Our test results had not arrived before we boarded buses for the airport, where two U.S. government planes waited for us. I made my way to the back of the cargo plane, where the Air Force had set up a quarantine area cordoned off with sheets of plastic. So I took a seat in the quarantine area and fell back asleep 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 that three of us who had been cordoned off would fly to Omaha (with our spouses, if they wanted to come along). 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 were equipped with microphones, so that the medical staff and I could communicate with CDC officials at central command down thehall. 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 test came back a few hours later, I wasn’t surprised to learn that I had the coronavirus. Later, the Tokyo swab confirmed theresult — I had caught the virus even before I left the ship. (Pictured) People wearing protective face masks following an outbreak of the coronavirus make their way in a shopping district on Feb. 29 in Tokyo, Japan. Migrants rescued in the Mediterranean sea disembark from the Sea Watch NGO's ship on Feb. 27 in the port of Messina, Sicily. Life inside a red zone: A protective mask has been put on the face of a statue of Italy's patron saint, St. Francis, in San Fiorano, one of the towns on lockdown, in this picture taken by schoolteacher Marzio Toniolo in San Fiorano, Italy, on Feb. 27. The first group of patients infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus was discharged from Leishenshan Hospital on Feb. 18, according to local media. The ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China, is seen in an illustration released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, on Jan. 29. 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. 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 for coronavirus. 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 24 days because I’d catch a novel virus at the center of what could become a pandemic — that would have completely freaked me out.
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