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A bus believed to be carrying passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, leaves Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, on Feb. 19. (Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

I have the coronavirus. And it hasn't been that bad for me.

I am in my late 60s, and the sickest I've ever been was when I had bronchitis several years ago. That laid me out for a few days. This has been much easier: no chills, no body aches. I breathe easily, and I don't have a stuffy nose. My chest feels tight, and I have coughing spells. If I were at home with similar symptoms, I probably would have gone to work as usual.

I caught the coronavirus on the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that was quarantined outside Yokohama, Japan, for 14 days, at the end of a 16-day cruise I took with my wife, Jeri. When I left the ship several weeks ago, I felt fine. We had checked our temperatures throughout our quarantine, and Jeri and I had gotten a swab test for the virus. Our temperatures were normal; we'd get the swab results back in 48 hours. But our test results had not arrived when we boarded buses for the airport, where two U.S. government planes waited for us.

As we took off from Tokyo, I had a bit of a cough, but I chalked it up to the dry air in the cabin. I felt pretty tired - but who wouldn't, in our situation? I dozed off.

When I woke up, I had a fever. I made my way to the back of the cargo plane, where Air Force personnel had set up a quarantine area cordoned off with sheets of plastic. They took my temperature. It was over 103 degrees. So I took a seat in the quarantine area and fell asleep again until we touched down in California, at Travis Air Force Base.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came onto the plane and said three of us who had been cordoned off would fly to Omaha (with our spouses, if they wanted to come along). The CDC had a quarantine location at the University of Nebraska's hospital. We arrived on Feb. 17, greeted by a fleet of emergency vehicles and police cars. Officials put me on a stretcher and wheeled me into an ambulance, which made for a very dramatic scene. I easily could have walked myself, despite my exhaustion.

On the hospital campus, I was put in a biocontainment unit. The space was sealed off, with two double-paned windows that looked out on the hallway, and a large, heavy, insulated door. Two cameras watched me at all times; a set of computer monitors was equipped with microphones, so the medical staff and I could communicate with CDC officials at central command down the hall. The room had last been used during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

A doctor and nurses reviewed my case with me and took a bunch of lab tests. They wore heavy-duty hazmat suits sealed with duct tape and equipped with motors that helped with air circulation. It looked like something out of " The Andromeda Strain." When the tests came back a few hours later, I wasn't surprised to learn that I had the coronavirus. Later, the Tokyo swab confirmed the result - I had caught the virus before I left the ship.

It didn't scare me too badly. I knew my number was up. The way I saw it, I was going to be stuck in at least 14 more days of quarantine, even if I didn't have the virus. So many fellow passengers had come down with the illness, including one of my friends, that I'd gotten somewhat used to the idea that I might catch it, too. My wife, however, tested negative and headed to quarantine at a separate facility a few blocks away. After those days being cooped up on the ship together, I think we both relished the alone time; we still could communicate through our phones.

During the first few days, the hospital staff hooked me up to an IV, mostly as a precaution, and used it to administer magnesium and potassium, just to make sure I had plenty of vitamins. Other than that, my treatment consisted of what felt like gallons and gallons of Gatorade - and, when my fever rose above 100 degrees, some ibuprofen. The nurses came to the room every four hours or so, to check my vitals, ask if I needed anything and draw my blood. I got very good at unhooking all the monitors checking my oxygen level, blood pressure and heart rate so I could go to the bathroom or just pace around the room a little, to get my blood flowing. I never quite got the hang of hooking them back up without making a tangled mess. After 10 days, I moved out of biocontainment and into the same facility as Jeri. We had a week of videochatting from our separate quarantines, in neighboring rooms, until she was cleared for release on March 2. She never had the virus, and is now home and back at work at the radio station we run.

As of my most recent test, on Friday, I still have the virus. But by now, I don't require much medical care. The nurses check my temperature twice a day and draw my blood, because I've agreed to participate in a clinical study to try to find a treatment. If I test negative three days in a row, I get to leave.

The time has passed more quickly than I would've expected. With my laptop, I get as much work done as I can. I catch up with friends. I walk around my room, trying to take 1,000 more steps each day. I also watch the news. It's surreal to see everyone panic - news conferences, the stock market's fall, school closures - about a disease I have. The United States has more than 200 confirmed cases, a number that is likely to rise, but it won't help anybody if we all panic. The disease seems much more likely to be fatal for older people and those in poor health. I'm relatively fortunate: I'm still younger than the most at-risk groups, and I'm in good shape, giving me less cause for alarm. Others who contract the virus won't be as lucky. At least seven Diamond Princess passengers have died of the disease, of about 705 passengers who caught it.

Still, coronavirus doesn't have to be a horrible calamity. Based on my experience, I'd recommend that everyone get a good digital thermometer, just as a comfort tool, so they can reassure themselves if their noses start running.

If you told me when I left home in January that I wouldn't be back until March - that, instead, I would be confined for more than a month because I'd catch a novel virus at the center of what could become a pandemic - that would have completely freaked me out. But now that it's happening, I'm just taking it one day at a time.

As told to Post editor Sophia Nguyen.

This article has been updated.

Testing for the coronavirus might have stopped it. Now it's too late.

My 14 days in coronavirus quarantine weren't totally terrible

China barred my dystopian novel about how its system enables epidemics

We can't stop the coronavirus now. But we can be ready for it.

Coronavirus: What you need to read
Updated March 7, 2020
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Perspective | I have the coronavirus. So far, it hasn't been that bad for me.

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I have the coronavirus. And it hasn't been that bad for me. I am in my late 60s, and the sickest I've ever been was when I had bronchitis several years ago. That laid me out for a few days. This has been much easier: no chills, no body aches.

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Works Cited

Coronavirus | Human Coronavirus Types | CDC. (2020). Retrieved 6 March 2020, from

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

Goldman, C. (2020). I have the coronavirus. So far, it hasn’t been that bad for me. Retrieved 6

March 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/28/i-have-

coronavirus-so-far-it-isnt-that-bad/

Adams, J. (2020). Surgeon general: Be cautious, but not afraid of coronavirus. Retrieved 6

March 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/opinions/coronavirus-prepare-not-

panic-opinion-adams/index.html

Callaway, E. (2020). Time to use the p-word? Coronavirus enters dangerous new phase.

Retrieved 6 March 2020, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00551-1

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The spread of the new coronavirus could soon become unstoppable, say scientists who are concerned about a rapid surge in the number and size of outbreaks outside China. Some are even muttering the p-word: pandemic.

In South Korea, more than 900 people have been infected, many in an outbreak in the city of Daegu. And in the past few days, officials in Italy have been scrambling to contain a cluster of more than 300 infections in the country's north that has caused around 10 deaths. Most worryingly, an outbreak in Iran that has killed at least 15 people and has infected an unknown number seems to have already spread the virus to other countries in the Middle East.

The latest flare-ups - which include many cases with no clear link to China, as well as signs that some went undetected for weeks - could mean that containing the virus, which causes a disease called COVID-19, is no longer possible.

"The identification of previously unrecognized infections in large numbers in Iran and Italy in particular, and also South Korea, really shows us that it's likely to be impossible to contain coronavirus," says Ben Cowling, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong.

That could mean that new strategies are needed to curb its spread, scientists say. These include much wider measures outside China that limit social interactions, such as school closures. But researchers need to answer key questions about the outbreak to deploy such measures most effectively. One is whether children transmit the virus as widely as adults do, and whether children are as susceptible to infection.

Pandemic potential?

Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva said on 24 February that the global coronavirus outbreaks do not yet constitute a pandemic - broadly defined as the uncontained spread of an infection in multiple regions. "Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, it has. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet," said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The WHO is sending teams of experts to Italy and Iran to help to control the outbreaks there.

But other scientists say the surge in international cases marks a tipping point in the 2-month-old outbreak. "Whatever WHO says, I think the epidemiological conditions for a pandemic are met," says Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. "Under almost any reasonable definition of pandemic, there's now evidence of it happening."

For example, community spread is likely to occur in the United States, said an official at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in Atlanta, Georgia, in a 25 February press conference. "It's not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen," said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The deaths in Iran are particularly troubling, researchers say. "If the first cases identified are fatal cases, that means infections have probably been going on for a few weeks," says Cowling.

The discovery in the past week of numerous cases in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere that were exported from Iran are worrying, says Andrew Tatem, a geographer at the University of Southampton, UK, whose team has modelled the global spread of the virus. That's because international travel is not common among most Iranians, indicating that there is likely to be a large number of undetected cases in Iran, where it has been circulating for longer. "I think with Iran, we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg because we're only seeing the sickest cases being reported," adds Devi Sridhar, a public-health researcher at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Missed contacts

Whether it's deemed a pandemic or not, Lipsitch and other scientists say that containment measures that seem to have stopped outbreaks from escalating outside of China for more than a month might soon become unfeasible. Those efforts have involved quickly identifying infected people and their close contacts, and isolating them to prevent further transmission. "I don't see that most places have the resources to track down all the cases that they've missed, and the cases that those people infected, and so on," says Lipsitch.

The WHO's decision to hold off describing the global outbreaks as a 'pandemic' was based in part on data showing that infections in China had peaked between 23 January and 2 February and that control measures, such as the partial lockdown of cities including Wuhan, where the virus originated, had worked to prevent new cases.

But Cowling says that such measures are unfeasible on a broader scale. A lockdown is likely to be effective only if implemented for weeks or longer, and there is always the risk that easing a quarantine will seed new outbreaks as infected people fan out from cities. "We've got to think more carefully about what measures might be sustainable in terms of reducing transmission without shutting down cities completely and stopping people from moving," he adds.

The role of children

Such mitigation efforts involve 'social distancing', which reduces the chances, on average, that people will encounter one another. "I think very soon, most of the world is going to switch to various forms of social distancing, which don't depend on knowing who's infectious," says Lipsitch.

For instance, studies of the 1918 influenza pandemic have found that cities that closed public places such as schools, churches and theatres early in the event experienced lower death rates and fewer overall cases compared with cities that implemented such measures later.

But epidemiologists say too little is known about the current outbreak and the coronavirus to effectively deploy social-distancing measures. More studies are needed to determine the best time to deploy them, says Cowling. One of the most common - school closures - would be worth trying only if scientists knew that children played an important part in the transmission of the coronavirus. There are some reports that children are less likely to experience severe illness when infected, but researchers do not know whether they are as susceptible as adults to infection or whether they easily spread the virus to others. "That's one of the urgent questions that we need to answer," says Cowling. Children are important in the spread of both seasonal and pandemic influenza, says Lipsitch, "but in this virus, I think that's an open question".

The best way to determine children's role in transmitting COVID-19, Lipsitch says, would be to analyse closely linked cases, for instance in an individual household, to determine how the virus spread and whether children became infected and passed the virus to others.

Immunity question

If the coronavirus becomes ubiquitous, and circulates widely in communities, researchers will also want to examine how people develop immunity to the virus after becoming infected. Lipsitch says that researchers are assuming that those infected are immune to reinfection for a certain period - but it's not clear how long. Immunity isn't long-lasting following infection with the coronaviruses that cause common colds, he notes, so it might not be long with the new virus. Studies testing antibody levels over time in people who have recovered from the infection could answer that question.

The response to COVID-19 isn't a matter of either containment or mitigation, says David Heymann, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He expects that countries such as Italy and South Korea will try to contain the cases they can and trace their origins, while preparing mitigation measures. "I think that people put way too much emphasis on a pandemic. I think what's important is a basic understanding of outbreaks and how to deal with them," he says.

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Time to use the p-word? Coronavirus enters dangerous new phase

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The spread of the new coronavirus could soon become unstoppable, say scientists who are concerned about a rapid surge in the number and size of outbreaks outside China. Some are even muttering the p-word: pandemic. In South Korea, more than 900 people have been infected, many in an outbreak in the city of Daegu.

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but not afraid of coronavirus (opinion) - cnn

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Surgeon general: Be cautious, but not afraid of coronavirus

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Jerome Adams writes that Americans should take comfort in knowing that we have the best team in the world to protect them from coronavirus