Post-vaccine Amtrak travel

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It appears that we will have a COVID-19 vaccine in a few months although it will probably not be widely available for some time. A significant section of the population has indicated that they have no interest in receiving the vaccine.

So I am wondering how the availability of the vaccine will affect Amtrak travel (and perhaps travel in general). In a few months will people who have received the vaccine start traveling by Amtrak in large numbers? Will the likelihood that vaccinated passengers will be traveling on the same train with unvaccinated passengers discourage travel?

I listened to a conference call yesterday from an organization that is planning a national conference in-person in Arizona in May 2021. They expressed great confidence that the meeting will happen. I think they are way overconfident and I expect the meeting to be canceled or postponed.
 
I too think they're way overconfident--and I've been looking at the relevant factors pretty closely. I was lead organizer for a large in-person annual event originally scheduled to launch in Nov. 2020. I doubt enough folks will want to attend such a thing before 2022.

And on the Amtrak front, once a vaccine is widely available I hope that proof of vaccination will be REQUIRED for ALL passengers and crew.
 
I personally don't think a vaccine will be widely available till at least June, so I personally think the tourist economy is going to remain depressed through next summer, even if people stop getting sick. Which is iffy depending on how effective the vaccine is. Given that the spread rate of COVID is similar to Diphtheria and the Pfizer trail is up to 90% effective, 85% of the population would have to get vaccinated to stop COVID from spreading widely...in theory. Considering how much we learn about COVID each week, it might end up being a different story a week from now.
 
I'd love to be able to plan to see my family back east, but vaccine or no, I am going to have to wait until people just stop getting sick (and the fam agrees that it's OK) before I can even begin to make plans. So I am looking at the remote possibility of planning for Feb 2022, but not actually making any plans at this time. And yes, if the vaccine is deemed safe and effective, I will almost certainly be getting it at some point.

I'm just a wait-and-see, better-safe-than-sorry kind of person.
 
I'm president of an international organization that has already made the decision that our July 2021 biennial conference will be all online. Given the current situation in the US and internationally, I don't expect live conferences till late 2021 at the earliest. Regarding vaccines, I will be taking a watch-and-wait approach--particularly if you are in the 60+ age group, we know that vaccines are often less effective due to our weaker immune responses. So for me, I would want to be able to compare the various vaccine candidates with that in mind.
 
... 85% of the population would have to get vaccinated to stop COVID from spreading widely..
While I read that 50% would not get vaccinated at all anyway. At 73, never had a flu shot and don't plan to get injected by anything from the "Government"! Can't wait to see the new Civil War when the Government mandates Biden Injections!
 
While I read that 50% would not get vaccinated at all anyway. At 73, never had a flu shot and don't plan to get injected by anything from the "Government"! Can't wait to see the new Civil War when the Government mandates Biden Injections!
Tell it to the 10,000,000 Infected so far, and 250,000 Dead going to 400,000 by Jan. if Science Deniers keep spreading Lies about Science and disregarding Common Sense Safety Guidelines..( see the Polio Epidemic from the 1950s for reference)
 
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At 73, never had a flu shot and don't plan to get injected by anything from the "Government"!

Wut? I wasn't aware that the flu vaccine came "from the Government!" I always thought the flu vaccine was manufactured by private concerns and marketed by them. The line up of manufacturers for the 2020 season follows (the numbers are the number of lots produced for distribution):
Afluria Quadrivalent
Seqirus Pty. Ltd.
70
Fluad
Seqirus, Inc.
1
Fluad Quadrivalent
Seqirus, Inc.
19
Fluarix Quadrivalent
GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals
47
Flublok Quadrivalent
Protein Sciences Corporation
72
Flucelvax Quadrivalent
Seqirus, Inc.
65
FluLaval Quadrivalent
ID Biomedical Corporation of Quebec
41
FluMist Quadrivalent
MedImmune, LLC
15
Fluzone High Dose Quadrivalent
Sanofi Pasteur, Inc
44
Fluzone Quadrivalent
Sanofi Pasteur, Inc.
37

Usually people who are skeptical of "government" prefer private market solutions; so I don't understand the position taken at all.
 
I'm older than you are and have been getting flu shots since my late teens. I was one of the first kids in my hometown to get a polio shot and I got it as soon as it became available. As for a new Civil War, let me remind how the last one ended for the side that started the rebellion and lost.

If you don't want to get vaccinated then please stay away from the rest of us. I will trust the science supporting the safety of the vaccines until reputable authorities say differently.

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it. Neil deGrasse Tyson
 
I have gotten the flu shot every year since I can remember--but one. That year for whatever reason I did not get the shot, and ended up with a nasty case of the flu. I only missed one day of work--the only day I have missed school or work due to illness in the last 46 years--but probably could have stayed home a few more days. It took awhile to fully recover from it. That made me a firm believer in getting the shot and have ever since.
 
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I think it will be some time before I have the pre-Covi confidence. That doesnt mean we won't travel...just that we will do it safely. Availability of vaccine is only one variable in traveling.
 
While I read that 50% would not get vaccinated at all anyway. At 73, never had a flu shot and don't plan to get injected by anything from the "Government"! Can't wait to see the new Civil War when the Government mandates Biden Injections!
I am also 73 and will be the first in line, with hopefully my wife, when it's distributed. I have multiple Chronic Health conditions and my wife has been fighting Stage 4 Cancer for years. I don't have Complete trust in the Government after being screwed multiple times after Vietnam. This year I got the 65+ Flu Shot. I'm getting my second Shingles Shot this week after 2 bouts with it. I trust the Profit Orientated Drug Companies more than the Government. How many cases of Polio, Measles, Mumps, etc, etc. have you seen lately? 🤔 😷
 
I am also 73 and will be the first in line, with hopefully my wife, when it's distributed. I have multiple Chronic Health conditions and my wife has been fighting Stage 4 Cancer for years. I don't have Complete trust in the Government after being screwed multiple times after Vietnam. This year I got the 65+ Flu Shot. I'm getting my second Shingles Shot this week after 2 bouts with it. I trust the Profit Orientated Drug Companies more than the Government. How many cases of Polio, Measles, Mumps, etc, etc. have you seen lately? 🤔 😷
Unfortunately, measles seem to be making a comeback due to anti-vaxers. :(

Measles cases in 2019
  • From January 1 to December 31, 2019, 1,282* individual cases of measles were confirmed in 31 states.
  • This is the greatest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1992. The majority of cases were among people who were not vaccinated against measles. Measles is more likely to spread and cause outbreaks in U.S. communities where groups of people are unvaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
 
I have worked within the field of immunology and am also aware of the peculiarities of my own immune system. I have great antibody response to vaccines and actual infection, but my cellular immunity (as detected to a certain degree by skin tests) isn't as responsive as my humoral (antibody) system. As soon as I can get the Covid19 vaccine, I'm getting it and will travel by train back east (hopefully via The Sunset Limited to New Orleans and then the City of New Orleans to Chicago and the whatever to Ohio) within a month of the last vaccine injection. This assumes that my travel partner/sister and our other sister in Ohio can/will get vaccinated which I have little doubt about. I want to do the travel soon after I get the vaccine because if the music groups (bands, orchestras, quartets) I'm in re-start, I want to be in Albuquerque (where I live) for that. I am assuming those groups will have to wait longer to re-start just because they are groups, sort of large groups, that blow air around.
 
While I read that 50% would not get vaccinated at all anyway. At 73, never had a flu shot and don't plan to get injected by anything from the "Government"! Can't wait to see the new Civil War when the Government mandates Biden Injections!
The Pfizer Covid19 vaccine was not part of Operation Warp Speed on the R&D side, though they will get US government money for vaccine supply. It could be said that "they" are talking out of both sides of "their" mouth. Here is the relevant paragraph from the article posted below:

"Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to rush a vaccine to market, has promised Pfizer $1.95 billion to deliver 100 million doses to the federal government, which will be given to Americans free of charge. But Dr. Jansen sought to distance the company from Operation Warp Speed and presidential politics, noting that the company — unlike the other vaccine front-runners — did not take any federal money to help pay for research and development.

“We were never part of the Warp Speed,” she said on Sunday. “We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.” On Monday, a spokeswoman for Pfizer clarified that the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html
 
Thinking like this has allowed the virus to surge out of control here, some estimates now are 400,000 dead by the end of the year. It’s not a Biden or Trump issue it’s a life/death/economic issue facing us all as Americans.

That being said I also don’t get the flu shot and would have serious concerns being one of the first to get the vaccine.

The greed/corruption in pharmaceuticals along with the expedited process/political interference and national desperation lead to that old saying, “what could possibly go wrong”.

So in a lot of ways I’m right with you. I like our Nation have a lot of soul searching to do. We have to come together and treat the virus as the enemy not each other.


While I read that 50% would not get vaccinated at all anyway. At 73, never had a flu shot and don't plan to get injected by anything from the "Government"! Can't wait to see the new Civil War when the Government mandates Biden Injections!
 
Unfortunately, measles seem to be making a comeback due to anti-vaxers. :(



https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Well, this has personal interest for me. Back when I was 6 years old or so, I participated in one of the clinical trials for the first measles vaccine. They must have given me the placebo, because I ended up getting a case of the measles. The vaccine trial was a bit traumatic, too, as it involved not just needle sticks for the vaccine, but also needle sticks for blood draws and such. As a six-year old, a needle stick was not appreciated or tolerated very well. I hate to think that all that effort on my part, and the risk I took to participate is being pissed away by idiots who don't understand the first thing about medical science and who don't want to understand it.
 
This is not a left vs. right issue this is something that should unify us as Americans, and as citizens of the world. There is a good alternative history book 1632 by Eric Flint that actually summarizes this issue really well. The premise of the book is that a town from 2000s West Virginia (Grantville, WV based on Mannington, WV) is sucked back in a time warp to the year 1632 in the middle of Germany alongside religious wars, plagues, and the inquisition and how they react. One thing the "Hard Liners" (Think small minded) say is that they should not be sharing their limited amount of medicine and resources on the refugees flocking into the one modern city in a war torn region because they aren't American. Where as the more ideological (think liberal) characters who are in the government believe in science and think rationally. One thing they talk about is this and I'll try to paraphrase it.

"The plague doesn't come up to you Jimmy and say "I can't go in here this is a good 'murican" and go somewhere else."

My point is the virus doesn't care if you are an American, a Russian, a German, a Nigerian, a Mexican, or a Korean if you are in its path you are going to get the virus. In the America I grew up in we may have had different opinions on things but we always cared about our neighbor, and our world. That is gone now I'm afraid but I'm hopeful it will return. I don't wear a mask to protect me, I wear it to protect the millions of immunocompromised people living in this world. I happen to live with two people who I love and care about who are in that category. I wear it to protect them. America used to be a country that was concerned about others, we fought wars to free other countries from tyrannical regimes, and helped with elections across the world. Somewhere in the last few years we have shifted to being a self centered population that doesn't care about the common good of the common man or the world as a whole.

I understand that people have the freedom to chose to do with their body what they want even if the rest of us disagree with it in regards to the vaccine, or wearing a mask. But I want those people to remember this. Where your freedom starts, someone else's freedom ends. Right now my grandmother who survived World War II in Berlin, fought in the German resistance can't leave home because of the virus. I want you to remember that someone who fought so that others could be free, can't be free because of your freedom to not wear a mask, or not getting a vaccine. We are all in this together regardless of our politics. So lets take care of this. We have a vaccine in the works (two promising ones in the USA from what I've read), and several other countries are close or have them (Russia). And honestly we shouldn't be working on this as a nation state but as the entire world. After all the only thing that doesn't discriminate is the virus.

It may be a living creature because technically cells are a living creature but it's not an intelligent one. It is not capable of thoughts, opinions, or the ability to move on it's own. And in my opinion science denial is one of the biggest viruses around and it's just as large of a pandemic as Covid-19. It just took Covid-19 to bring it to the forefront of peoples minds.

As far as the original post. I see that leisure travel will recover at a faster rate than business travel as teleworking, and zoom conferences have become common place. We are used to that now so I don't see where that's going to truly recover, and when it does it will be at a far lower rate. So the national network trains will do better than the corridors.

Be safe everybody, wear a mask (properly please), get vaccinated when it comes out, and be kind to your fellow man. We will get thru this.
 
Tell it to the 10,000,000 Infected so far, and 250,000 Dead going to 400,000 by Jan. if Science Deniers keep spreading Lies about Science and disregarding Common Sense Safety Guidelines..( see the Polio Epidemic from the 1950s for reference)

This is not like other vaccines that have been carefully tested over a long period of time. This vaccine has been rushed into production. How can we know how many people will experience serious adverse effects until it has been tested by a large number of people over a period of time? In 1976 the Ford Administration pushed a Swine Flu vaccine that nearly killed my neighbor. He survived but was paralyzed and unable to talk. It took two years to recover. Google the topic of this 1976 vaccine and you will find that quite a few people were adversely affected. Presumably the health authorities assured the public that it was safe, so why should anyone rush to take a Covid vaccine that has had no time to be carefully monitored?
 
This is not a left vs. right issue this is something that should unify us as Americans, and as citizens of the world. There is a good alternative history book 1632 by Eric Flint that actually summarizes this issue really well. The premise of the book is that a town from 2000s West Virginia (Grantville, WV based on Mannington, WV) is sucked back in a time warp to the year 1632 in the middle of Germany alongside religious wars, plagues, and the inquisition and how they react. One thing the "Hard Liners" (Think small minded) say is that they should not be sharing their limited amount of medicine and resources on the refugees flocking into the one modern city in a war torn region because they aren't American. Where as the more ideological (think liberal) characters who are in the government believe in science and think rationally. One thing they talk about is this and I'll try to paraphrase it.

"The plague doesn't come up to you Jimmy and say "I can't go in here this is a good 'murican" and go somewhere else."

My point is the virus doesn't care if you are an American, a Russian, a German, a Nigerian, a Mexican, or a Korean if you are in its path you are going to get the virus. In the America I grew up in we may have had different opinions on things but we always cared about our neighbor, and our world. That is gone now I'm afraid but I'm hopeful it will return. I don't wear a mask to protect me, I wear it to protect the millions of immunocompromised people living in this world. I happen to live with two people who I love and care about who are in that category. I wear it to protect them. America used to be a country that was concerned about others, we fought wars to free other countries from tyrannical regimes, and helped with elections across the world. Somewhere in the last few years we have shifted to being a self centered population that doesn't care about the common good of the common man or the world as a whole.

I understand that people have the freedom to chose to do with their body what they want even if the rest of us disagree with it in regards to the vaccine, or wearing a mask. But I want those people to remember this. Where your freedom starts, someone else's freedom ends. Right now my grandmother who survived World War II in Berlin, fought in the German resistance can't leave home because of the virus. I want you to remember that someone who fought so that others could be free, can't be free because of your freedom to not wear a mask, or not getting a vaccine. We are all in this together regardless of our politics. So lets take care of this. We have a vaccine in the works (two promising ones in the USA from what I've read), and several other countries are close or have them (Russia). And honestly we shouldn't be working on this as a nation state but as the entire world. After all the only thing that doesn't discriminate is the virus.

It may be a living creature because technically cells are a living creature but it's not an intelligent one. It is not capable of thoughts, opinions, or the ability to move on it's own. And in my opinion science denial is one of the biggest viruses around and it's just as large of a pandemic as Covid-19. It just took Covid-19 to bring it to the forefront of peoples minds.

As far as the original post. I see that leisure travel will recover at a faster rate than business travel as teleworking, and zoom conferences have become common place. We are used to that now so I don't see where that's going to truly recover, and when it does it will be at a far lower rate. So the national network trains will do better than the corridors.

Be safe everybody, wear a mask (properly please), get vaccinated when it comes out, and be kind to your fellow man. We will get thru this.

Thanks for your opinion. I and quite a few others prefer to wait to see how this vaccine affects those who take it in the first months.
 
Well, this has personal interest for me. Back when I was 6 years old or so, I participated in one of the clinical trials for the first measles vaccine. They must have given me the placebo, because I ended up getting a case of the measles. The vaccine trial was a bit traumatic, too, as it involved not just needle sticks for the vaccine, but also needle sticks for blood draws and such. As a six-year old, a needle stick was not appreciated or tolerated very well. I hate to think that all that effort on my part, and the risk I took to participate is being pissed away by idiots who don't understand the first thing about medical science and who don't want to understand it.

I think many who are wary of the Covid vaccine ARE interested in science but do not want to take a potentially grave risk on a rushed vaccine. Every vaccine involves a degree of risk but this one is brand new with no time to see medium to long term effects. Those who are worried about taking it are not ignorant or selfish for being concerned.
 
No matter how many assurances the government and medical community give us, not everyone is going to get vaccinated. In addition unvaccinated people are going to continue to cross the border illegally as they are doing in Europe and elsewhere in the world. The vaccine, even if safe and effective, will not be foolproof. From my way of thinking, this means that the masks as well as the social distancing will continue for a long time, hopefully not for years to come. We need a cure
 
Wut? I wasn't aware that the flu vaccine came "from the Government!" I always thought the flu vaccine was manufactured by private concerns and marketed by them. The line up of manufacturers for the 2020 season follows (the numbers are the number of lots produced for distribution):
Afluria Quadrivalent
Seqirus Pty. Ltd.
70
Fluad
Seqirus, Inc.
1
Fluad Quadrivalent
Seqirus, Inc.
19
Fluarix Quadrivalent
GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals
47
Flublok Quadrivalent
Protein Sciences Corporation
72
Flucelvax Quadrivalent
Seqirus, Inc.
65
FluLaval Quadrivalent
ID Biomedical Corporation of Quebec
41
FluMist Quadrivalent
MedImmune, LLC
15
Fluzone High Dose Quadrivalent
Sanofi Pasteur, Inc
44
Fluzone Quadrivalent
Sanofi Pasteur, Inc.
37

Usually people who are skeptical of "government" prefer private market solutions; so I don't understand the position taken at all.
I read that the US government had allocated $9 billion for the development of the vaccine. Didn't I read too that the military will be assisting in the distribution of the vaccine? It sounds like intense government involvement to me,
 
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