I was thinking the same thing. Even though I'd been following this since January and have already been taking it very seriously, Hanks, NBA, and Europe travel ban suddenly make it seem like there's a loud knock at the door.
The U.S. did not suspend all travel from Europe. The WH issues clarifications and corrections shortly after the speech.
First, it's not all of Europe -- 26 of 44 countries in Europe affected. Second, it doesn't include cargo (the president misspoke). Third, it doesn't restrict Americans traveling. Those affected are foreign nationals who have been those 26 countries in the last 14 days.
I agree this is still a bigger deal than Tom Hanks. However, for 99.99% Americans it's the first person they "know" who has coronavirus. So obviously people will see that and it will feel more real to them than a short-term ban on certain foreign nationals who were in 26 countries in the last two weeks.
The restrictions start for foreign nationals who aren't up in the air by Friday night, midnight Eastern time.
It's really hard to process all the information that's available about what's going on; it's changing constantly, there's no consensus on a lot of stuff, the numbers and curves are highly unnatural to think about even if they didn't have massive uncertainty in their variables, and on and on.
As an example, instead let's talk about the lottery. If I hear that a movie star won the lottery, that's pretty surprising. I didn't expect to ever even know the name of someone that wins the lottery. The odds are really, really long and I don't know the names of enough people. And oh, an NBA player won the lottery today too? OK, well maybe this lottery doesn't work the way I was thinking.
