2 US grad students who were on the Diamond Princess cruise share harrowing details and photos from their quarantine and 'zombie movie' evacuation

Fehrenbacher, 29, and Christoph, 25, were taking a break from their graduate studies at Tianjin Foreign Studies University in Tianjin, China. Fehrenbacher grew up in Washington, Virginia, and Colorado, and Christoph is from the Chicago area. They went on the cruise with two friends who declined to be named in this story.

"We were definitely the four youngest people on the cruise," Christoph told Business Insider. "But it was good. We had a blast."

The announcer asked anyone who had experienced fever, chills, or cough to report to the ship's medical center. Fehrenbacher debated whether or not to go.

"Anybody that might have symptoms of the virus are all going to the exact same place at the exact same time, and that's where I didn't want to be," Fehrenbacher told his alma mater, Grand Canyon University.

After a phone call with his dad, he decided to go down for the medical screening.

"Here I am in my sweats and my surgical mask and I'm walking into gloom," Fehrenbacher said. "I'm shivering. I'm in an elevator next to people in evening gowns and tuxedos going to dinner and shows. I couldn't help of thinking of a scene from 'Titanic' where you have Jack Rose running around panicking and 95% of everyone else is staring at him like he is the crazy one."

"You could hear that cough that's deep down in your lungs. I empathized with her and felt so bad," Fehrenbacher said. But he said he also recalled thinking to himself, "OK, I don't want to be in this room."

Fehrenbacher said he felt "super anxious" and stayed up until 3 a.m. waiting for the knock on his door.

He fell asleep, then woke back up when the staff came around at 4 a.m. Given his recent fever, they took a swab from him and sent it off for testing.

The ship started out with 3,711 people on board, both passengers and crew. That number would dwindle in the coming weeks as hundreds more people tested positive for the virus.

Dr. Norio Ohmagari, director of Japan's Disease Control and Prevention Center, told CNN that the quarantine "may not have been perfect" and that "scientifically speaking," crew members should have been isolated just like passengers.

"We suspected some of the cruise staff may have already been infected, but ... they had to operate the cruise ship itself, they had to see the passengers, they had to deliver the meals," Ohmagari added. "So that may have caused some close contact with the cruise ship workers and also the passengers."

On February 7, the ship's captain and CNN correspondents confirmed that all the tests taken on the ship had been processed.

"It was like, ok well if I'm still here tomorrow, then I'm negative," Fehrenbacher said.

Nobody came to his door to take him off the ship.

Japan's Ministry of Health, which oversaw the quarantine, did not to Business Insider's request for comment in time for publication.

Princess Cruises has promised to refund "full cruise fare for all guests including air travel, hotel, ground transportation, pre-paid shore excursions, gratuities and other items."

"We tried to enjoy it as much as we could," Christoph said.

The cruise line offered passengers free alcohol, so the two said they ordered it regularly for the first few days.

After talking with other passengers, though, Fehrenbacher and Christoph decided to cut back on drinking to keep their immune systems in working order.

"It just feels good to see familiar faces and hear those voices," Fehrenbacher said at the time. "When I'm feeling good about the whole thing, it's super encouraging."

But some nights he went to bed "just thinking about the worst-case scenario of everything," he said, adding that the quarantine was "a rollercoaster of ups and downs."

They shared a balcony with the two other friends traveling with them. The group spent nights playing Cards Against Humanity and other games.

Fehrenbacher said he also spent a lot of time watching TV and laying in the sun. He talked to his dad about three to five times each day.

He said he started boiling the silverware that came wrapped in a napkin with each meal.

As Fehrenbacher sat in front of his laptop, the CBC reporter introduced him with an update on the cruise ship outbreak: 67 new people had tested positive.

It was the first time Fehrenbacher had heard the number.

"It was just like a hammer in the face," he said. "I felt like an absolute buffoon in that moment."

Before that, Fehrenbacher had been championing the quarantine efforts of Princess Cruises and the Japanese government. He'd even written an op-ed about it for USA Today.

"They were not being entirely forthcoming anymore. And that was a very disappointing experience," he said.

After the US quarantine, Fehrenbacher planned to go to his parents' home in Canada.

He said he and Cristoph were both hesitant about leaving their rooms and sharing a plane with the other passengers they'd been avoiding for two weeks.

Fehrenbacher said some people tried to hide their coughs, though many had a lung-deep, rasping cough that indicates more than a scratchy throat.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

After a few hours, a woman stood up at the front of the bus, called for attention, and explained the proper protocols for wearing an N95 respirator mask, Fehrenbacher said.

After she sat down, Fehrenbacher said he heard someone behind him mutter "mask nazi" under their breath.

"You could tell that the flip — between being a passenger who's catered to on a luxury cruise line, versus an evacuee being rescued in the middle of an outbreak — that switch hadn't flipped for quite a few people," Fehrenbacher said.

"Some people were very, very critical, very, very frustrated, extremely upset with the circumstances of the bus ride," Christoph added.

He said the man was first told that he would have to wait, so he sat down. But as more time passed, the man went back to the driver and insisted. Other people on the bus began scolding the driver, Fehrenbacher said.

Eventually, workers in hazmat suits took the man off the bus to use a bathroom. Others did the same.

The process seemed disorganized, Fehrenbacher said — workers in hazmat suits handed passports to people at the front of the bus and let passengers pass them in a line to their owners at the back. He worried about all the hands touching each passport.

The Washington Post reported that CDC officials had argued against the decision to have sick and healthy people fly on the same plane. The sick individuals' tests had come back positive after they had already begun leaving the cruise ship and boarding their buses.

The CDC lost that argument on the tarmac, the Post reported, then insisted they be left out of the news release announcing that 14 infected Americans had shared a plane with more than 300 others.

That argument is likely the reason the buses were held up for so long.

Officials had told the evacuees that nobody who tested positive would be on the flight, he said.

"At the very least, I think they should have told us when we were on the tarmac," Fehrenbacher said. "These people who were spending 20 minutes with their masks off, eating sandwiches and having snacks — they might have been a little bit more careful."

Officials also provided snacks, but Fehrenbacher said he didn't eat on the flight for fear of exposing himself to the virus.

Christoph said he also slept for most of the flight, and hoped his glasses would provide some eye protection.

Fehrenbacher said he later realized that a woman sitting behind him had also tested positive for the virus: When the plane landed, he said, a CDC official told her she would be continuing to Omaha, Nebraska — where the CDC sent the infected Diamond Princess evacuees.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment about the woman's case in time for publication.

"You hear 'welcome home' 100-plus times in a situation like that, it's very emotional. It's very heartwarming," he said. "It kind of makes it a little more clear how dramatic the situation that you've just gone through actually is."

"I used probably half a bar of soap trying to just feel clean again," he said, adding, "I was still concerned that, ok, let's hope that I don't have this virus. Because every time I had to clear my lungs I was worried that I had it."

"They go into an apartment, they come out a couple minutes later, and they would kind of help one another take the gown off, throw it in the trash, take the gloves off, put hand sanitizer on, and then put new gloves on, put another gown on, and take the trash can and walk to the next apartment," he said.

They read him a script that said he still needed to monitor his symptoms, then moved on.

"It took a few minutes to process. My dad was the first person that I called," Fehrenbacher said.

He added, "the times that I've cried throughout most of the quarantine were times when I didn't really ever expect it to happen."

People walk around the lawns, play soccer, sunbathe, and do calisthenics, he said. Everybody wears face masks and tries to stay 6 feet apart.

Fehrenbacher said he has about 300 pages of his last book left. He still spends lots of time with Christoph.

"We went on a late-night walk, which is quite the experience because the whole yard is lit by these giant floodlights," he said. "There's at least three or four cars and trucks with US marshals sitting in them to keep watch around the perimeter."

He said he and Christoph go into the laundry rooms, which are often filled with extra supplies, to see what kind of loot they can find. Sometimes there are bottles of lotion or shampoo, cases of soda, or boxes of cookies.

"The best thing that I've gotten at this point was a bottle of hand sanitizer," Fehrenbacher said.

"The last 20-some days quarantined on a ship and then here, I guess it's just kind of a free meal and a free bed," he added.

Fehrenbacher said he's excited to be with his family again, but nervous about what the interaction with customs will be like. He's preparing himself for the chance that Canadian officials will ask him to complete another 14 days of isolation.

"If there's one thing I'm learning in this quarantine, it's that you just have to be ok with the absolute unexpected happening and just having to roll with the punches," he said.

Isaac Scher contributed reporting.

• Read more:
• How the 'failed' quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship started with 10 coronavirus cases and ended with more than 700
• As the coronavirus outbreak worsens outside of China, hopes of containing it are diminishing
• Photos show what it's like to travel around the world by train, bus, boat, and plane in the age of coronavirus
• Mapping the coronavirus outbreak: Where in the world — and the US — the disease has spread