MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow sat down with Donald McNeil, science and health reporter for the New York Times, to discuss the harsh and stringent measures “experts” say are necessary to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

According to McNeil, this is only the beginning. The real work of halting the virus begins with removing infected people from their homes and taking them to an isolation camp, even if they don’t feel sick, and show next to no symptoms.

“First of all, you’ve got to get people who are infected out of their homes so that they don’t infect their family members,” McNeil said.

“That means they’re going to have to go, even if they have mild cases, even if they have almost no symptoms, they’re going to have to go someplace where they can get over it together.”

McNeil continued, “We need to find the fevers, we need to test literally millions of people because the first time you get a negative test means nothing. A negative test yields no information. Sometimes it takes three or four days even after you have symptoms for a test to turn up positive.

“There’s a lot more to do even after we go into a lockdown,” he added.

McNeil went on to describe COVID-19 as an “open carry issue,” saying, “Is it safe to walk into a grocery store while openly carrying a fever?

“You’re endangering the over people in the store. You, yourself may not even recognise that you’re sick.

“The fever doesn’t mean that you’re tossed into isolation. The fever means, in China, that you’re taken for a test to see what the cause of your fever is,” McNeil said.

“If you have coronavirus now we’re going to put you in isolation. It’s for your own protection.”

WATCH: