We won't really know until much more analysis is done, but there's a ton of reasons to suspect an over-reaction now. See some of the daily update links here:
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
The basic problem is confused data e.g. 100,000 deaths expected from what? Given how often COVID-19 seems to give people a little push over an edge they were very close to anyway, it's extremely hard to even define what a C19 death means, let alone do so in a way that's comparable across countries.
Meanwhile healthcare systems have been scaling up a lot but actually the projected collapse isn't close to being here even in Italy, where many hospitals are still mostly empty outside the core hotspots (leading to a question of whether it's not ventilator capacity that's needed but patient transfer capacity). And where hospitals are under pressure it may be partly due to huge numbers of staff isolating themselves as they tested positive, sometimes with no symptoms (i.e. could be false positives?). Hospitals can be overwhelmed even by normal admissions if 30% of the staff are gone due to self-isolation.
I don't consider it ethical to do that. Quite the contrary.
Interestingly, there seems to be a collective delusion developing about when the action could of/should of been taken. Late January...early February...really? That long?
Also, the state of quarantine is happening at a global level, not just the US.
I was answering the poster's question with my opinion. You do not have to like it.
Me neither - my intention was to pose a neutrally-worded question, which I think I did.
Non-sequitur.
The push for suppressing entire populations for months and years are coming from those that want to dis-empower these populations the rest of the time.
If by "normal" you mean the neo-liberal/neo-marxist agenda "progressing"... that is increasingly unlikely