. We'll see but I still support Gov. DeSantis's stand.
Originally Posted by HedonistForever
43.4% of Americans have been fully vaccinated. Count in people who've received one shot and those who had the disease but not the vaccine, and maybe around 60% are reasonably well protected.
What about the other 40%? These cruise ships have been shown to be COVID incubators. You've got a lot of people crammed into a small place, and the people who haven't gotten vaccinated probably aren't going to wear N95 masks either. You get something like the Delta variant on a cruise ship and not only are you going to have the unvaccinated coming down with COVID, but vaccinated people as well. A recent study out of Scotland indicates the Pfizer vaccine, the best of the bunch, is only 79% effective against that variant, which has rapidly come to account for the majority of cases in the UK and India. There's a good chance it will be the dominant strain in the U.S. soon too. The Delta Variant not only is highly contagious, but once infected it's about 2X as likely to put a person into the hospital as the UK variant, which currently is number one in the United States.
There are more people like your friend than you think. Do the Cruise Lines want to do this because they're bleeding hearts out to save humanity from the unvaccinated heathen? Hell no. They want to do it to make more money, so that people won't be afraid to go on cruises and so they won't get sued.
Because nobody was vaccinated. They will be now and the few that are not vaccinated will not adversely effect those that are. That is what the data shows, does it not? No, not 100% but there is no such thing as 100%, 95% is the new 100% because even if you have been vaccinated and test positive, the data says that you will not get sick.
Originally Posted by HedonistForever
It's not 95% effective. Again, perhaps 79% for the Delta variant which is crowding out the other ones where it's present. 90% for the UK variant that's currently #1 in the USA. That's with Pfizer. It's less for the other vaccines.
And again, if say 40% of the passengers are not vaccinated, you're telling the Cruise Lines they've potentially got to be prepared to handle localized epidemics onboard if they want to stay in business. Or find someplace other than Florida to set to sea.