For half a month, she has been making short videos for her company's TikTok account, in which she shares her feelings and cheers people on.
"I know that I have my whole life ahead of me, and I'm not going to let this virus get in the way of that," she said.
As for future plans, she mentioned finishing her teaching credential, exploring more of China and staying in Wuhan longer.
"I know I will be in Wuhan for a couple [of] years at least! It's a lovely city; I just need to brush up on my Chinese," she said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after the first flight carried around 210 U.S. citizens from Hubei to the March Air Reserve Base in California on Jan 29, four more planes have brought hundreds of people to four Air Force bases in California, Texas and Nebraska.
All passengers face a 14-day mandatory quarantine period, during which they are housed at the bases and closely monitored by medical staff.
The U.S. State Department said on its website that the "evacuation flights" are available for private U.S. citizens "on a reimbursable basis".
For U.S. citizens not in Wuhan, some newly enacted travel policies in response to the outbreak also have created some concerns.
According to the Level 4 travel advisory for China that the U.S. State Department issued Feb 3, American citizens who are currently in China should "attempt to depart by commercial means", which have been limited following a travel ban related to the coronavirus.
"I was finally able to get a ticket back to the U.S. after making tens of phone calls nonstop for two days," said a woman who gave only her first name, Lisa, a San Francisco Bay Area resident who flew back to the Northern California city Thursday from the Northeast China city of Changchun, in Jilin province, where she spent the Lunar New Year holiday with her family.
Lisa's original plan was to fly back Feb 10 for work, but her carrier – Air China – notified her that the flight was canceled after the U.S. announced it would deny entry of foreign nationals who were on the Chinese mainland two weeks prior to entering the U.S.
Three U.S. airlines – Delta, United and American – all have temporarily halted flights between the two countries. Chinese airlines also are significantly reducing the number of flights.
According to Ctrip, China's major flight and hotel booking platform, only about a half-dozen airlines are offering flights from the Chinese mainland to the U.S. in February, with barely any nonstop flights.
Lisa said that her plane was only half full, with all passengers wearing masks. Upon their arrival in the U.S., they went through temperature checks and were greeted by officials distributing messages in English and Mandarin, asking them to conduct a 14-day monitored self-quarantine.
The number of U.S. airports that receive flights from China has dropped to 11, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. All have implemented enhanced screening procedures and the capacity to quarantine passengers.
"It does not make a lot of sense to restrict travel to and from areas which are not seriously affected, so long as proper health-screening measures are adopted," said Robert Lewis, co-founder of the Beijing-based think tank CGGT and tech startup docQbot.
Lewis, who has worked in China as an international lawyer for almost three decades, has frequently flown back and forth between China and the U.S. However, he had to put off a trip to China on Jan 31 because of canceled flights.
"Having lived in Beijing at the time of the SARS panic in 2002-2003, I would not personally have concerns about returning to Beijing now under the current conditions," said Lewis, who added that he was "quite shocked" that U.S. airlines canceled all flights between the two countries.
He was, however, concerned about not being able to fly to the U.S. once he returned to China and was even more concerned about the possible mandatory quarantine process.
"Under current policies in the U.S., I am concerned that I may not even be allowed to self-quarantine at my home in Utah upon my return to the U.S. It is a big risk — not a big risk of contracting the virus, but of having my personal freedoms curtailed due to what appear to be overly aggressive quarantine measures adopted by the U.S. government," said Lewis, who is currently working remotely in Utah and looking into flying back to Beijing once "conditions are stabilizing".
Mario Cavolo, an American author and speaker based in Shenyang, wrote in a recent LinkedIn post: "The world should be applauding China's unprecedented, broad, aggressive response. I am on the ground here in China watching with my own eyes and it is quite incredible by any measure, not to mention an enormous economic sacrifice."
Cavolo criticized what he called "hateful, vicious attacks on the Chinese government" and restrictive measures taken by other countries, including the U.S., that are "isolating" China.
Comparing the current coronavirus outbreak with the 2009 H1N1 outbreak — a pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths globally and more than 12,000 deaths in the U.S., as the CDC estimated, Cavolo noted that no country issued travel bans to and from the US, and the Americans did not get "xenophobically attacked and targeted by anti-American sentiments like the Chinese are experiencing now".
Foreigners in China are "most likely safer and more peaceful and more stable by simply staying put than by leaving right now", he wrote, adding that in China, "almost everyone is staying home and dutifully isolating themselves with awareness".
