I posted our story on the Community Board as well. My husband is flying into Milan on Wednesday for what is supposed to me a month long stay in Italy. I am scheduled to join him on March 12th. For the first 9 nights he has an apartment in Florence, where there are currently no know cases. He is taking a wine certification class and test there. He has reservation in Reggio Emilia immediately following Florence, but that is in the general area of the outbreak and the train station is currently closed.
After we met up in Milan, we were supposed to be going to Alba in the Piemonte, a few days near Trento and then on to Trieste - all basically in regions that are currently in the news.
We are fortunate in that we go to Italy a couple of times a year - my mother was born in the Veneto and my husband has dual American/Italian citizenship. But, I was/am looking forward to the trip. I am trying to balance the risk in going vs. jumping the gun and cancelling. I am not worried about catching the disease necessarily, but being on vacation where all of this going on does not sound like fun. Plus, from my experience with Italians, including plenty of relatives who live there, they are somewhat over the top and paranoid with health issues anyway. Plus, there is always the chance that we get there, it escalates and we somehow end up in an area that is quarantined.
Since most of the issue in Italy is in the North (north of the Po River), we have also considered heading South. But Southern Italy in March is somewhat depressing as many things are still closed. But I am considering some options.
We will cancel if we need to. However, if it gets bad enough that we can't travel to Italy, something tells me all of this is going to take awhile for things to get back to normal.