As some are aware, I recently spent six months aboard a ship with a group of about 250, which was joined for the last couple of weeks by an additional 250 people.
Before we boarded, COVID (early January 2022) had run rampant and infected all of the ship’s entertainment staff as well as some of the passengers. All who boarded with us were fully vaccinated, PCR tested and mandated to wear masks aboard (KN95 were supplied by the ship and we brought our own supply as well). Almost everyone wore KN95 or N95 masks whenever in public and “social” distancing was enforced. All new crew were vaccinated/tested, then confined for five days and then tested again before joining the staff. COVID infections (in the wild) dropped to nearly zero.
The initial ports we stopped at either enforced masking, bubbles or whatever (or the population was largely masked) and COVID levels stayed close to nil for about two months.
Then the mask mandate aboard the ship was removed and shortly afterwards the distancing mandate and the new General Manager (essentially, the hotel manager) told me the problem was too much testing - they would have less cases if they didn’t test as often - about every two weeks).
Long story made short, by the time the cruise ended, about 75% of the passengers and crew had been infected and spent 5-10 days confined to their cabins. We remained masked with KN95 masks, didn’t eat/drink with others and were in the exception (didn’t catch the virus).
Being sequestered with this size group meant we could use it like a laboratory. Our trivia team of eight, at the beginning of the cruise, vowed to wear masks while together. After the mandate, they tended to eat and drink together. By the end of the cruise, the other six had contracted COVID and continued to wear masks while playing “for the protection of my wife and I”.
At duplicate bridge, only myself (my wife doesn’t play) and one couple who stayed masked weren’t infected (one of them, caught COVID at a birthday party for a bridge player about 20 days from the end of the cruise, presumably taking his mask off to drink or eat cake).
You could watch it spread between people who ate or drank together and so on.
OK, we had gotten second boosters about a month into the cruise (at a CVS during a stop at Miami) and also likely had a great deal of luck (one does have to take one’s mask off to eat - and we ate in the restaurants, not in our room, but despite being “social creatures” I changed all my reservations to eating alone). I also stopped playing bridge for a few weeks while COVID was spreading there.
I don’t enjoy wearing a mask any more than the next guy, but good ones seem to be giving valuable protection. We went to Midtown Manhattan yesterday and walked down Fifth Avenue noticing that exactly zero (other than us) people were masked along the crowded street (almost all were tourists). About 60% of the riders on buses and subways are still masked (frequently associated with demographics: Asians almost always, Russians, almost never, etc.).
Anyhow, we are all free to handle this as we wish, but our micro-experience confirms the macro-experience of the science.
Jeff