COVID-19 variant forces cancellation of August meeting

It's that time of the month - we have to consider whether to hold an AMO membership meeting at headquarters as scheduled on Monday, August 2, or cancel it under COVID conditions to limit the health risk to the men and women we represent.

The unfortunate but unavoidable decision is to cancel this meeting.

The optimism we shared late in June about restoring direct, in-person meetings by late summer as the crisis eased in Florida and nationwide faded fast in July, when a fierce coronavirus variant known as Delta hit nationwide, with substantial infection, hospitalization and death rate increases in four states, including Florida.

By July 19, Florida had reported 73,199 new cases in one week - up 60 percent from the previous week's number, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Florida accounted for 19.4 percent of all new COVID cases nationwide. The largest concentrations were in five counties, including Broward - home to AMO in Dania Beach - and nearby Miami-Dade County to the South.

Hospitalizations traced to the coronavirus statewide in July were up a staggering 146 percent by mid-month, compared to the total recorded in June.

Florida state, county and municipal authorities restrict gatherings of 10 or more when the infection rate exceeds five percent, and this "positivity" rate had hovered between two and three percent until mid-month, when this rate soared statewide to 15.1 percent.

At this point, the rates of new infection were 10.9 percent in Broward, 10.1 percent in Miami-Dade and 12.5 percent in Palm Beach County to Broward's immediate North.

Meanwhile, I have leads to two services that will determine ways to live stream and record monthly official AMO membership meetings to allow seagoing members at home or at work aboard deep-sea, Great Lakes and inland waters vessels to participate in real time or to log on to a secure portion of the AMO website to view a recorded session.

One meeting was anticipated later this week, and the other will be scheduled for a mutually convenient time in mid-August.

As always, our priority is to minimize the health risk to AMO members who travel to Dania Beach for membership meetings or for routine union business from points across the U.S. and overseas - including regions where COVID-19 and its mutant forms continue to rage.

We are focused now on September as our next potential membership meeting opportunity, and we will keep the seagoing AMO membership informed in as thorough and timely a way as possible.

Until then, AMO representatives will visit the deep-sea, Great Lakes and inland waters fleets as often as they can to keep our seagoing membership informed and to listen to what the engineers and deck officers have to say.

And we continue to stand in moral support of AMO members and their families who endure the persistent professional and personal COVID consequences - unduly long rotations, quarantine and restriction to ship as required, missed or canceled family functions, or assisting sons, daughters, brothers or sisters displaced from their jobs or small businesses because of local restrictions.

Paul Doell
July 28, 2021