What's the typical age of the students parents?
What would happen if a good 5% of them have more than a runny nose, end up in intensive care and there is a shortage of beds?
Go read up for a bit on what is happening in Italy, then check where your country is and advance 4 weeks. See if you still think 'runny noses' is a good analogy.
Risk = impact times likelihood.
I hear people say that all the time of all sorts of places, but what does that mean? Does Boston have (beyond some baseline) more respiratory aid machines than other places? More virus or respiratory system specialists? Better or more nurses? If they do, why? It doesn't matter if they have a bunch of world class brain surgeons. I'd imagine the area would have roughly the same level of materials and skills in this specific domain that other big developed areas have. I wonder what makes people so sure about the specific capabilities of all the areas they claim to be (much) better than other areas.
shrug. The position you need to defend, the matter under discussion, in this case is: how does that relate to them being better equipped to deal with this specific virus/outbreak/pandemic/situation?
The correct method of action here is to tell professors to stay home and students to stay put. Not to tell students to leave and travel! That's absolute madness.
Most students are going to be traveling home in May anyways - moving this to now, while the risk of students being infected and asymptomatic seems like the lesser of the 2 evils.