This sucks, but I think it's very prudent until we know more. Outside of China, things are still very early days, we are nowhere near fully knowing what we're dealing with. Heck, it's really only been known in China for a few months.
Stateside, there are some worrying indications all the cancellations are sparking a bit of panic. I have no mouthpiece to do so myself, but I would love to remind the general public that these events are being canceled precisely because they are so optional and, for the most part, entertainment oriented. For example, the NCAA basketball tournament seems like a great big deal (it's my personal favorite sporting event of the year), but it's in fact completely and totally expendable in terms of the basic functioning of society. I'm afraid some are (perhaps subconsciously) making some very irrational and potentially dangerous "what next?!?" leaps.
The name of the game is to keep the number of available hospital beds as high as possible for as long as possible. That represents our collective insurance policy until we know more.
The illness is highly concerning from multiple angles, but for me the biggest concern right now is the uncertainty. People who have dedicated their lives to this stuff are consitently saying "we're still learning", "we just don't know", etc, but you have so many knuckle heads running around clinging to the first apparently disarming statistic they can get their hands on telling everyone it's no worse (or even not as bad) as the flu or even the common cold or what have you. We don't know, give the experts who can time to find out.