It’s really a question about whether this virus poses such a threat to human life that we must — literally— threaten our replicant form of government by this action at the federal. This will set a hell of a precedent so the elected leaders must be damned sure of the facts before doing so ... damned sure because of the price we’ll pay down the road.
/.02
Even though the fatality rate from this is lower than the flu, it is almost three times as contagious. It causes A LOT of people to require health and hospital care. As such, this overwhelms the health care system and makes it harder for other people to get necessary care for other things. That's why you have so many people dying in Italy. There are many who would have survived it if they could have received even minimal treatment. But, they could get treatment, so they died. I fear the same thing will start happening here in the metropolitan areas.