Two questions:
(1) Do you believe the social distancing policies saves lives? If you don't buy into that, then any discussion of the economic impact really doesn't matter, because if you truly believe there's no way to stop the spread of the virus, then yeah, we should all just go on with life as usual.
(2) Have you seen a study/estimate that isolates the economic cost of just the social distancing measures being implemented? As I said before, you need to isolate the cost of the "hysteria" which I assume you mean to describe the social distancing policies. If we simply went about life business as usual, we'd still be seeing a huge economic cost due to both the loss of life and also the amount of people that get sick and potentially miss weeks of work. So what is the marginal economic cost to cancelling social gatherings of more than 50 people?
Finally, I think you're being hyperbolic describing social distancing as collapsing life as we know it. Yes, not having sports sucks. Yes, it's not as easy for me to do my job at home. Yes, I'd like to go out to bars, restaurants, movies, and travel over the next few weeks. Yes, there's a real economic cost for many that earn income from those events and hopefully we step up and help those who are hurt economically by this. However, avoiding social gathering events and not traveling for a few weeks or even months is not collapsing life as we know it. If the measures were more extreme, for example if we're told nobody could work - that could collapse life as we know it if food, medicine, and essential services are shut down and everyone needs to take care of themselves. But that is not what is happening.
