Quarantines and other public health measures are as American as apple pie:
There's quarantines and there's wholesale exertion of control...one has its place and the other sets even more bad precedence.
I have "been guilty" of using comparisons to the Flu for perspective...As I type this, there's less than 600K reported cases of corona infection world-wide...it would have to multiply by 50 to even approach the number of Flu cases in America during an average year...yes, it will kill folks at a higher rate than the Flu but would have to be left totally unfettered to approach the deaths an average Flu season produces....yet we go into wholesale panic and beg the government to enslave us "for our own good"...