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On MSC European cruises, all guests receive antigen tests when they board and if they test positive, they are given an additional PCR test. Non-vaccinated guests boarding its cruises in Britain must also present proof of a PCR test taken 48 hours before they embark.

The simulated voyages must be between two to seven days in length with at least one overnight stay, according to C.D.C. guidelines. They are required to test embarkation and disembarkation procedures, medical evacuations, onboard activities such as meal service and entertainment, re

Florida officials have said they will not exempt the cruise lines. If cruise companies decide to sail with a mix of vaccinated and non-vaccinated passengers, they will have to carry out simulation cruises with volunteers to test health and safety protocols.

Passengers are also tested mid-cruise after three or four days and are required to wear contact tracing bracelets so that they can be tracked down if someone they have come into contact with tests positive.

Cruise ships, she said, “have always been a cesspool for viruses, like planes, and I think there were risks at the height of the pandemic, but now with vaccines and health and safety measures I think they are ready to go again.”

As of Thursday, the Guardian had identified five ships in the Americas that were unable to unload nearly 6,000 passengers. At least three other ships were having trouble off the coast of Australia, including one which sought urgent medical attention for an outbreak of respiratory illness. Two more ships were trying to get passengers to ports in Italy.

Holland America said this week it had dispatched support in the form of another cruise ship carrying 611 extra staff, supplies and coronavirus test kits to meet up with the Zaandam, and that the cruise line is looking for other alternative locations to disembark passengers.

Passengers who spoke with the Guardian describe being locked down in the cabins, with three daily meals left on the floor outside their doors. Meanwhile the number of people reporting influenza-like symptoms has almost tripled this week: 56 passengers and 89 crew members, passengers say the ship’s captain has told them. Four elderly passengers reportedly required oxygen.

The fast-moving nature of the virus has added to the confusion – when many passengers left for vacations in early March there were no cases of Covid-19 in South America, so they thought it would be safe to travel.

cases of cruise ships being turned away from ports as a result of coronavirus fears began as early as January and escalated in February, with passengers being quarantined on the Emerald Princess in Japan on 3 February.

“There is a level of greed on the part of these companies,” he said. “They want to make every penny – and they make money when people are on the ships.”Cruise ships are drawing increasing government scrutiny for not doing enough to protect their passengers during this pandemic.

Despite Donald Trump’s repeated vows to bail out the cruise ship industry, money for cruise companies was not a part of the $500bn in aid for large employers included in stimulus bill passed by Congress on Wednesday.

Meanwhile a report from the US Centers for Disease Control this week laid the blame on cruise ships for spreading the virus in the crucial early weeks of the outbreak, linking hundreds of cases to the Diamond Princess and Grand Princess.

“The remote location of the travelers at sea means that they may need to rely on the medical capabilities and supplies available onboard the ship for extended periods of time” — resources that are severely limited and expensive.

he glossy marketing of denial makes it easier for passengers to overlook the costs for human safety and well-being

Cruise ships generate high levels of air pollution, and some companies have been fined for illegally dumping gray water, oil-contaminated waste and plastic into the ocean — and also for falsifying records afterward.

it was the staff, working so diligently to keep everyone happy and in compliance with quarantine orders, who were especially likely to be affected; they performed the high-risk labor of transporting infected passengers and providing translation for government officials, but were also last in line to receive medical attention

Cruises are an almost perfect metaphor for a country and a presidential administration that works so hard to stand on the deck of a stewing metal pot of disease and assure us that everything is perfect — but which relies on the fundamental denial of the poop in the pool

Many Americans, even the most comfortable, live one medical disaster away from financial ruin; school closures are cutting off families’ access to child care and students’ access to meals. Yet Trump initially criticized a House relief bill that would offer free coronavirus testing, paid sick and family leave and food assistance — measures that would protect those most vulnerable to the disease.

spring breakers and other tourists have still been buying tickets, refusing to defer their much-awaited getaways. As one prospective passenger told the Daily Beast, “At least I wouldn’t have to cook.”

Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

vessel is expected to be delivered to the US-based firm in two months.

50m longer than the Eiffel Tower is high.

6,000 passengers.

About 2,000 crew members will cater for their needs.

When her father began to feel sick, he resisted getting tested. “He didn’t think that he could have it,” Kristen said, “because he wasn’t 100 percent confident that it was a thing.”

Many vehicles on the road today already implement some level of automation technology, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration breaks down into various levels.

NHTSA said it has an “active investigation” of Autopilot. “NHTSA generally does not comment on matters related to open investigations,” NHTSA spokeswoman Veronica Morales said in a statement. In 2021, the agency adopted a rule requiring carmakers such as Tesla to report crashes involving their driver-assistance systems.Beyond the data collection, though, there are few clear legal limitations on how this type of advanced driver-assistance technology should operate and what capabilities it should have.

“Tesla has decided to take these much greater risks with the technology because they have this sense that it’s like, ‘Well, you can figure it out. You can determine for yourself what’s safe’ — without recognizing that other road users don’t have that same choice,” former NHTSA administrator Steven Cliff said in an interview.“If you’re a pedestrian, [if] you’re another vehicle on the road,” he added, “do you know that you’re unwittingly an object of an experiment that’s happening?”

Banner researched Tesla for years before buying a Model 3 in 2018, his wife, Kim, told federal investigators. Around the time of his purchase, Tesla’s website featured a video showing a Tesla navigating the curvy roads and intersections of California while a driver sits in the front seat, hands hovering beneath the wheel.The video, recorded in 2016, is still on the site today.“The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons,” the video says. “He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

Musk made a similar assertion about a more sophisticated form of Autopilot called Full Self-Driving on an earnings call in July. “Now, I know I’m the boy who cried FSD,” he said. “But man, I think we’ll be better than human by the end of this year.”

While the video concerned Full Self-Driving, which operates on surface streets, the plaintiffs in the Banner case argue Tesla’s “marketing does not always distinguish between these systems.”

Not only is the marketing misleading, plaintiffs in several cases argue, the company gives drivers a long leash when deciding when and how to use the technology. Though Autopilot is supposed to be enabled in limited situations, it sometimes works on roads it’s not designed for. It also allows drivers to go short periods without touching the wheel and to set cruising speeds well above posted speed limits.

Identifying semi-trucks is a particular deficiency that engineers have struggled to solve since Banner’s death, according to a former Autopilot employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Tesla complicated the matter in 2021 when it eliminated radar sensors from its cars, The Post previously reported, making vehicles such as semi-trucks appear two-dimensional and harder to parse.

“If a system turns on, then at least some users will conclude it must be intended to work there,” Koopman said. “Because they think if it wasn’t intended to work there, it wouldn’t turn on.”Andrew Maynard, a professor of advanced technology transitions at Arizona State University, said customers probably just trust the technology.“Most people just don’t have the time or ability to fully understand the intricacies of it, so at the end they trust the company to protect them,” he said.

The Obama administration had sought to persuade the Russians to correct the violation while the missile was still in the test phase. Instead, the Russians have moved ahead with the system, deploying a fully operational unit.

Saudi Arabia was among the 11 nations that issued the communiqué on Tuesday, and Mr. Kerry insisted that the Saudis and Americans were now “on the same page” regarding Syria.

Setting a precise date for Geneva peace talks has been a recurrent problem. The United States, Russia and the United Nations initially first sought to organize one months ago

“The window of opportunity is still there, but the window of opportunity is narrowing,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday. “We need to act quickly before it closes completely.”

At the beginning of any disease outbreak, public health experts painstakingly trace the contacts of every person who becomes sick. The experts build a family tree of possible illness, with branches that include anyone who might have shaken hands with, or been sneezed on by an infected person

with confirmed infections approaching 80,000 people, contact tracing on a case-by-case basis could soon be impractical.

“What we find is that this virus is going to be very difficult to contain,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease researcher at Columbia University and co-author of the study posted Monday. “Personally, I don’t think we can do it.”

The word ‘pandemic’ invokes fear, but it describes how widespread an outbreak may be, not its deadliness.

“I think we should assume that this virus is very soon going to be spreading in communities here, if it isn’t already, and despite aggressive actions, we should be putting more efforts to mitigate impacts,”

The virus would be easier to contain if people who are contagious were obviously so, as was the case with SARS, which started an outbreak that burned itself out in 2003. But the new virus appears to spread among people who in some cases are not noticeably sick.

among the more than 600 passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship who have tested positive, about half had no obvious symptoms.

If the coronavirus becomes a true pandemic, a large proportion of the human population — a third, a half, two-thirds even — could become infected

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch estimates that 40 to 70 percent of the human population could potentially be infected by the virus if it becomes pandemic. Not all of those people would get sick

The novel coronavirus may be particularly suited for stealth community transmission since its symptoms can be indistinguishable from those of a cold or flu, and testing capabilities are still being ramped up.

Experts estimate it takes about a week for the number of people infected in a given community to double. Based on that, it would likely take several weeks for a new infection cluster to be picked up by a local health department

By mid-March, he estimated, officials should know if there is community transmission and a true pandemic.

“I want to be clear that we are not seeing community spread here in the United States yet,” she said Friday. “But it’s very possible, even likely, that may eventually happen.”

“If a large number of countries are unsuccessful in preventing sustained multi-generation transmissions, then we could witness the next pandemic.”

A pandemic is a line in the sand, and every expert has a slightly different definition for when an outbreak crosses it. Generally, it means that there are self-sustaining lines of infection in multiple countries and continents — where the family tree of possible illness begins to encompass the entire population.

I think we’re not in as dire straits as we might be, and that’s because everyone is pulling together internationally.”

Public health experts are devising strategies on how to conserve N95 respirators, specialized masks that are in a limited supply amid surging demand.

“Extrapolating from some of the numbers we’ve seen on the impact to the health care system in China, it means we’ll have to surge fast.”

"The digital health pass is an electronic version of the index card that you get when you get your full immunization," explains Tim Paydos, a vice president of government industry solutions at IBM. Given that paper records can be misplaced, or forged, there's a benefit to the digital pass. He says it's a free, voluntary and convenient way to share your COVID-19 vaccination or test status.

He says there are several ways employers, event venues, cruise lines, or airlines could help ensure a safe environment, and still give people choices. "It may be acceptable to have people show either proof of vaccination, proof of a negative test, or proof of a recent episode with COVID," Parasidis says. "There are a lot of different options."

Traditionally, presidential elections provide clarity on how a party sees its political future.

Today, with both presidential candidates content to make the race a referendum on Mr. Trump, questions about him have overshadowed the debates raging within both parties over how to govern a country in the midst of a national crisis.

If Mr. Biden wins, progressive Democrats are preparing to break their election-season truce, laying plans to push for liberals in key government posts, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as Treasury secretary. If Mr. Biden loses, progressives will argue that he failed to embrace a liberal enough platform.

This year’s election seems likely to plunge both Republicans and Democrats into a period of disarray no matter who wins the White House.

“Nothing focuses the mind like a big election loss,” said Mr. Flake, who was one of many Republicans to retire in 2018 and who has endorsed Mr. Biden for president. “The bigger the better when it comes to the president.”

Rather than engage women or voters of color, the president expanded Republican margins with white, working-class voters, said Mr. Fleischer, a former press secretary for Mr. Bush who has come to embrace Mr. Trump after leaving his ballot blank in 2016.

Mr. Hawley argued that Republicans should embrace the populist energy of their voters by pursuing the breakup of big technology companies, voicing skepticism of free trade and making colleges more accountable for their high tuition costs.“If the party is going to have a future, it’s got to become the party of working people,” he said.

Democrats face their own divides over whether to use the moment of national crisis to push for far-reaching structural changes on issues like health care, economic inequality and climate change.

“I didn’t know at the time how much I really disagreed with Bush on some things,” Mr. Wurst said. “Look at what Mr. Trump has gotten done. I don’t like his tone, but sometimes you have to look at results.”

In Texas, a rising number of young, liberal politicians believe they can finally turn the conservative state blue by embracing a progressive platform.

No matter who wins, Democrats will be split between younger progressives and a moderate old guard. And a Republican Party redefined in President Trump’s image will start weighing where it goes next.

both parties appear destined for an ideological wilderness in the months ahead as each tries to sort out its identities and priorities.

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he questions facing partisans on both sides are sweeping, and remain largely unresolved despite more than a year of a tumultuous presidential campaign.

The party is headed toward a reckoning, whatever happens in November, because you still have large segments of the party establishment that are not at all reconciled with the president’s victory in 2016,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who is frequently mentioned as a possible 2024 contender. “These people are still very powerful in the Republican Party, and I think we’ll have a real fight for the future.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus and an ally of Senator Bernie Sanders, said those plans were the “floor, not the ceiling” of what the liberal wing of the party plans to demand should Mr. Biden win.

“Both sides have been content to make this election about a personality,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist and an author of a book about the conservative populist coalition that fueled Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016. “Therefore, we’ve not had a lot of light shown on the ideological realignment that’s occurred in the country.”

Mr. Hawley argued that Republicans should embrace the populist energy of their voters by pursuing the breakup of big technology companies, voicing skepticism of free trade and making colleges more accountable for their high tuition costs.

Texas may provide a preview of these debates. As Democrats continue to make gains in the state and as the coronavirus rages there, moderate Republicans have tried to steer the state closer to the center while conservatives have tried to push Texas further right.

Yet in an increasingly polarized country, that center may be shifting.

the pandemic increasingly looks like one of the defining events of our time. The best-case scenarios are now out of reach

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if a vaccine remains out of reach for years, the long-term changes could be truly profound. Any industry that depends on close human contact would be at risk.

Large swaths of the cruise-ship and theme-park industries might go away. So could many movie theaters and minor-league baseball teams. The long-predicted demise of the traditional department store would finally come to pass. Thousands of restaurants would be wiped out

In this scenario, a vaccine will arrive sometime in 2021. Until then, the world will endure waves of sickness, death and uncertainty.

is a loss of the gains we’ve made over the past 20 years in the access for first-generation and minority students.”

“It’s only when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett likes to say, “that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”

Local newspapers will be one casualty. They were already struggling

Traditional department stores are another example. In recent years, they have lost significant business to online retailers and quietly lost even more to big-box stores

If they do, they will create spillover victims — the hundreds of malls that rely on department stores for rent and foot traffic

enrollment and tuition revenue are likely to drop sharply, creating existential crises for many less selective private colleges and smaller public universities.

“The biggest danger that we face as a sector

It could easily be the most important global experience since World War II and the Great Depression

for many white-collar workers, the remote-work experiment shows no sign of ending — a trend that could depress the commercial real-estate market and business travel long after a vaccine is available.

Consolidation, in turn, tends to increase income and wealth inequality, in part because the largest companies are run by highly paid executives, typically based in major metro areas, and the companies’ stock is disproportionately owned by the affluent.

“My basic fear,” Heather Boushey, a leading progressive economist, said, “is that it leads to a rule by the oligarchs.”

“Even Republicans — younger Republicans — have recognized that the center of gravity is shifting on the relationship between the state and the market.” The virus, he added, “will only accelerate that.”

That agenda is shaping up to have two defining features

The first is reducing inequality — through higher taxes on the rich, greater scrutiny of big companies, new efforts to reduce racial injustice and more investments and programs for the middle class and poor, including health care, education and paid leave

The second is acting on climate change, which could cause even more global misery than the coronavirus. “Climate change cannot be solved by the private sector,”

while Mr. Obama’s team had only a couple of months to plan for taking office amid a national crisis, Mr. Biden’s team would have almost a year. “There is a whole vision that I think is ready,” Ms. Boushey added. “And there is a lot more runway.”

If there is a single lesson of the current era of American politics, it’s that change can happen more quickly than we imagined.

“They got cases,” she noted, “but fewer deaths.”

work on other nonlethal viruses showed that people tend to get less sick with lower doses and more sick with higher doses. A study published in late May involving hamsters, masks and SARS-CoV-2 found those given coverings had milder cases than those who did not get them.

In an article published this month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Gandhi noted that in some outbreaks early in the pandemic in which most people did not wear masks, 15 percent of the infected were asymptomatic. But later on, when people began wearing masks, the rate of asymptomatic people was 40 to 45 percent.

She said the evidence points to masks not just protecting others — as U.S. health officials emphasize — but protecting the wearer as well.

Earlier on Friday, the North’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement denouncing a proposal by the United States that the U.N. Security Council place fresh sanctions on North Korea following several ballistic and other missile tests since September 2021.

Separately on Wednesday, the Biden administration blacklisted five North Korean officials active in Russia and China who Washington said were responsible for procuring goods for North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile-related programs.

North Korea resumed ​testing missiles in September​ after a six-month hiatus. It has since conducted at least seven missile tests, including the one on Friday. The tests involved a long-range strategic cruise missile, ballistic missiles rolled out of mountain tunnels and a mini submarine-launched ballistic missile.

All the tests violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that banned North Korea from developing or testing ballistic missile technologies or technologies used to make and deliver nuclear weapons. But the North’s Foreign Ministry insisted on Friday that it was exercising “its right to self-defense” and that the missile tests were “part of its efforts for modernizing its national defense capability.”

But ​the country has resumed missile tests since meetings between its leader, Kim Jong-un, and Donald J. Trump, then president, ended without an agreement on how to roll back the North’s nuclear weapons program or when to lift sanctions.

If the U.S. adopts such a confrontational stance, the D.P.R.K. will be forced to take stronger and certain reaction to it.”

“The U.S. is intentionally escalating the situation even with the activation of independent sanctions, not content with referring the D.P.R.K.’s just activity to the U.N. Security Council,”

Those tests indicated that the North was developing more sophisticated ways of delivering nuclear and other warheads to South Korea, Japan and American bases there on its shorter-range missiles, according to defense analysts.

Some of the missiles it has tested since 2019 have used solid fuel and have made midair maneuvers, making them harder to intercept, the analysts said.

But since the Kim-Trump diplomacy collapsed, North Korea has warned that it no longer felt bound by its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests. It has since unveiled its largest-ever, still-untested ICBM during ​a ​military parade and exhibition.

On Friday, North Korea reiterated that its missile tests “did not target any specific country or force and it did not do any harm to the security of neighboring countries.”

But in the test on Tuesday, the North’s hypersonic missile traversed the country from west to east and then veered to the northeast, flying over the waters between the Russian Far East and Japan toward the Pacific,

The missile hit a target 621 miles away, the North said. ​And as the missile hurtled out of North Korea at up to 10 times the speed of sound, aviation regulators briefly halted flights out of some airports on the U.S. West Coast as a precaution.

Washington has repeatedly urged North Korea to return to talks, but the country has said it would not until it was convinced that the United States would remove its “hostile” policy, including sanctions.

“Willful sanctions do not help resolve the Korean Peninsula issue, but only worsen the confrontational mood,

“There is now greater urgency for the U.S. to step up assistance to the moderate opposition forces who can lead Syria after Assad.”