It seems we (the country) are at a stage of response where its easier or safer to not do things, than to figure out whether something can be adjusted to make it relatively low risk.
Probably also because only limited testing is available.
But it does remind of me of certain managers who wanted to do 'big events' without having an incident command structure in place. Fortunately I wasn't there when they did it.
I think they have to go with the 'better safe than sorry' response, because they don't really know how bad it is or what it will do. This is buying time for them to figure it out and for healthcare to be able to handle it better.