So our goal this morning is this to inform you about what we know, where we're headed and how to protect yourself and your family is the virus spreads.

We're starting to hear firsthand accounts of people directly affected, including passengers who were quarantine on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were made.

The virus felt like a common cold.

My wife and I did Valentine's Day quarantine on the Diamond Princess together.

I'm feeling fine.

I had a high fever of 103 plus had a dry cough.

If I wasn't contagious, I would've been back at work.

The next day, the Corona virus swept through the ship.

I ended up testing positive relatively early on in the quarantines, and I was removed from the ship and placed in a hospital in downtown Tokyo, where I spent exactly three weeks.

My experience was, thankfully, very mild.

There's no reason to panic.

It's just a sickness, and it will run its course as the virus spreads here in the U.

S.

We brought together a panel of health experts to answer your questions CBS News medical Contributor.

You know her well, Dr Tearing A Rule is back with us.

We're also joined by Michael, Poster home director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

He knows a lot.

And Dr Ben Gupta.

He's a respiratory specialist and global health policy expert.

Welcome, doctors.

I want to start with you.

Michael.

Can we just talk about the ship for a second?

What do you think when you see that it is a cruel human experiment?

Why?

We know the cruise ships facilitate transmission just by the air circulation in the inner cabins and the prince and the Diamond Princess was proof inputting of that and every cruise ship where we have this where you keep people out to sea.

It's just a matter of time before many of them getting ill.

We've got to get him off the ship, get him on land.

You can quarantine him there.

If you want to do that to get him off the ship.

Let's talk about the rest of us who aren't on ships because I'm wondering how scared you should be.

I had always thought many people think if you haven't been to Italy, China, South Korea, Italy or any of the affected countries.

And you haven't come in contact with any of those people that you're You're pretty okay, You know, right now we have pretty much a homogeneous viral reactor around the world.

Means you're not exactly it's not.

It's it's what we knew would happen.

We predicted, ah, a month ago that we would suddenly see activity pick up in the United States.

Today, Seattle has in many cases, as many other than the countries that we've mentioned.

They're having a problem.

And we're gonna have more Seattle's around the country in just the next few days.

Two weeks.

So it's you have to now, just like seasonal influenza.

You have to assume that this is everywhere right now.

And anyone could potentially be infected that way.

Sotero.

In terms of testing, should you only get tested if you have symptoms, should everybody be tested?

What's what?

Support of the parameters here?

Yeah, I think it's an interesting question, and certainly this there was a change this past week, and so basically that change said that anyone can get tested with the permission of their doctor but what we're looking at are people who have the symptoms we know were associated with cove in 19 which is fever, shortness of breath cough in that if you have those symptoms, you should speak to your doctor and let the doctor really get an assessment of your clinical picture what your travel history or exposure history might be, and then make a decision as to whether you should be tested.

And at that point, you know you will be either sent Thio Hospital or, you know, at some point have it done in the clinic when those lab tests become available.

Dr.

Gupta what?

What does the Corona virus actually do to your body?

Any point of entry to the body, the Sinuses, the aural faring.

So gastrointestinal tract.

What it does is it invades.

The lining of those cavities causes local inflammation, and that's when you have symptoms.

That's when you have shortness of breath.

That's when you have cough, runny nose that those and we're also seeing you sometimes have G I symptoms as well.

So that is, that is what's happening at the cellular level.

We always have symptoms.

You always so one of one of the interesting dynamics here is that we're seeing potentially asymptomatic transmission here, where people are not actually demonstrating classic symptoms of cough, shortness of breath fever, but they're able to transmit the disease.

I will say one thing on testing.

One of the struggles we have and everything Terry said is absolutely correct is we don't have We don't know these emergency tests.

They're coming.

They're just cleared by the FDA.

Who knows how they function in the fields?

We have no idea.

We were You know, they're gonna work.

You're saying what we hope they do, and I hope they're better than what was initially deployed for weeks ago to the States.

But who's to say how they're gonna actually function in the field?

Get me highly sensitive enough?

We hope that's the key piece.

That's you know, Michael.

Are we prepared for this to spread across the country?

Well, we're prepared in the sense that we know it's coming, and we know that our health care facilities are going to have a major increase in load.

Well, that's not an issue of debate.

What is a concern is how prepared are we at the health care level, in particular are prepared, and we're not.

We have 45,000 beds in this country for intensive care medicine and anyone given day they're filled.

Can you Can you get this and you get Can you get this?

Not know you have it and recover without being treated?

Yes.

In fact, the vast majority of what we now know is is that in the first day of your infection, where you're actually putting virus, you may not even have symptoms that we just heard from Dr Gupta.

But then we know that over the next 3 to 5 days you have this rest of upper respiratory infection just like the flu type of picture.

For some reason, a large, uh, risk is there for people who are over age 55 60 of underlying health problems for the virus, then getting into the lungs and then causing the additional problem.

The vast majority people will never experience that.

They're just gonna have those first couple of days of respiratory something they can't get through it.

And they won't.

They won't even be treated will be fine.

But they might affect infect others.

Dr.

Gupta, with a question from a viewer in Minnesota.

Lori.

Let's listen to that.

I would like to know how long the virus lives on the various surfaces.

You're such a good question, and I think, what we what we know now.

We have studies that so show it depends on ambient temperature number one and then on the surface.

And so, depending on the temperature, it's a 70 degrees you can see you can see foe mites.

Basically, the virus particles live on surfaces like paper or steal upto up to anywhere from two hours to nine days.

But if it's Ambien, if it's a 60 to 70 degrees longer life span that's hotter or colder, shorter.

Let's man Michael, another viewer asked a question.

Should we be limiting our air travel and gatherings of large numbers of people?

South by Southwest is scheduled for next week.

Right now, it's still on those kind of gathering.

You know, today if you're someone who is over age 55 you're someone who has underlying health problems.

I would say Don't put yourself at risk and being in the large gatherings, younger age populations have seen very little serious illness.

In fact, no one in Korea under age 30 has died in China.

Only 2.1% of the cases were in people 19 years of age or younger.

So again, I think we have to start looking carefully.

One of the areas that were very concerned about a school closings.

Mostly, today, the illness is going to be in adults.

And if it's not in kids, should we be closing schools?

Well, maybe.

Yes.

If they're shutting the virus, they're getting sick.

I mean, getting infected, not sick and shutting the virus.

And we should So, yeah, at this point, uh, Justin scene for people with underlying health problems, though, is a Really I think important.

You sure?

Tara, we want to do a quick reality check on some of the things we've been hearing about the first face mask, which they're getting a lot of attention to.

Face masks actually protect you from the virus?

No.

Right.

And we've been trying to make this point loud and clear.

The surgeon general tried to make this point.

Stop buying face masks.

So the surgical mask that you see everybody walking around with are not able to prevent those viral particles from getting to you.

They can go around.

They're not, You know, if it'd to your face appropriately.

The n 95 respirator masks that the health care professionals use are meant to keep out 95% a very small part.

We'll save them for the healthy should.

Michael, is this more or less contagious in the traditional flu?

You know, this is just like influenza in every way possible, and I weigh I describe it.

It's like trying to control the wind.

You know, we in anyone that would suggest trying to stop a seasonal flu year by trying to control us.

Somehow it would be laughed out of the room.

And it's really about either vaccine for fluid this when we don't have a vaccine.

So we're pretty much at the whims of this kind of respiratory transmission.

Dr.

Gupta, we've been talking about people, but what about pets?

I mean, this came from an animal.

Could go back to a lot of people asking about sense.

This case of the dog in Hong Kong, I believe that tested weakly positive for the virus.

What I can say.

The evidence that exists today suggests no, you cannot ask.

You acquire Corona virus from a pet.

I think we'll wait.

It's a wait and see approach, though, because we just don't know enough information.

But right now, the evidence suggests sanitizing everywhere.

What products should we be using?

Any alcohol based hand room, which, you know, the one that we all talked about his parole, but their number on the market.

And they do help.

And they not only help with this, but we have a lot of the infectious diseases the three of us are worried about.

Besides influenza.

That helps a lot with those two.

Yeah.

What about the liquor cabinet at home?

It is a Friday.

Well, that Washington, in a way, I get the great public health.

No, sir.

John l call that way is not so called in moderation, but Lysol to tear.

All right, So the e.

P.

A.

Just released a five page letter that lists all the potential products that can be used against Cove in 19.

And they've been shown to be effective against viruses that are even harder to kill than Cove in 19.

Lysol is one of those products listed or Clorox.

Exactly.

We know that the Koven 19 viruses surrounded.

It's an envelope virus by a fatty layer that can be broken down easily by these Teravainen and Michael.

Thank you all very much.

Very helpful.