Cancelling early is the right thing to do, as much as it sucks. The difference between cancelling proactively and reactively will have a massive impact on the number of deaths.
Places like South Korea, China (outside Hubei), and Singapore have had fairly extreme, proactive policies put in place very early, and their death rates are hovering around 0.5-1%. Places like Italy and Iran that didn't "flatten the curve" enough, are looking at 5-10%. You have to act before it looks bad.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coron...e-f4d3d9cd99ca