Deregulating the cruise ships

Michael Reagan on Jan 13, 2022

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

It almost seems like the CDC wants to sink cruise ships.

Since the start of its war against COVID-19 the CDC – everyone's favorite public health care bureaucracy – has been torpedoing the cruise ship industry with unnecessarily strict regulations that are only making it harder for the industry to survive the pandemic and its lockdowns.

As recently as Dec. 31 the CDC issued a statement warning all travelers – including vaccinated ones with boosters – to avoid cruise ships, which are really gigantic floating hotels with casinos.

The warning, which was triggered because the total number of COVID cases on the 92 ships that the CDC monitors had spiked to a high level in early December, was a warning we’ve heard many times before:

“The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads easily between people in close quarters on board ships, and the chance of getting COVID-19 on cruise ships is very high, even if you are fully vaccinated and have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose.”

After the CDC targeted the cruise ship industry, the media piled on by spooking the public with headlines about ships not being allowed to sail or having to return to port because of COVID outbreaks among passengers or crews.

Despite two years of scary publicity that kept many travelers on land and crushed the industry's revenues, these days a cruise ship is actually one of the safest places on the planet.

Passengers and crews are 100 percent vaccinated. Masks are mandatory in public spaces except when eating or drinking.

Ships are not booked to full capacity. And there is a hospital with doctors and nurses on board.

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