How did the trip of a lifetime end with six weeks in federal quarantine?

By the time Jake Rosmarin finally lowered the curtains in his room, most of the satellite trucks outside had disappeared.“I’m in good spirits,” Rosmarin said during a video interview with The Advocate on Monday from inside quarantine. “I feel good. I have no symptoms.”A week into his federally mandated six-week isolation at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Rosmarin still has not tested positive for hantavirus, the rare and potentially deadly virus linked to an outbreak aboard the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius that killed three passengers. So far, blood tests have returned negative results.For days, television cameras had camped near the facility, where Jake Rosmarin, a 29-year-old gay travel influencer from Boston, was living after accidentally becoming the public face of the outbreak. At one point, he realized photographers could potentially zoom directly into his room.“I’m happy to talk to the media,” he said. “But I want it to be on my terms.”Now, a week into his 42-day quarantine, Rosmarin has begun constructing a life inside the room.Related: Travel blogger pleads ‘We’re not just headlines, we’re people’ aboard hantavirus-plagued cruise ship See on Instagram Making a quarantine unit a homeThe sterile medical space has slowly softened into something closer to a temporary studio apartment. Fresh bedsheets and pillows ordered from Amazon have replaced the institutional ones. Printed photographs from the voyage — penguins, islands, sunsets — are on the walls. Packages arrive almost daily. There is a stationary bike in the corner. A refrigerator hums nearby. A smart TV glows late into his “movie nights.”The room is comfortable enough, if surreal in its boundaries. He cannot leave, and only medical staff wearing full personal protective equipment can. “Masks and face shields, not the full bio-hazards suit,” he clarifies, can enter.Rosmarin said federal funds cover the quara