by ThirdRail7
miamicanes wrote:OK, since you're so confident that the slightest hint of an allergen will ruin your trip, here's an experiment. Suppose you were offered a free Amtrak trip of a lifetime, under the following rules:Aaaaaaand once again, you're making up nonsensical fantasy...this time in the form of a game....that still costs money....while failing to answer (for at least the third time) the direct, REAL questions and concerns put in front of you. I'm also glad to see you're so cavalier about the health of people. Statistically, I could probably have sex with someone that I've known for two minutes and not get some sort of disease. I suppose you'd like to try that too?
Route: Miami to New York. New York to Chicago. Chicago to Seattle or Portland (your choice). Seattle/Portland to Sacramento. Sacramento to Chicago. Chicago to Los Angeles. Los Angeles to New Orleans. New Orleans to Chicago. Chicago to DC.
For each segment, you will travel in a "virgin" sleeper car that has never previously been occupied by a pet, in the roomette or bedroom closest to the vestibule towards the dining car. On each segment, there's a 50% chance that a roomette or bedroom at the opposite end of the sleeper car is occupied by a passenger with a cat. You are not allowed to proceed further into your sleeping car to try and investigate or do additional detective work. You have only your own body and the ambient air in both your room and the corridor between your room and the vestibule to the remainder of the train.
After each segment, you have to guess whether or not the cat was present on that segment. At the end of the trip, your score is calculated as follows: segments with undetected cat + (2 x segments with false-positive alleged cat when no cat was present).
If your score is 0 (100% correct, every segment), cats will be banned from Amtrak for the rest of your life... or at least from any train you're personally riding on.
If your score is 1, 2, or 3, the experiment is inconclusive, and has to be repeated with more allergic passengers... but taken as evidence that you're unlikely to reliably notice the presence or absence of a cat in a different sleeper car.
If your score is 4 or higher, it's presumed that you can't reliably tell whether or not there's actually a cat. You're either not as vulnerable and sensitive as you thought, or cats are just one item on a laundry list of allergies or other problems that you're going to encounter anyway. Statistically, they could probably stick a cat in the compartment next to yours, and you probably couldn't tell the difference either way.
Would you feel confident enough to participate, and would others accept you as their allergic representative proxy? Remember... if they choose somebody who's TOO hypersensitive, they're just going to run up the score with too many false positives.
My argument is that you wouldn't, and that in a true double-blind test, you'd be wrong (with at least one false-positive) on at least 4 out of the 9 trips. If you had allergic reactions, they'd be as likely to be due to something else (like local pollen). I would genuinely be shocked if there's ANYBODY who could actually make the trip and correctly determine the presence or absence of the cat on every single segment.
At some point, some level of separation between pets and passengers with allergies is "good enough", and to demand 100% allergen-free purity that doesn't exist ANYPLACE where visitors aren't forced to disrobe and undergo invasive scrubbing first is unreasonable. I happen to think that keeping pets in one sleeper car, assigning passengers with genuine allergies to the other, and maintaining a list of "soft" pet rooms (in non-pet sleeper cars used for rescue purposes that have been subsequently cleaned) to keep those same allergic passengers away from them, is more than good enough to address the problem by keeping ambient allergens down to levels below what you'd encounter from contact with pet owners somewhere like a restaurant or movie theater *anyway*.
Ok. You really have nothing to add and it is clearly visible. Your opinion has been noted. However, I'll make a deal with you. When Amtrak starts ordering new equipment or we start living on the moon or whatever fantasy you'll dream up next, we'll come back to your posts.
PS: Since this is all fantasy at this point, I have a counter scenario. If we engage in your ludicrous test and I'm one of the people that has an actual reaction, would you mind if I sneezed on you with out covering my nose/mouth? Would you mind if I wiped my my nose on your clothes when I run out of tissues? I mean, I don't see why you would mind, but I'm courteous enough to ask first.
I want my road foreman!