Hype or doomsday?

I haven't posted my personal thoughts on the coronavirus until now because I'm not sure I have anything worthwhile to say:

i) The larger danger may be an artificial crisis by businesses and gov't officials panicking and overreacting. If we had drugstores and supermarkets close. Or if Internet providers send their employees home. Or if gov't officials attempt citywide lockdowns. 

ii) Another scenario is that the virus will be severe in terms of infection rates and mortality rates. Ironically, there's a sense in which we shouldn't panic in a worst-case situation because there's little we can do to mitigate the damage. No point getting hysterical about something you have no control over. 

According to (i), we have an avoidable catastrophe. Not the pandemic itself, but how people make it worse, maybe far worse, than it naturally is. 

According to (ii), we have an unavoidable disaster, in which case I'm fatalistic. 

One doomsday scenario is if the power company and public water system don't have enough healthy employees to keep things running.

And, of course, there's a cascade effect. It's not just about a supermarket having enough healthy employees for a skeleton staff at reduced hours. Supermarkets have to be constantly restocked by truckers.

If supermarkets close, they will be broken into and looted. Hospitals will be looted.

As Peter has often remarked, industrial, hitech societies are quite fragile compared to rural "backward" Third World countries. And cities are especially vulnerable to a cascade effect. Moreover, cities supply the suburbs.

At the moment, nations like Italy may be the canary in the coal mine. How Italy fares may presage what happens in the USA.