The current state of affairs for cruises and Swine Flu and what you can do to protect yourself.
As I write this we have just received an update (4-28-09) from Carnival Corp regarding the line's future plans for dealing with the Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico. They will suspend stops at Mexican ports for all three ships it has scheduled to visit the country in the next few days.
Royal Caribbean International also just announced they will cancel all calls to Mexico for the next week. Mariner of the Seas called on Cabo San Lucas today.
Norwegian Pearl, currently on a repositioning cruise with stops in Mexico, is conducting fleet-wide guest health questionnaires. Royal Caribbean notes that the outbreaks are inland rather than in the Mexican coastal cities popular with cruise tourists.
What are We Really Looking At?
First let's point out that it is much easier to cancel Mexican ports in the Caribbean, but for West Coast cruises to the Mexican Riviera there are no other port options. Without stopping in Mexico, West Coast cruises become cruises to nowhere.
Carnival has succumbed to pressure and canceled all port stops in Mexico this week, but have no doubt they will reassess that decision next week. There is no way cruise lines can stop cruising to Mexico without doing significant damage to their bottom line. It is the fourth most popular cruising region in the world and two cruise lines just made significant investments to locate new and bigger ships there.
Next, lets clarify that the Mexican Swine Flu is still an outbreak and not an epidemic, and it is certainly not a pandemic. Those words only apply to a virus that has infected a critical portion of the population and is getting more virulent.
Mexico's Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said on Tuesday night that more than 1,300 people were in hospitals, some of them "seriously" ill, out of a total of around 2,500 suspected cases of the virus. "In the last few days there has been a decline (in cases)," Cordova told a news conference. "The death figures have remained more or less stable."
Personally, I think it is sad to see Carnival forced into this decision by a small number of vocal complainers, people who have decided that since they do not want to go Mexico no one should go. Bottom line, it is far too soon to say that this is a crisis situation and hence it is too soon to start a panic about cruise ships stopping in Mexico.
I rarely tell other cruise reporters what I think, but yesterday I saw them asking the general public if cruise ships should stop cruising to Mexico. This is not a decision to be made by a few panicked consumers. Let the cruise lines decide what is most prudent, and let other passengers decide for themselves what they want to do. No one is forcing anyone to take a cruise to Mexico, so no one should be telling the cruise lines or me that I can't cruise to Mexico.
When the cruise lines did speak up and say they have seen no instances of swine flu where they stop and have no plans to change itineraries I cheered. Then people on the sites where panic had already been introduced went wild with fear. The cruise lines had to back down and cancel port calls in Mexico. By the end of the day no ships were stopping there. As said, it is easy to find substitues in the Caribbean, but Mexico Riviera cruises will be very hard hit if this panic continues.
For those people calling on cruise ships to stop cruising to Mexico, I fully expect you to be calling for the closure of flights to Mexico and all borders with Mexico as well.
And let's be clear; Canceling cruises to Mexico isn't like airlines canceling flights. It means displacing ships that sail solely to the Mexican Riviera year round. It means having to re-deploy ships to regions that are already pushing the boundaries of too much capacity, such as Alaska or the Caribbean. That would be acceptable if a specific danger had been proven, but that is not yet the case.
Repositioning a number of ships to non-Mexico routes will mean huge financial losses for the cruise industry leading to a loss of jobs and/or income for millions of people affiliated with the cruise industry in this country. Once again, public safety should come first, but only after it has been determined that cruises to Mexico are a real health concern.
Not as Bad as it Appears - Yet
The national Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have both raised concerns about non-essential travel to Mexico. But neither of these organizations has recommended that airlines or cruise ships stop traveling to Mexico. There are still flights going right into Mexico City, the point of genesis for this virus.
Neither the CDC nor the WHO has recommended closing the border even in one direction; stopping the streaming of Mexican citizens into the United States. Political issues aside, I ask if it is logical to ask U.S. citizens not travel to Mexico and not to put a similar restriction on non-U.S. citizens entering the United States from Mexico?
I grew up and live in Arizona less than 200 miles from the border. I have two Mexican nationals working in my house right now. In the residential park where I have a home in San Diego we have Mexican nationals who cross the border to come to work daily.
Should I be panicked? No one has told me I should be, and yet I can drive 10 miles and become completely immersed in a neighborhood of Mexican nationals who travel back and forth through the border several times a year.
My point is the critical aspect of proximity. Cruise ships generally do not visit areas of Mexico where outbreaks have occurred. Furthermore, passengers are not forced to mix with the general population. Cozumel, for example, is an island 10 miles from shore but over 1000 miles away from the nearest outbreak. In most ports cruise passengers can stay in tourist areas where it is very easy to control who goes in and out. This was before there was a health crisis. This can be improved upon and no doubt will be.
Wendy Orent, author of "Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease," wrote this for the LA Times today, "So why are some of the Mexico strains so lethal? The answer may lie in the ... giant Veracruz pig farm that raises almost a million pigs a year... Locals report a fearful stench, hosts of flies and, since December 2008, serious respiratory disease that sickened 60% of the community... Influenzas that have their origins in huge, crowded animal farms are often more virulent than other flu strains."
Wendy goes on to say that this led to infections so acute the afflicted were too disabled to become spreaders. It is the people a few hosts removed from the original cases who picked up milder form of the disease and have been spreading it.
The WHO currently has a six-point scale for rating viral outbreaks. According to some online sources this outbreak technically qualifies for a number five rating, defined as outbreaks affecting more than one nation. However they have not raised the rating. Why? Probably because they are not yet convinced this virus is a virulent enough to qualify.
In fact, the WHO is now no longer recommending travel restrictions, the report says they have no evidence the virus is an "incontrovertible spreader." They suspect it has been in Mexico far longer than we suspected.
"We don't understand why the disease has been more severe in Mexico," WHO spokeman Rick Hartl said. "The first victims may not have recognised they were infected with a new type of flu requiring different treatment than normal seasonal flu, they may not have received the required medicines until late, or they may have been infected with other diseases reducing their immunity to the virus."
Now, the WHO says travel doesn't affect the spread of the disease? That is my whole point - no one knows what the "health professionals" are going to say next, so why are so many people including the cruise media jumping to the furthest conclusion?
I noticed UBS securities has already issued a statement that Swine Flu will affect cruise line earnings by 1% over the next year, equal to "$.24 cents per share in net yields." Amazing, now the analysts at UBS can see a year into the future. It isn't the fact that they did the math that bothers me, it is their 100% certainly the virus will end cruises to Mexico for a year.
Meanwhile another virus has been killing Americans at the rate of a few hundred every week. What is it? The flu. There is nothing new about that, so why the alarm over a virus that has killed no one in the U.S.? So far Swine Flu appears to be treatable by antiviral drugs, the reason why no one outside of Mexico has died. So, the truth is no has a good idea what has already happened in Mexico, either the virus has been undetected a lot longer than suspected (meaning it isn't that virulent) or else the deaths in Mexico are not solely caused by the virus - there are mitigating factors. In any case, health professionals need to understand what has already happened in Mexico before they can even say what will happen next, and the media needs to wait until they have an answer.
An affiliate of Homeland Security under former President Bush said, "this is not a crisis yet, it is too soon to tell." Keiji Fukuda, WHO acting assistant director-general, told reporters, "There is a definite possibility that the new virus could establish community-wide infections in multiple countries, but it is too early to say that this is inevitable."
He also said, "It is entirely possible...that we may see a very mild pandemic. That would be the best of all situations short of this current situation simply stopping and disappearing." So, in other words, he is saying it might be mild, or that it could even just disappear. Granted, he doesn't say the latter is likely, but he alludes it is not impossible.
All of the health officials giving us guidance are saying they are preparing for the worst possible circumstances, as they have learned to do extremely well in the last few years, but they are not saying that the public should expect the worst. In fact, they are going out of their way to say a mild episode is a possibility and that there are no indications to the contrary.
Swine Flu and Travel Insurance
I understand the hard choice if you are already booked on a cruise to Mexico. If you are truly afraid and decide not to go you will lose your money. If you decide to still go you can still stay on the ship instead of going ashore. You will have to make sure you don't pick up anything from someone who went ashore.
If you are already booked on a cruise to Mexico, you are probably wondering if you can get cruise insurance. Yes, you can, under certain conditions. If you already paid for your cruise last month it may be too late to get full coverage, but you can still get insurance for coverage if you happen to get sick.
Let's discuss how travel insurance may or may not cover the Swine Flu. John Cook of online cruise travel insurance broker Quotewright.com knows the travel insurance business in and out. John says it is not too late to get insurance for your Mexico cruise, however the average policy will not cover you if you want to cancel your cruise - even if the State Department issues a travel warning. A policy will cover you if you get sick however, under most circumstances, but read on to find out the exceptions.
The only policy that will cover you if you choose to cancel is a "Cancel for Any Reason" policy, but it has restrictions, comes with a price and it may be too late to get one. "Cancel for any Reason" policies are usually written up as a "rider" to a standard travel insurance policy. To get this rider you will pay an additional premium, you must insure your trip for the full cost of your cruise and you must get the policy within two weeks of having made your first payment on the cruise. One insurer, Travelex, gives you 21 days.
For standard policies, I would have expected them to cover you if the State Department issued a travel warning after you booked your cruise, but NO! They do not. John Cook told me most travel insurance policies are "buyer beware" and the insurers purposely plan their coverage to minimize their own exposure to losses.
For example, any reference to the State Department in any travel insurance policy that John knows of only relates to terrorism, not illness. Furthermore, many policies add an exclusion for illnesses caused by an "epidemic." If this seems a little counter-intuitive and one-sided in favor of the insurance companies, well it is. Buyer beware.
As I said, if you get sick on your cruise and you have medical expenses or require evacuation then you should be covered, but NOT if the policy expressly forbids illnesses caused by epidemics. When it comes to the official definition of "epidemic" John says there isn't one in any policy, which can make getting insurance payoffs a sticky wicket, or it could work in your favor.
Basically, John Cook advises buyers to read a policy carefully and to take it very literally. "If a policy says your trip has to be interrupted for at least 24 hours then a 23 hour delay will not qualify you for a payout." Bottom line, it may not be too late to get insurance coverage for Swine Flu, but you are going to pay more and you have to be very careful what you buy.
If you are looking to insure a Mexico cruise we recommend you contact a travel insurance broker who already knows the limitations of most available policies. Or to make it easier, call John Cook at Quotewright.com, or go to another travel insurance site we recommend regularly, Insuremytrip.com.
Summing Up
The fact is that no one from the U.S. has died from this disease and no one yet knows why. One theory is "maybe the people who contracted it here were already immunized and that lessened the effect." There are barely over 100 cases. Before they spread panic like this shouldn't they know if our people were immunized? As a Washington Times editorial says today, "You have to give the medical bureaucrats and the media credit for chutzpah to think they can keep such thin soup on the panic menu."
I am disappointed for a number of reasons, but mostly with my cruise media colleagues who choose to foment the panic by asking regular cruisers if they thought cruises to Mexico should be cancelled before the cruise lines were given a chance to give their point of view. This isn't like airlines, the health of the cruise industry depends on enthusiasm from the public for cruising. I vote 'no,' they should not be cancelled.
Here are two articles about panic in the media over Swine Flu:
