Does the CDC Have It Out for the Cruise Industry?

I went with my two boys to see ‘Spiderman: No Way Home’ earlier this week.

I also caught an exciting high school basketball game the other night.

And I got lucky and nabbed a couple of orchestra seats to ‘La Boheme’ at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City later this month, the last two orchestra seats together for that performance.

TMI? No, not really. In general, I’m not in the habit of sharing my calendar and what I do with my discretionary dollar with the general public. But there is a method to my madness.

While watching Spidey take on the Green Goblin again, and while attending the hoops game, and when I go to the opera in a few weeks, I would argue that I was, and will be, in closer proximity to other people than I would be on a cruise.

Which only makes me wonder about something I wrote early last year.

Does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have it in for cruise lines?

It sure seems like it, based on what we’ve seen again this week.

For the better part of a year the CDC made cruise companies jump through hoops to get back on the water, damn near coming close to bankrupting the industry. And certainly there is a case to be made for being ‘abundantly cautious,’ although it has become my least favorite new phrase.

And before you start with the Facebook comments, I get it. The sheer amount of passenger volume on a cruise ship is greater than at a movie theater, or in the bleachers of a high school gym, or at Lincoln Center for the opera, or, dare I say it, an airline flight.

But those airline flights still aren’t getting nearly as much scrutiny as the cruise liners, which came under fire again two days ago when the CDC raised its travel warning for cruise ships from Level 3 to Level 4, its highest level.

Cruise ship vs. Airport. Pick your “petri dish”. pic.twitter.com/LoOQARdP7K

— Aaron Saunders (@deckchairblog) December 30, 2021

The latest update advises people to avoid traveling by cruise ship regardless of their COVID-19 vaccination status, due to the surge in positive cases for the Omicron variant. The CDC says that the variant is more transmissible, especially among people sharing close quarters such as some environments onboard a cruise ship.

The industry’s lobby group, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), called the decision “perplexing.”

I call it curious. Don’t go on a cruise but it’s OK for 180 people to sit three across separated by the length of an arm hair? OK...

But I also call it dangerous.

Almost immediately, cruise companies felt the repercussions. The announcement was made on Thursday, and on Friday, cruise line stocks dropped. That’s the kind of power such an announcement can have.

I’m not quite sure what the motivation is here on the part of the CDC. As I wrote months ago, this has seemingly graduated from ‘concern’ to vindictiveness. You could make a case for every mode of travel to have an advisory, so why just cruise lines?

Perplexing, indeed.