Egg sandwiches and colouring book: Life in US quarantine after cruise

"I honestly don't remember what I ordered for lunch," he said.

A photographer and content creator, Rosmarin has also been posting social media updates since the early days of the outbreak while still on the ship, with the first being highly emotional when he was clearly scared. His posts since then, however - particularly since arriving in Omaha - have been much more staid, as has his outlook, Rosmarin said.

"I kind of think it still hasn't hit me yet," he said. "I think I'm now in a better place, but I think every day when I was on that ship, I thought I was going to just wake up from a nightmare, and it was a reality."

Sharing his experience is helping his mental health, he said.

"My whole life is on social media, and if I can't be creating content, I don't know what to do with myself," he told the BBC. "And it seems that people are really interested in what is going on. … I'm going to tell people what I'm experiencing, and I don't mind sharing that."

Responses have ranged from hate to disbelief to love and support, he said.

"I think there's people who just want to, you know, show hate, and the hate isn't supported by anything factual," he said. "And the people who come up with conspiracy theories - no one's going to be able to convince them that it's not true.

Since he started posting, he said some critics have come around.

"I've seen that the people who were originally … saying maybe that I'm selfish for wanting to get off the ship and just maybe not understanding the situation in full, I've seen a lot of love and support from those people that I didn't see originally."

He said the initial criticism was particularly difficult when he was on board.

"There was so much unknown, and getting those comments made it hard. I think that love and support that I knew was truly heartfelt is what got me through those seven days."

Rosmarin and the others had been informed by the captain of a hantavirus case during a meeting in a lounge "less than 24 hours before we were supposed to disembark the ship", he said. He and others immediately began googling and, "after that point, I basically did not leave my cabin at all".

Rosmarin and the other passengers were marooned on board with "seriously ill" travellers as the cruise ship searched for a port that would accept them.

It was a "really sticky and tough and scary situation", he said. Not only could they not dock and get help for the visibly ill, but there was no way to know who else may have been exposed and infected.

The "turning point", he said, was leaving the vessel.

"It was a wave of emotions ... it brought me to tears," he said. "It felt like we were being so-called 'saved.'"

He said it was intimidating seeing "the way people were dressed up" in "real, full hazmat suit" when leaving the cruise ship and eventually getting on a plane, and he was nervous about the journey to Omaha.

"But once I got into this room, it was the best mental headspace I had been [in] since we had found out that something was wrong."

Now, in addition to his attempts to make the quarantine space more comfortable, he's also going to start writing.

"This is not something I want to forget, because it's a story that I'm going to definitely want to tell my children one day," he said.