I think the people poo-poo'ing this are thinking that the "leading Harvard expert" might be full of it.
That's fine, but you can't ignore the fact this thing is far more contagious than the flu, and spreads like wildfire in any situation that's not 100% locked down.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is no way for us to stop this with essentially no border and millions of people a day traveling internationally. It WILL hit us here - probably hard. And the thing that makes it even harder to stop is that it can be passed when the carrier is asymptomatic. WAY harder than the flu..and it has a much higher "R" factor (number of secondary people infected per carrier) than the flu.
Face it..this is pretty serious, regardless of whether you believe any of the so-called experts. It's just basic common sense from what we've seen of this virus to-date. And the mortality rate is CONSERVATIVELY 20X+ that of the flu - and that's if you believe China (I don't) that it's only ~2% mortality. It's likely far, far more than that.