TL;DR I'm staying home until I have reason to believe Japan is in control of Corona virus. I urge anyone else who can work from home to do so. Please avoid crowds in your social life, especially indoors. Corona virus is not that lethal when treatment is available but it doesn't take much for hospitals to be overwhelmed, at which point things become far more dangerous.

There's a huge difference between us all getting this eventually and us all getting this at the same time.

The difference is in the death-rate. Wuhan had a death rate of 5% - "but that's Wuhan", yeah and now it's Lombardy too and it flipped in a matter of days. There was nothing especially bad about Wuhan or Hubei, they didn't have low standards of care. They were just overwhelmed.

I'm reading articles about hospitals in Lombardy that do not have enough ventilators, they are allocating them to the ones with best chances of survival. To be clear, they are picking people to live or die. That is what happens when the number of cases goes over capacity. We need to keep away from that situation. Also, the hospitals have shut down many of their other services to try deal with corona virus. People will suffer and even die due to other unrelated problems because corona is taking up resources.

The mortality rate appears to be < 1% when resources are available and 5% when they're not.

Italy had 21 cases on Feb 21, now it has a national crisis. Ireland has 34 today with a fraction of the population of either Italy or Lombardy.

Everywhere is different but nowhere is special. What happens next comes down to people's behaviour and until you know that your country really has this under control, the responsible thing to do is to play it safe. Wait until credible, independent medical experts are saying it's under control, not politicians. It's critical that we avoid the kind of spike in cases that overwhelms the system. The government has no magic wand, it might be able to build make-shift hospitals but it cannot pull doctors and ventilators out of thin-air. It can make things much worse but it's too late for them to make things much better.

You don't have to panic, you don't have to hoard. You don't need masks and litres of hand-sanitizer if you're staying in. Masks are for sick people, medical staff and people who deal with lots of customers every day and have a decent chance of getting sick and not knowing it yet. If you can, support your local businesses, because either way, this is going to suck economically.

A few links

3 small concert venues in Osaka led to at least 40 infections over a few days
https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan's-live-music-clubs-emerge-as-new-coronavirus-transmission-sites

Italy's situation
https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-italy-doctors-tough-calls-survival/

Flattening the peak
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/09-03-2020/the-three-phases-of-covid-19-and-how-we-can-make-it-manageable/