So what if we're taking all of these drastic measures....but didn't have to? Problem is, we don't know enough about the virus, so all of the present steps can be seen as "better safe than sorry" measures. But, it is quite possible that this virus is no more deadly than the flu.
Right now, the mortality rates everyone is talking about are being calculated as an expression of confirmed cases. However, everyone agrees there are more cases out there than the confirmed. Question is, how many? It is a good bet that we know of everyone (or very close to everyone), who is dying of the virus. These people are in the hospitals. But the big unknown is how many people have symptoms or are asymptomatic, have the disease and have recovered or are recovering. We won't know these numbers until testing for both the virus and antibodies is more widely available. It is perfectly plausible to expect that the actual numbers of infected is far higher than any numbers we've seen in the media...and that would be good news because it would mean the virus is actually not as lethal as we have been fearing it is.
If that turns out to be the case...all of this disruption to our lives will have been for naught and it will turn out to be one hell of an expensive lesson in the value of preparedness. If (like South Korea), our society had been ready to conduct immediate thorough testing, we would have been armed with better knowledge and therefore been able to make better decisions.