Travel

by Robert McGarvey

I never thought I would say this so loudly and emphatically but now I have to: Europeans are smarter than we are. Here the proof: Starting August 6 Italy will require proof of vaccination (a so called health pass) to gain entry to bars, restaurants, concerts, museums, and just about all places where large numbers congregate. To get the pass there must be evidence of at least one vaccination shot.

Also in August, France will enforce a similar requirement. France, understand, had had a reputation of being something of a vaccine skeptic but, obviously, that was before. Now the government is all in with vaccines.

Greece already has in place a vaccine requirement for those who want entry at indoor restaurants, cafes, bars, or movie theaters

Understand: neither country has issued a broad requirement that residents get vaccinated. But they have said that for those who choose not to get vaccinated there is a price to pay and that price involves exclusion from most social venues.

Bravo. Globally Covid-19 is on a rampage. It is absurd to think we are on the other side of this pandemic. We are still in the thick of it. Nine nations – nine, count ’em – claim that more than 50% of their people have gotten at least one shot of a vaccine. On that list are Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, United States, Saudi Arabia, Argentina.

Globally only around one in four of us has gotten at least one vaccine shot. That means 75% have gotten none.

Meantime it is plain that the leading vaccinations are effective – especially Pfizer and Moderna. There is no rational basis for being a vaccine skeptic.

And yet in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas – to point to the bottom three US states in terms of population percentage vaccinated – only about one third of the population is fully vaccinated and indications are that it will be very hard to persuade the vax deniers in those states to roll up a sleeve.

According to Politico, “many people…in the Southeast are turning down Covid-19 vaccines because they are angry that President Donald Trump lost the election and sick of Democrats in Washington thinking they know what’s best.”

I have no idea if that is right but what I do know is Covid is having its way in Alabama, where already 11,483 of them have died from Covid and more will, probably lots more.

Arkansas and Mississippi are doing no better.

But getting vax refusers vaccinated isn’t my mission. I have no suggestions about how to encourage them, especially when they are surrounded by sickness and death of neighbors, friends and family and that isn’t persuasion enough.

My mission is getting the US to implement a health pass a la France and Italy and Greece where those who are vaccinated get privileges that will be denied the vax refusers,

That seems a simple ask – but it is anything but.

Lots of US governors are implementing high barriers to prevent discrimination against the unvaccinated.

In Arizona, for instance, Governor Doug Ducey in June signed an executive order prohibiting public colleges and universities from requiring students to get vaccinated and they cannot require proof of vaccination to attend in person classes. What prompted that other than sheer stupidity? Ducey offered this feeble explanation: “The vaccine works, and we encourage Arizonans to take it. But it is a choice and we need to keep it that way,” said Gov. Ducey said in a statement. “Public education is a public right, and taxpayers are paying for it. We need to make our public universities available for students to return to learning. They have already missed out on too much learning.”

Ducey also signed an order banning “vaccine passports” at businesses.

The Arizona Covid-19 rate is ticking up right now. Rates are climbing so fast Ducey recently issued a statement urging residents to get vaccinated.

In Florida, meantime, Governor Ron DeSantis doubled down by signing into law a bill that bans businesses from seeking proof of vaccination by customers.

The Florida Covid-19 rate is really spiking upward, by the way, and if you are keeping lists of where not to go, put Florida high on that list.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbot signed into a law that bans businesses from requiring proof of vaccination by customers. It’s sweeping legislation with real teeth: “In addition to banning private businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, SB 968 provides that any business that does require proof of vaccination will not be permitted to engage in state contracts, and some state agencies that regulate different business sectors may screen for compliance with SB 968 in issuing licenses and permits,” explained a Texas law firm.

Covid-19 rates are climbing in Texas too.

Sigh.

And now you understand why – obviously – Europeans are smarter than we are. They are taking steps to safely re-open their economies to those who are vaccinated and, no, vaccination is no guarantee against infection but right now it is the very best thing we have. As I said before, I see no need to require vaccinations – as long as we are willing and able to exclude those who refuse the shot.

by Robert McGarvey

How many more articles must I read that document flamboyantly stupid and obnoxious behavior of passengers? The latest one is headlined: Unruly airplane passengers are straining the system for keeping peace in the sky.

What is wrong with these mask refusing idiots?

One fact: the Federal Aviation Administration is incompetent. Per WAPO: “despite launching a ‘zero-tolerance’ enforcement policy in January — amid a rise in conflicts often tied to mask requirements in the air — the agency said that as of mid-July it had ‘completely closed’ just seven cases.”

What is wrong with those idiots?

There are two things I know about all this and the first is that until something like peace returns to the skies we will not resume full tilt flying and among the holdouts I believe will be business travelers. Lots of companies just will not feel safe putting employees on planes where fellow travelers include dazed and drunk mask deniers who joyfully slug flight crew, attempt to open emergency doors, and pee in their seats. Nope, most companies will hesitate to push employees onto planes until tranquility is restored.

The second thing is that I am unconvinced government intervention is the best option.

Airlines for America and some nine other trade groups disagree. In a letter to the US Attorney General, they said, “The federal government should send a strong and consistent message through criminal enforcement that compliance with federal law and upholding aviation safety are of paramount importance,.”

Is this necessary?

To me, the surest route to better inflight behavior is for the carriers to ban unruly passengers. Instantly. Over 4000 passengers have been banned in the last year and more should be. Besides, the feds can still prosecute. In many cases they should.

But the airlines can act much faster and can issue a ban without much rigmarole.

That’s appealing.

Meantime. however, I do ponder exactly how bad it truly is the skies, despite the many unruly passenger stories I have read. As of July 13, the FAA said it had 3420 unruly passenger reports. Let’s say the real, unfiltered number ought to be 10,000. (I’m assuming many reports just didn’t get filed because the flight crew had other issues to deal with and the paperwork never got filled in.)

On July 18, 2021 passenger throughput reached 2,227,704. That’s just one day of flying. The 10,000 unruly passenger number over six months is a rounding error, an inconsequential number.

There is just a smidgen of unruly behavior in the air. Annoying, unnerving, perhaps frightening if it is on your flight? Undeniably. But odds are slender that it will happen.

Now go back and look closely at the FAA graph that charts the incidence of unruly behavior from 1995 to 2020. Today it may seem high but there were 50% more FAA investigations initiated into unruly behavior complaints in the period 2000 to 2004. Initially I wondered if this coincided with the ban on inflight smoking but, nope, that happened in stages from 1988 to 1990.

Of course there were the horrific 9-11-2001 flight incidents and afterwards there were unfortunate and wrong acts of hostility on airplanes towards many people who somehow seemed Middle Eastern. But enough to warrant a spike in unruly behavior filings and investigations?

Color me uncertain exactly what triggered so many FAA investigations in that period. But the lesson is that what we have now is not so much worse than what we have been seeing for many years.

But my more pressing concern is how to get today’s skies friendlier and the recipe seems simple: ban booze in coach (alcohol is intimately linked with bad inflight behavior and some carriers already 86 hooch) and encourage carriers to drop the flight ban on ever more passengers. and publicize bannings, FAA fines, and all manner of punitive actions against inflight miscreants. Make them understand that their actions will have consequences and at least some will play nicer.

Misbehaving at 30,000 feet has consequences – when it does, the misbehavior will decline.

That’s my bet.

If you agree forward a link to this column to any and all airline employees you know. They can give us friendlier skies and the key just is to be unfriendly to a handful of rude morons who are violating our right to peace in the skies.

The Travel Weekly headline screamed the obvious: “Vaccine hesitancy is slowing the reopening of the U.S.”

Just about daily I am seeing multiple reports and predictions auguring a brisk and quick return of business travel. Today for instance Bloomberg observes that “Business trips coming back faster than expected in the U.S.” And United’s CEO “voices optimism” including a prediction that business travel will rebound in the fall: “We expect the demand to pick up in September, October.”

Nonsense and the reason I say that is that the US vaccination rates have fallen off a cliff. As of today 48.4% of us are fully vaccinated and with the Delta variant multiplying that simply means we are unsafe in crowded places and, to me, that means just about any meeting or in person event I can imagine. Experts say that with the emergence of variants we need perhaps 85% of us to be fully vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Some say maybe we can get by with 70% vaccinated. But nobody thinks we will reach a 70% rate in every state this year. States like Mississippi, Louisiana, Idaho may never reach 70%.

As Travel Weekly noted. “Go back to April 21, and 40.2% of the U.S. population had received one vaccine dose, compared with 26.1% of Canada’s population and 20.1% of the population of the EU, to cite two prominent examples. As of July 4, however, the U.S. had only increased that figure to 54.5%, while Canada’s single-vaccination rate had soared to 68.6% and the EU was fast catching up to us at 52.1%, according to an analysis by Our World in Data. Barring an unforeseen turn, of course, Canada, EU countries and other wealthy nations will eclipse our fully vaccinated rate in due time.”

I told you we had fallen off a cliff. There now are plenty of vaccine shots available but there are too few willing arms.

Actions have consequences or, in this case, inaction has consequences. Those who decline to be vaccinated are in effect telling travelers to stay home.

And I think many of us will do exactly that. Or they will opt to go to destinations where the residents are more levelheaded.

Any way you parse the numbers, the reality is that anti vaxxers just are saying nope and a consequence is that travel just will not rebound as more of us are cautious about mingling with the unvaxxed.

About half the country’s states are simply unsafe. But CDC makes the data more useful by offering county level reports and, gulp, I find where I live, Maricopa County in AZ, has a “substantial” risk of community transmission and, worse, just 41.2% of us are fully vaccinated. That is why I still generally wear a mask when around others.

If I were you I would not come to Maricopa County – and I think many of us will be making decisions based on these data.

Personally I saw this vividly when, contemplating a possible trip to east Texas, I impulsively decided to look up the particular county I might go to. Just 27.4% of the people have gotten at least one shot. How about neighboring Arkansas? Only 34% of the residents are fully vaccinated, the Delta variant is galloping around the state and, no, I would not even think about going there.

Scratch that trip.

My prediction is that when confronted with a possible business trip we will include in our calculation a look at the state’s vaccination rate and also the particular county’s. See a high number and that nixes that trip.

The number’s look bad in much of the country. Just 47% of the residents of Clark County – where Las Vegas schemes about rebooting business meetings – have gotten even a single shot and that is nowhere near good enough. Erase Nevada off the go to list.

There are successes – Chicago for instance has been smart about vaccinations. So is San Antonio. But for every success, there is a failure.

This is mid 2021 reality. Vaccination rates will make our travel choices for us. Here’s a list of the most and least vaccinated states

And as more of us study such lists before booking a trip that will be very bad news for many destinations. Case in point: Fox 17 TV in Nashville asked this question: “With 10th lowest vaccination rate in US, is it responsible to tout tourism in Tennessee?” I can’t speak for leisure travelers but as regards business travelers my advice to Nashville is promote vaccines first, business travel second.

Or just look at the empty beds around town.

by Robert McGarvey

If you hold an Amex Platinum card – guesses are there are around 400,000 of us, but Amex does not confirm these numbers – it now has become unavoidable that you do a big, deep rethink: Is this the card that best suits me?

If you don’t have it but are mulling applying – there’s a lush 100k miles sign up bonus right now – do the same rethinking because nowadays there are options at the lofty Plat level, notably the Chase sapphire reserve. The era of Plat hegemony is over.

That rethink maybe is all the more urgent because, as the pandemic loosens its grip on our psyches, many of us are facing up to the reality that we will be doing less business travel for the foreseeable future. How much less, for how long? I do not have a crystal ball that can answer those questions. But for now I am assuming I will do minimal business travel in the remainder of this year and I did none in the first half.

I mention that because for years I justified paying for Amex Plat as a business expense that made tedious business trips a mite more tolerable. The club access alone justified the cost but then Amex lost access to all but Delta clubs among the domestic carriers and the Centurion, while lovely, were few in number and then became vastly too popular. The Centurion became the Venice of airport lounges or maybe it embodied that Yogi Berra line, nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded. But, for me, the pleasure of Centurions had vanished amid overcrowded lounges and a scarcity of seats.

Then there’s the question of guest access at Centurion. Amex plans to begin charging for guest access (up to $50 a head) but not until February 2023 – so if air traffic in fact picks up and stays up, as some pundits predict, the Centurion will remain as inviting as a 6 train at 4pm on a Friday night in July at Lex and Grand Central, at least until the guest head count falls in 2023.

The final shoe dropping is the big fee increase – from $550 to $695 as of July 1, 2021. Remember, too, the card cost $450 in early 2017. That’s a 54% bump in just four years.

And does the card still fit my evolving lifestyle, the post pandemic me?

Yes, Amex does conveniently calculate that I saved $250 using the card this year on purchases at BestBuy, HomeDepot, Goldbelly, and there’s another $200 in Uber credits plus miscellaneous givebacks on PayPal purchases for another, say, $100. Add in the free cellphone protection, free Global Entry, etc.

There’s also a new $240 annual digital entertainment credit which will cover my NY Times subscription. And a $100 Saks credit.

Very probably there is $695 in perks.

But do I want these perks? Really?

What I keep choking on however is what seems a good deal – a new, monthly $25 credit at Equinox, the fitness club, and that money can be used at an in person club or an online service. The latter costs$40/monthly so net $15 to a Plat cardholder. Here’s the deal however: I am more like to get my hair dyed green and my nose pierced than I am to use Equinox, not that I have a problem with the club, just that it has little to do with who I am and what I do (and my personal exercise is to tie on a pair of $100 walking shoes and walk, which I did for 10 miles this a.m.)

A lot of the Plat perks seem, well, like stuff we laugh at the characters in Babbitt when they crave similar shiny objects in their day.

It was all so much simpler when Plat gave me airport club access and I flew enough where that mattered.

Now the Amex club access is tarnished, Priority Pass benefits seem to have shriveled for cardholders. Restaurant lounges are excluded.

To renew or no? I can renew at the old rate when my term comes up next month.

But going forward is this new lifestyle card – because that is what Plat now is – right for me and my lifestyle?

And do I really want to spend time tracking and logging the perks and benefits which do change? I want a credit card that works for me. Not vice versa.

I just am not sure about renewing. But I will be by next year. Ask me then.

Awards travel update: I used Amex miles, converted into Delta miles, to buy two round trip comfort class tix from PHX to MAD in September. Cost was around 190,000 miles, which worked out to about a penny a point. But, hell, a lot of those miles were earned buying groceries at Whole Foods, paying dentist bills, vet bills, and other routine, mundane charges. A free trip to Spain in return is an ok deal in my mind. Even if I fell far short of my 2 cents a mile target.

By Robert McGarvey

Or is it just that the cash price for the flight is inflated in the first instance?

I am planning a trip to the Iberian Peninsula in early fall.  It had started as mainly Portugal but Portugal has been imposing lockdowns, etc. as it wrestles with an outbreak of the delta variant of Covid-19 – probably all to the good in the long term – and now my focus has shifted to a trip to Madrid and points north in Spain (Leon, Santiago de Compostela, etc.).

So I look on Expedia and, shut my mouth, a Delta flight from Phoenix connecting through ATL is priced at $2296 for premium economy for two fliers, and that is as good a fare as I see except for Condor which flies a milk run with multiple stops (including one in Frankfurt). The Condor flight may be cheap but no…I am not prepared for that long a flight.

But I have a stash of Amex miles.

So I go to the Amex rewards page, plug in details, and a rewards flight is 229,690 points.

Ouch. That is a penny a point.

But I do not see much better deals for any flights to Madrid.

Here’s the other mystery: Is it better to lock in that fare now and part with the miles (I’ll probably plunk down the points, rather than pay cash, because I got ‘em and there’s no value in holding the things since they generally just lose value)?

You may be thinking, there are better deals to other places in Europe? You are right.  But they do not have the Prado, nor do they have the jamon and the short beers that always seem like a 3-star lunch wherever I have eaten and drunk in Madrid.

No, Spain it is, Madrid it must be, and points will be my currency.

One more thing I ponder – is it worth my time to transfer points from Amex to Delta and buy the flight from the airline? I have done that before, for instance when Amex and Delta had a bonus deal going (my memory is that I got a 50% bonus, so 100,000 miles became 150,000).  But I don’t see a similar deal at Amex now  that involves European carriage.

When booking at Delta, miles for two is 240,000 plus $115.50 in cash. A bit dearer than via Amex.

Choices, choices, choices.

Why fly Delta anyway? The flights and prices are comparable to American Airlines from Phoenix and, in this town, those look to be the best to Spain, at least for now. More flights, on more airlines, will be scheduled in the coming month (assuming Covid remains tamped down in Europe and the US) and I do not plan to make a commitment for at least two weeks. So the options may change but, right now, it’s American versus Delta and Delta has a narrow lead because the club in Phoenix is good as is the one in Atlanta.

But I remain gobsmacked at the mileage costs for such flights and in the early fall.  Not prime summer (although who knows that summer will be peak this year for European travel, probably not).

Am I just stuck in a past era?

Or have flight costs been bumped up right now simply because jet fuel is pricey and airplane capacity remains limited, as carriers scramble to get planes and crew and supporting infrastructure in sync?

And who am I to complain? Essentially free flights to Spain. In autumn.  

It’s a good, if dear, life.

By Robert McGarvey

Suddenly the Internet is afire with rumors that very soon we will all have to submit to a weigh in before boarding our next flight.  Even the mainstream media has joined the frenzy.  The headline on WKRC TV’s web page screamed: “Airlines may start weighing passengers before they can board flights.”

The Deseret News in Utah headlined: “Airlines might weigh passengers before boarding flights.” The subhead added: “A new initiative would require airlines to weigh passengers.”

The New York Daily News noted: “Airline passengers may have to get weighed before boarding.”

Unexpectedly, there even is a proposal involving passengers and weigh-ins that is kicking around Washington DC.

Before plunging into that, however, understand that airlines have had the option to weigh passengers for some years.  Personally I have been asked for my weight several times when flying in Alaska.  When planes are small and land on water the pilot needs to distribute weight in the plane with care.  It may be an awkward question but there are times when you will be asked and when you think on it you will be glad the pilot asked.

Airlines also already require passengers to fit in a seat with a seatbelt buckled (an extension is OK) and the armrests down. Obese passengers who don’t fit can be required to buy a second seat or deplane.   

Back to what triggered all this teeth gnashing: In May 2019 the FAA issued an advisory circular where it mulled what changes needed to be made in accurately guessing passenger weight (along with weight of carry-ons).  That is important because an airplane has a maximum weight load and much of what is on the plane already is weighed (checked baggage and freight for instance).  The big unknown is what we weigh and how much stuff we are stuffing into the overhead bins and under our seats.

Airlines had until June 12, 2021 to file a plan for more accurately estimating passenger weights.  Thus the recent angst about possible mandatory weigh-ins.

Overweight planes do crash.   Sometimes they are so stuffed they cannot manage a takeoff. Usually these are small, private planes but occasionally a commercial flight crashes due to excess weight – notably and sadly a 2003 US AIrways crash that killed 21.  The NY Times lead gives the facts: “ A commuter plane that crashed on takeoff from Charlotte, N.C., in January was 400 to 1,000 pounds overweight, and two bags in its tail baggage compartment were so heavy that it took two handlers to carry each of them, a sign that the plane was tail-heavy as well, people involved in the investigation said.”

What grabs me in that paragraph is how comparative small the deadly weight was – perhaps a half ton or less.

Keep that number in mind.

In 1980 the average weight of an adult man was 172.2.  A woman weighed 144.2

In 2014 the average man weighed 195.7.  The average woman weighed 168.5.

Let’s assume 200 passengers on a plane, with males and females evenly split.   That means the passengers now weigh at least 4780 pounds more, about two and one-half tons.

Seasonal weight differences also come into play.  FAA numbers seem to believe we are five pounds heavier in the winter and that could be explained by a topcoat and a heavier weight suit.  

So what the FAA is looking for in its 58 page advisory is a new game plan for guesstimating passenger weight for the purpose of deciding if a plane is safe to fly.  Airlines had two main options.  They could actually weigh every passenger in the boarding process, or they could rely on government estimates about our weight.

There never was a mandate that required passengers to be weighed.

Not surprisingly, per the Washington Post, airlines have indicated their preference for using government weight data.  No airline contacted by Wapo indicated it had a plan to actually weigh passengers.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. As a nation we despise our annual weigh-in at a doctor’s office and often dispute the findings (“Im wearing heavy shoes, take off five pounds!”).  We certainly would not welcome a public weigh-in with our weight flashed before a throng of passengers (doubtless all Keto diet practitioners).  Of course no airline would inflict that on us.

Proving that there indeed are limits to how much abuse airlines will heap on us. And that perhaps is the biggest surprise in this blog.

By Robert McGarvey

That is the question.

You might think every cruise line has the same Covid protocols.  The plague is a national, indeed planetary, issue we all face, and therefore a uniform response might seem the most straightforward path to thwarting the disease and its crippling paralysis of the cruise business for well over a year.  You would be wrong.

The four big lines – Carnival, Royal Caribbean, NCL, and MSC – have four different responses.

And some lines have different responses for different ships and different countries and even different US states.

Worse, at least three ships in the early cruise fleets already have Covid cases. More on that below, but this reality underlines that Covid is a persistent threat that needs dealing with in our world.

Here is my advice about 2021 cruising.

First off, don’t even think about sailing from Florida or Texas.

Our ban on all Texas and Florida cruises is because the governors of those states and their legislatures have made it illegal for a business to demand proof of vaccination of its customers and, whoosh, there goes the basic cruise line tactic for preventing a recurrence of the devastating and deadly Covid-19 epidemics on multiple cruise ships last year.

Understand, to bypass a lot of CDC hoops involved in restarting cruising, a line can fast track its sailings by requiring that 95% of passengers and 95% of crew be vaccinated.  Texas and Florida are saying no can do. 

The Texas governor has no leverage – only Galveston ranks as a top 10 embarkation port.  It is easy to tell the Lone Star State’s governor to pound sand and New Orleans  – the 11th busiest cruise port – is ready to step in and pick up the slack.  Me, I’d much prefer a Corpse Reviver in Nola anyway.

But Florida is a more complex matter.   Three of the top three cruise embarkation ports are in Florida and four of the top 10.  Eliminating this state from cruise sailing is thorny- and potentially devastating to tens of thousands of Floridians whose livelihoods are dependent on cruising.  Word of advice to Floridians: tell your governor he is demanding an unscientific and dangerous approach to cruising that will unnecessarily endanger passengers and crew.

Until he changes his policy our advice stands: just do not cruise out of Florida.  Lots of Caribbean islands are scrambling to fill in for Florida. There are and will be cruises in the region.  

Aren’t some cruise lines saying their ships embarking from Florida will require vaccinations? Yes they are. But I see no reason to believe they will have the backbone to stick with that position in defiance of the Florida governor.  Maybe they will.  But I would not risk my health on that bet.

The ante is upped, starkly and scarily,  by the fact that three recent cruises have been scarred by Covid-19 cases.  An MSC Mediterranean cruise announced that two passengers – traveling separately – tested positive for Covid-19 in routine tests administered by the line.  The ship was denied docking in a Malta port – shades of early 2020 cruising! – but went to Sicily where the passengers who tested positive disembarked.  

MSC passengers on this cruise were not required to be vaccinated but were required to take two tests, one a few days before the cruise and one midway in the cruise.

“If anything, this is another demonstration that the protocol works,” a line spokesman told the Washington Post.

If he says so….

I will not even think of sailing a ship that does not require vaccinations for the vast majority of passengers and crew.

But that may not be assurance enough. Breaking news is that Royal Caribbean has cancelled a number of sailings of a new ship because of an outbreak of Covid-19 among crew. No passengers were yet on board. But…

Meantime, two passengers aboard a Celebrity ship that set sail from St. Maarten – with all passengers vaccinated — tested positive in a required end of cruise testing, according to the Washington Post.  

The passengers had been sharing a cabin.

Passengers were required to show proof vaccination and also to show a negative test result taken within 72 hours of embarkation to sail on the Celebrity ship.

Presumably the passengers who subsequently tested positive met those requirements. One hopes they weren’t using the counterfeit vaccination cards that apparently are popular in the anti-vax and Trumpie circles.

“This situation demonstrates that our rigorous health and safety protocols work to protect our crew, guests and the communities we visit,” a statement from the line said.

I have a question – probably you do too.  What vaccine did the passengers have?  Both Pfizer and Moderna boast effectiveness rates around 95%.  The J & J jab is around 76% effective.  And if you had a choice – I know if I had a choice – we’d sail only with those vaccinated with the Moderna or Pfizer shots.

But right now we don’t have those choices.

We do have a choice of lines we’d sail on and, right now, the policies do differ dramatically. MSC has no vaccination requirement, NCL has a 100% requirement. Carnival, the biggest cruise line, says 95% of passengers will be vaccinated.  Royal Caribbean seems to have different policies for different lines. Celebrity seems to be sticking with a 100% vaccination rule.  Royal Caribbean itself says it will not have a vaccination requirement on voyages embarking from Florida and Texas but it adds that unvaccinated passengers will have to meet special, unspecified requirements.  

So, should you cruise?  That’s your call.  Personally, I am in no rush to climb aboard a ship leaving any port.  I am far busier plotting a possible European vacay in the fall.

I want to cruise again, I am sure I will, but I cannot say with any certainty when that will happen. We are still in a pandemic, people.  The disease keeps morphing, nobody knows how the vaccines will hold up, and I frankly like my odds a lot better on land than in a sealed container at sea.  

But monitor the many cruises that now are embarking. Are they suffering Covid cases? How are they handling them?  Your answers will tell if you are ready and eager to cruise.  Or not.

By Robert McGarvey

My bag beckons, it is half packed and you are likely doing similar with grand visions of a pint of bitters in London or an Armagnac in Paris or a Vinho Verde in Porto.  

Sober up.  It is not happening, not this summer.

Not unless you have a long held ambition to be an extra in Marat/Sade.  

Tune back to May 7. That’s when the UK issued its list of so-called green light countries. That’s where UK residents can travel without ado and return similarly. No tests, no quarantines.  Not on the list were France, Spain and the US.  On it were the Faroe Islands, the Falklands (aka the Malvinas), Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Iceland, Gibraltar, Israel, and Portugal (plus a couple Portuguese islands).

No fools the Brits, this unleashed a stampede to Portugal (even in a pandemic would you crave an excursion to the Malvinas and, no, I have no idea how you would get to these remote south Atlantic islands).

Flashforward to June 3 and a reshuffled UK list of safe destinations excluded Portugal and from June 7 on Brits returning from Portugal need to self isolate for 10 days and take two PCR tests.  Of course that change triggered stampedes at the Lisbon and Porto airports – some carriers even shifted extra metal there to appease the exiting mobs.

That paragraph captures why we aren’t going to Europe this summer.

Don’t think it’s a Brit thing that has nothing to do with us. Here’s the deal: a lot of how we travel to Europe will be impacted by what limitations the UK puts on travel. And there is no guessing that.

What’s more, just about every big nation now is behaving as erratically as the UK. Including us. Including much of Europe.

Don’t think the Falklands are a go, either. They aren’t. Tourists are currently denied entry, including cruise ship passengers. I know, drat.

Nothing is certain, nothing can be counted on with international travel.  What we know to be true today may be ancient nonsense tomorrow and the reason of course is that the pandemic keeps morphing, nobody knows how the vaccines will fare against still emerging variants, and nations are frantically trying to balance public health concerns with demands by their domestic travel providers to lower the barriers and let the cash registers ring.

A week ago when I looked, the sane way for me to get to Porto was to fly LAX to LHR, LHR to OPO and that was easy and modestly priced on BA – but with Portugal now demoted to the UK amber list, will the flights remain? Probably not.  Because very probably most Brits will stay home – or convince themselves they really want to go to Iceland, a nation with twice as many sheep as people. Look it up.

And when the UK’s next list reshuffle is issued around June 24 will Portugal be upgraded to green and, who knows, maybe Iceland will have been downgraded to red as the virus has jumped to sheep.

Just kidding about Iceland’s sheep.

But no joking that there is no guarantee where Iceland will fall in the next reshuffle.

Just about everything else also remains uncertain. Spain, for instance, has said it will be open to all vaccinated travelers as of June 7 but hunt for details and there are none.  Will it apply to Americans? Only vaccinated travelers are welcome.

Americans flying to France are welcome – if they arrive with a very recent PCR or antigen test. Only vaccinated travelers need apply.

A complication is that fake vaccination cards continue to be sold online so who could trust one? Especially at an overseas passport desk? We don’t know how foreign governments will validate CDC vaccination cards presented by Americans and we don’t know what additional proofs they may require. Thus the French solution.

Portugal, by the way, says it will open to vaccinated US travelers. “We are in a position to approve the opening of non-essential travel and flights to people from the U.S. to Portugal as long as they have a vaccination certificate,” Economy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira, cited by Portuguese radio Renascenca, said on June 8, per Reuters. But no details are known.

Meantime, all Americans returning to the US, vaccinated or not, need produce a current covid test result.  There do not appear to be any countries to which this does not apply, although as with everything else in this column the facts change seemingly daily.

That border entry test requirement from the CDC dates to January 12, however, and there has been no motion to change it.

Are you beginning to feel just a little crazy?

Personally, I find myself thinking if maybe I would prefer a vacay in Yellowstone – is Yogi Bear still around?  With the right laughs I just might forget how crazymaking and frustrating trying to plan international travel has come.

By Robert McGarvey

I am still wearing a mask when indoors in public spaces – even though the governor of Arizona, where I live, has issued an executive order that lifted Covid-19 restrictions (such as capacity restraints) on businesses and barred local governments from enforcing most mask mandates.  So now ever louder voices are raised insisting that we have a right not to wear a mask – even before the governor’s order a meeting of the Scottsdale school board dissolved into chaos as mask deniers bellowed out their refusals.

A private business can insist on masks but still there are protests that this robs people of their rights.

There is no such right and it is also simply dumb to insist on such a “right.” We are not out of the pandemic yet.  As “As long as there is some degree of activity throughout the world, there’s always a danger of variants emerging and diminishing somewhat the effectiveness of our vaccines,” said Anthony Fauci in an interview with the Guardian.

That’s why it is crucial that we still wear masks, certainly in indoor public spaces, and practice social distancing.  To fail to take such simple steps is to endanger ourselves and others. It will also slow the recovery of the travel and restaurant sectors.

That is reality.

But I expect the wars to get louder, angrier, more violent.

Especially in the places travelers congregate.

As we begin to travel again we will be on the frontlines of these battles. I am looking forward to travel, but not to these skirmishes.

Even in the skies – where a federal mask mandate remains in place until September – there is increasing anti mask violence. There is no exception for the vaccinated (although many think there is) when it comes to mask wearing on airplanes.

Matters are so heated in the skies that both American and Southwest have halted booze sales in coach, mainly because drunken passengers just are more obstreperous and violent.

Airports, too, are mask required zones – although reports multiply of maskless offenders testing the readiness of authorities to act on the ground.  Busses and trains also have many mask refusers.

But transportation isn’t the worst place when it comes to mask issues.

Matters are getting more perilous at restaurants – places not covered by the federal mask mandates and where many governors have been erasing mask requirements. Even Starbucks and Chipotle have dropped their mask requirements wherever they can, saying only the unvaccinated are required to wear masks.

The problem with that – at least going by what I am hearing – is that it is the vaccinated who are still wearing masks indoors.  The unvaccinated, taking advantage of the reality that there is no easy way to prove vaccination status (I don’t carry my CDC card and know nobody who does, at least when we are not traveling), are stripping their masks and pretending they have gotten the shots.

They of course are threats to the rest of us and to each other – and, sadly, it is they who will prolong the pandemic even though they often are also pandemic deniers who also deny the 600,000 who have died from the disease just in the US.

Employees in retail naturally have rising concerns as they interact with maskless, unvaccinated customers. Will many quit? That’s a good guess.

One sector where I expect the mask wars to only get hotter in restaurants.  For instance, in Mendocino CA, a place called the Fiddleheads Cafe charges diners who wear masks a $5 surcharge. What’s weirder is where this is happening.  Biden got two-thirds of the county’s vote in 2020.  Mendo is, shall we say, a laid back place. It has long had an anarchic streak, however, and I suppose that’s what is playing out at Fiddleheads.

I get it, too. In restaurants in particular masks are a complication (when to wear it, when not?).

I have eaten in a restaurant exactly once this year and that was on an outdoor patio.

I do not expect to eat indoors at a restaurant this summer.  Why? To be a witness to anti mask stupidity?  Besides, I am growing fonder of Uber Eats and good food is getting brought to me.  I eat it in peace at home.

Will I next cross air travel off my list because of the mask defiers? We will see as the summer plays out.

By Robert McGarvey

Used to be, as I planned a trip, I’d look at a weather report for the destination and, in very special cases, I’d consult a crime report for a foreign destination at the US Dept. of State.  That about did it for my information curiosities and, note, I don’t believe I ever consulted crime data for US cities, only for some international cities.

But now as I find myself contemplating travel to several destinations, both domestic and foreign, I suddenly want more data – and that is why I am creating new travel bookmarks that I will share with you because you just may have similar needs.

The big difference in my 2021-2022 travel planning: disease, particularly Covid-19, looms large in my thinking.  There are places I just will not go to because I would not feel safe and, yes, I am dually vaccinated. Plus I had the disease 15 months ago so I have antibodies and probably am resistant to Covid-19.

But resistant to all variants? To new strains?  I don’t know and I am not going to risk a trip to a place where I might run into a Covid variant I have no immunity to.

About 5% of the world’s population presently is fully vaccinated – which means 95% aren’t.  It is going to take at least a couple years to distribute vaccines widely and that is a wildly optimistic estimate.  

That means international travel will slowly rebound and it will be on a destination by destination basis.  

Bookmark this page via Statista that shows Covid infection and death rates by country and offers fine tuned date for the last 7 days.  Places I don’t want to go to right now include Hungary, Peru, and Brazil –  too many cases, too many deaths.

What about India?  It happens not to be on the Statista page I am looking at today and that’s important to understand,  No site I am aware of is comprehensive – all crunch data using their own methods and own feeds. So you have to look at multiple sites.

But any reader of the international news knows India is afire with Covid-19 and the end does not appear near. It is one of the scariest places on the planet right now.

And then there are countries that have released no data.  Tanzania is a case in point and I know I won’t even think about traveling to a place where its Covid infections and deaths are state secrets (or, even worse, just not counted).  Sadly, much of the undeveloped world fits into that category.  They are not hiding information so much as they just don’t know their incidence rate, death count, or when vaccines will be available to their populace.  

Another, useful tool is from the Lowy Institute and it allows us to compare countries in terms of Covid responses.  Search for Portugal and Spain, for instance, and to my eyes their Covid patterns have been quite similar. That’s useful to know especially since many of us are probably weighing options for either/or trips – Jamaica vs Dominican Republic, for instance, and today the differences seem minimal.

Of course the facts are fluid.  Countries that once seemed to have Covid under control now are messes. The Seychelles is a case in point; it had ranked among the most vaccinated countries.  But a majority of the people had gotten China’s Sinopharm vaccine and questions swirl around its efficacy. Now there are lots of active cases in the Seychelles. It’s not a place I would visit.

But fluid facts mean we have to check frequently.  Last week’s reassuring research may take a deadly turn today. Or a country with a bad bout of Covid infections may turn a corner.

Another new twist for me: I plan to check US infection and vaccination stats before traveling to domestic destinations.  Some parts of the country just are stubbornly anti-vax and while I won’t argue with them, I also won’t mingle with them.

That’s why I’ve bookmarked a widget at Becker’s Hospital Review that shows the percentage of a state’s population that has been vaccinated. Mississippi and Alabama bring up the rear but that’s no surprise. They have vaccinated fewer than one in three.

Also useful is a CDC Covid tracker that lets us drill into county specific infection incidence data across the US.  Get specific when looking. Incidence can multiply within a few miles.  

Do I enjoy this data crunching?  I do not.  But I would enjoy being bed-ridden with an encore battle against Covid even less.

But at least, data in view, I am newly confident about traveling.  I just plan to do it as the numbers guide me.