First Liveaboard experience in a post-COVID world

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"Better safe than sorry" sounds reasonable. But I'm curious as to why the advocates of this philosophy aren't demanding laws that require people to wear helmets when driving cars, or even when walking down the street (or doing anything, for that matter.) After all, you just never know when something might hit you in the head.

I'm a fan of risk mitigation, but I prefer to quantify the risks and the effort required to mitigate them. "Better safe than sorry" seems to dispense with that.
So when somebody gives you an explanation which you yourself say "sounds reasonable", your first instinct is to push things to an absurd extreme in an attempt not actually give a counterpoint, but in an (unsuccessful) attempt to make that person look foolish.

Let me guess, if no steps were taken, and someone who was asymptomatic did infect someone else you would be one of the first crying for the person who got infected to sue because the boat's crew didn't take proper precautions.

Boats, in particular cruise ships, have proven to be extremely susceptible to outbreaks of this virus. Given that LOBs are essentially small cruise ships, it is logical for the crew of any LOB to take extra precautions to minimize the risk, where possible to their crew and their passengers and extra cleaning and screening are reasonable.
 
Let me guess, if no steps were taken, and someone who was asymptomatic did infect someone else you would be one of the first crying for the person who got infected to sue because the boat's crew didn't take proper precautions..

Oh goodness no. I would never encourage anyone to sue. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh... I just noticed, you're Canadian. And you probably assume all Americans are "sue happy." Totally understandable, and a reputation the US has earned many times over.

But we're not all that way, it's a misconception. I'm sure America is #1 in civil litigation, but it's not because we all want it that way. Unfortunately it's one of the reasons our health care costs are so high.

So no... no no no... I would never be "one of the first crying for the person who got infected to sue." I would be much more likely to be one of the first to tell that person "life happens, it's full of risks, quit crying and get over it."

Case in point: my 74 year old father was in the hospital (a couple months ago) for something relatively minor. He was released after a few days, had contact with virtually no one for a week and then... virus symptoms. I took him to a different hospital and he was tested positive for covid. We're pretty sure he picked it up in his first hospital visit. He has high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity... and at his age, the virus was practically a death sentence, right? Apparently not. A couple days of complaining about the hospital food and he was back to being his usual cantankerous self. Didn't even require a ventilator.

Now... if I was the person you thought I was, I would be "crying" for him to sue the first hospital, right? Fortunately I'm not. And fortunately my father's not either. He just moves on, gets over it and leaves the nonsense behind him. That doesn't necessarily work for everyone, but it's how it's done in our family.

As for minimizing risks on liveaboards: you are right, the crew does have to do something so that if those "crying to sue" people show up, the crew has a chance of defending themselves in court. I do understand why they're doing it... and that's exactly my point. They're not doing all the wiping and mask wearing because there's any evidence it helps. They're doing it so that (a) it makes people "feel safe" and (b) it provides some liability protection in the event that someone tries to sue them for not doing enough.

And "sounds reasonable"? I meant exactly that. "Better safe than sorry" does sound reasonable. But when we start to dissect it, we realize how empty it really is. Risk mitigation requires some quantitative analysis. Otherwise it's just marketing.
 
Pretty good infomercial.
 
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@yle forest and foremost, I am happy to read that your father is on the road to recovery. I hope that his recovery is speedy and complete.

For the vast majority of my adult life, I dealt daily with the fine art of balancing risk acceptance and risk mitigation. Almost every one of those decisions was to some degree a "Life and Death Decision" usually made with incomplete and often inaccurate information. While I agree, in a perfect world it would be nice if it could all be quantified, but in the real world, that isn't always the case, and often it comes down to judgement. You infer that there is no proof that the boat's procedures are known to help, but I would offer that there is no proof that they don't help, and in the absence of conclusive evidence on one side or the other, then it is prudent to take the steps, there is nothing lost and it might help.

As for me, I desperately want to travel again, but I am also a firm believer in the saying "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." I am willing to wait until COVID-19 is under control on a Global scale before I do any traveling. I don't want to see this explode again like it did in April. I am not in a rush to be one of the people putting on the proverbial Starfleet Red Jerseys and heading out early.
 
I was on a "sick boat" on the Red Sea a few years ago. The count of passengers and crew that became seriously ill over the course of 3 weeks (that I'm aware of) was extremely high and I was one of the fallen.

Had that boat's crew taken half the care that Nautilus crew is taking, we may not have had so many fall ill.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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