Covid-19 infection on a liveaboard at the Maldives

[wedivebc]

OMG. We get it. You are traveling to go scuba diving, and you don't like being travel-shamed for it.

Not really interested in your ludicrous parsing of a fairly straightforward and near universal recommendation that people have been using to fight pandemics for centuries.

"Avoid unnecessary outings" means just what it says. You are coming up with ridiculous explanations about how "outings" implies no masks, but "dive travel" is safer than "outings" so that means that "dive travel" is exempt from the recommendations about limiting the motion of human beings around the planet.

I love diving. I hate missing out on dive travel this year. Too bad. I'm trying to #stopthespread, for all of the reasons that have been mentioned upthread.

For this and most of your other posts in this thread

 

[Oliver Ohlendorf]

Who said I was staying at home for 2 years? Once the vaccinations have progressed in the places I want to visit and I’m allowed in (and I’m vaccinated), I plan to resume travel - I expect that will be later this year. I chose to reduce risk to myself and others by abstaining from travel for now - I’m not selfish like you! Have a nice #alternaterealitylife...

Later this year? For the vaccinations to be effective at least 60-70% of the population has to be vaccinated.
There is very little chance this will be the case during this year, even in Europe and the US

 

[scubadada]

Hi @Oliver Ohlendorf

How did the folks on the Maldives liveaboard get infected with the testing policy in place? Was it from passengers or crew? How can you prevent this? Who wants to quarantine at facility like this?

 

[Oliver Ohlendorf]

Who said I was staying at home for 2 years? Once the vaccinations have progressed in the places I want to visit and I’m allowed in (and I’m vaccinated), I plan to resume travel - I expect that will be later this year. I chose to reduce risk to myself and others by abstaining from travel for now - I’m not selfish like you! Have a nice #alternaterealitylife...

So you will need to get vaccinated every year or you adapt to living with it...

 

[Oliver Ohlendorf]

Hi @Oliver Ohlendorf

How did the folks on the Maldives liveaboard get infected with the testing policy in place? Was it from passengers or crew? How can you prevent this? Who wants to quarantine at facility like this?

BRAVO

These are the right questions that should appear here instead of a virtual pissing contest "who can bring more arguments for or against scuba travel"...

They got infected by a passenger, presumably representing the 10% error margin of the PCR tests. Nevertheless would the boat crew (and the passenger herself) have kept basic covid-19 protocols they would have isolated the symptomatic passenger and probably prevented the spread to all other guests. I guess there is no way to completely prevent this. But you can also not completely avoid getting sick at home, I guess.

I have to say that things did not go completely well but as you can read in the article there are other (better?) facilities, these people had probably "bad luck". Besides this other operators may do more for their clients. It is a fact that everyone who plans to participate in a LOB should be prepared for the worst case - that means being quarantined. If that does not fit with someone's schedule they should not attempt to travel. At least this is what I am preparing for when I travel abroad.

 

[Darnold9999]

The Maldives have been allowing tourists since September 2020. No "loophole" necessary. They require a negative PCR test and if you have a look at their statistics, it seems to work. Their infection numbers are around 50 new cases per day. Their death numbers are extremely low. They are receiving about 10.000 visitors/week, increasing. For them it is easy to separate visitors from local communities, since most tourists arrive to resort islands or LOB's.

So where is the problem?

Did I say there was a problem?

That the Maldives have decided that it is worth it to them to accept visitors is OK for them. Which I am pretty sure was the point of my post. Every country/ location has to make their own judgment call. We (Canada) don’t want you or anyone else visiting and we strongly recommend that people not travel except for essential travel.

If you are prepared to quarantine when you get back and don’t cheat I don’t have an issue.

Would not be my choice but you do what you want. Understand that whatever you do, PPE, tests, etc traveling adds some amount of risk to everyone around you when you come back. You have to balance that risk against the benefit you get from travel. Again, one person tiny risk. Multiply by millions large risk.

 

[doctormike]

Understand that whatever you do, PPE, tests, etc traveling adds some amount of risk to everyone around you when you come back. You have to balance that risk against the benefit you get from travel. Again, one person tiny risk. Multiply by millions large risk.

Exactly.

Here's something I wrote on FB back in November, when 1300 US deaths a day seemed like a lot:

The premise of the 2009 Cameron Diaz film “The Box” (and “Button, Button”, a Twilight Zone episode from the 1980s) is based on a classical philosophical thought experiment. You are given a box with a button on it, and if you push it, someone will die and you will get a million dollars. You are guaranteed that you won’t know the person who dies. The idea is that this choice is some sort of horrifying ethical struggle.

Of course, we now see that in 2020, this is barely a consideration. Push the button for a million dollars? Hell, we are happy and eager to push the button to have a turkey dinner!

I see all sorts of pushback to the idea of anyone -let alone the government - telling us that we can’t gather inside for the holidays in large groups. One person on this site said that limiting parties to 10 people was the same as the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union that she had fled (and she unfriended me when I politely challenged that idea).

Yeah, I get it. You aren’t “afraid” of COVID-19. You aren’t going to let it change your life, or limit what you can do. Any attempt at limiting the spread is a “lockdown”, which will wreck the economy and kill more people than it saves.

And of course, the reason why all of those people can be so brave behind the keyboard is that they will likely not see any consequences of their actions, for themselves or for anyone that they know. Even if they get COVID, it’s November, not April. The ICUs are better at treating these patients and we have some ways of pulling many of the sickest patients back from the edge.

Which means that there are no consequences, right?

But even with all that new medical expertise, 1300 people in this country died yesterday in this country from the virus. If 1300 people were killed in a terrorist attack, we would go berserk. That number has been climbing for the past month. Almost every day we set new records in case numbers, and we are heading into more dangerous times, when the cold weather makes outdoor activities less appealing.

I remember people mocking Dr. Fauci who said that we could see 100,000 cases a day. There were 180,000 new cases yesterday in the US. And no matter how good the ICU is at saving people, that means people are going to die. That’s not a political opinion, that’s an epidemiological fact.

So go ahead and push that button for a drumstick. Someone else’s dad will suffocate alone in a cold little room with no one to hold his hand when he dies. You probably won’t know him, and that means he’s not real.

Multiple COVID-19 Outbreaks Linked to a Wedding Reception in ...

 

[Joneill]

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So you will need to get vaccinated every year or you adapt to living with it...

What is your point??? Do you think that is a problem? I don’t see it as an issue at all as I get a flu vaccine every year...

 

[Joneill]

Later this year? For the vaccinations to be effective at least 60-70% of the population has to be vaccinated.
There is very little chance this will be the case during this year, even in Europe and the US

Yes - I see it as entirely possible later this year for the places that I intend to travel to. I, myself, will be vaccinated by March.

 

[Joneill]

They got infected by a passenger, presumably representing the 10% error margin of the PCR tests. Nevertheless would the boat crew (and the passenger herself) have kept basic covid-19 protocols they would have isolated the symptomatic passenger and probably prevented the spread to all other guests. I guess there is no way to completely prevent this. But you can also not completely avoid getting sick at home, I guess.

Hmmm... but you said, and I quote: “travelling does not add to the risk of others”. So how could this have happened??? Here’s a hint - it does add to the risk for others as was proven here.

Look, you are not breaking any laws by traveling - so do as you see fit... but your justification of why it’s OK doesn’t hold any water with me.