[kopochameleon]

From what I understand the mitigation strategy has moved from "containing the virus" to reducing peak transmission rate — spreading out.

In your scenarios:

1. "keep it contained at the university" would probably look like: thousands of students, staff, businesses get the coronavirus rapidly over the course of the next two months (possibly overwhelming local hospitals), proceed to spread across the other densely populated area universities, Boston, NY, Spring Break, summer internships, travel everywhere happens post-mass-infection phase. Many deaths attributable to the campus being open likely.

2. Single person brings it to where they're from - same effects of a single sick person traveling we're seeing in the US every day (including what brought it to Boston). Unless they're going to another densely populated university or conference, which if more measures like this take place they should not be, the impact will be far less.

At this point they aren't aware of any students who have it, so a likely scenario if nothing is done is that the student population GETS it from the Biogen outbreak in Cambridge, AND spreads it at a much higher rate across the local area, country, world.