Covid testing in Cozumel

[tridacna]

Canada has been requiring a 14 day quarantine for months and months now. There is an ap you use where you file your quarantine plan before you leave for your country, you can expect to be asked about it as you go through customs and immigration, and I received a few follow-up phone calls during my quarantine from those who were monitoring and enforcing. Yes, I'm sure I could have somehow dodged it, but the fines are crazy-high. And you can expect the RCMP to show up if someone suspects you are violating your quarantine.

Good luck enforcing that in the LOTF and THOTB. And yes, Biden just signed that plan.

 

[drrich2]

An enforced mandatory 14-day quarantine could be a serious blow to (not just dive) tourism to (not just) Cozumel. A very common pattern in U.S.A.-based vacation planning is the 7-day trip, often Saturday-to-Saturday. Think about why that is.

Often the traveler, or at least one in a group, has a job. Getting vacation time approved to be off a week can seem like pulling teeth to begin with, even if you've got plenty of vacation time on the books. And in the U.S. we don't get a guaranteed minimum of vacation time.

While the pandemic has brought a lot of attention to white collar jobs where people can work remotely from home, I suspect that's still a minority of the American workforce.

If it's hard to get approval for a week off, now imagine putting in for a 3 week stretch.

Many people have already delayed travel plans for a lengthy time. Last year I didn't do a 2nd dive trip, and my family skipped planning a cruise till this summer (and that's fairly likely to get cancelled by the cruise line). 2021 Is starting to look a to like 2020, with no clear time frame when will all end.

No, I don't see strongly enforced federal quarantines as a widespread routine thing as likely. U.S. culture is more individualistic than that, and the practical demands of life not a good match.

 

[deepsea21]

Canada has been requiring a 14 day quarantine for months and months now. There is an ap you use where you file your quarantine plan before you leave for your country, you can expect to be asked about it as you go through customs and immigration, and I received a few follow-up phone calls during my quarantine from those who were monitoring and enforcing. Yes, I'm sure I could have somehow dodged it, but the fines are crazy-high. And you can expect the RCMP to show up if someone suspects you are violating your quarantine.

This is true. Our Canadian friend who traveled to Mexico with us in December did indeed get visited by the Canadian "Covid Police" one day to confirm she was at home and self quarantining.

 

[gopbroek]

An enforced mandatory 14-day quarantine could be a serious blow to (not just dive) tourism to (not just) Cozumel. A very common pattern in U.S.A.-based vacation planning is the 7-day trip, often Saturday-to-Saturday. Think about why that is.

Often the traveler, or at least one in a group, has a job. Getting vacation time approved to be off a week can seem like pulling teeth to begin with, even if you've got plenty of vacation time on the books. And in the U.S. we don't get a guaranteed minimum of vacation time.

While the pandemic has brought a lot of attention to white collar jobs where people can work remotely from home, I suspect that's still a minority of the American workforce.

If it's hard to get approval for a week off, now imagine putting in for a 3 week stretch.

Many people have already delayed travel plans for a lengthy time. Last year I didn't do a 2nd dive trip, and my family skipped planning a cruise till this summer (and that's fairly likely to get cancelled by the cruise line). 2021 Is starting to look a to like 2020, with no clear time frame when will all end.

No, I don't see strongly enforced federal quarantines as a widespread routine thing as likely. U.S. culture is more individualistic than that, and the practical demands of life not a good match.

What about those that have had the vaccine or who recently recovered from Covid and no longer pose a transmittion threat? I doubt this was thought thru

 

[ggunn]

What about those that have had the vaccine or who recently recovered from Covid and no longer pose transmitting threat? I doubt this was thought thru

Do we know yet that those who are vaccinated cannot be carriers?

 

[ChrisM]

What about those that have had the vaccine or who recently recovered from Covid and no longer pose a transmittion threat? I doubt this was thought thru

As above, we do not know if a vaccinated person can transmit the disease

 

[gopbroek]

Do we know yet that those who are vaccinated cannot be carriers?

And how many other disease’s are you aware of that a vaccinated person becomes a host carrier? Then again we could ban walking outside for everyone since there is a risk a getting hit by a meteorite.

 

[ggunn]

And how many other disease’s are you aware of that a vaccinated person becomes a host carrier? Then again we could ban walking outside for everyone since there is a risk a getting hit by a meteorite.

That's hyperbole, of course. If 24 million people in the US had been hit by falling meteorites in the last 10 months and 400,000 of them had been killed, then, yes, walking outside would be a significant risk. The risk of being hit by a meteorite is very low (astronomically low?) but it's not zero. Risk is not binary.

My wife and I are slated for shot #1 on Saturday, with the second to follow in 21 days. We have plane tix for a Cozumel trip in May, so we are watching this stuff very closely.

 

[drrich2]

What about those that have had the vaccine or who recently recovered from Covid and no longer pose a transmittion threat? I doubt this was thought thru

This gets talked about a lot, not just here but in medical and related articles, and the answer's not definitive. Part of our specific immune response to a known foe is antibodies. In our blood, we use IgG. In our mucosa (e.g.: nasal passages, throat), we use IgA. For sake of argument, let's say a person who's been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 has a good IgG level and his memory T lymphocytes are also effective, so he keeps it cleared from his bloodstream and suffers no serious disease. Great.

But...does he produce enough IgA in his mucous membranes to prevent the virus from colonizing there and potentially spreading? Granted, if he's not coughing or sneezing he's likely not blasting it out as far from himself, but still...

The gist from one of the more thoughtful articles I've seen is that immunization or recovery from a prior case will probably reduce one's potential to transmit the virus substantially...not not completely.

Research going forward should give us a better idea, but I think that's where we're at now.

 

[ChuckP]

Canada has been requiring a 14 day quarantine for months and months now. There is an ap you use where you file your quarantine plan before you leave for your country, you can expect to be asked about it as you go through customs and immigration, and I received a few follow-up phone calls during my quarantine from those who were monitoring and enforcing. Yes, I'm sure I could have somehow dodged it, but the fines are crazy-high. And you can expect the RCMP to show up if someone suspects you are violating your quarantine.

Canada has had that for pretty much the whole time right? They just added the testing?

It'd be nice to understand where our tourism comes from - maybe divers verses day trippers as I think that's fairly different. It seems like Americans make up greater than 50% of the divers - I don't think that's true of the daytrippers though after sitting and watching a ferry unload.....