If you have 1001 people in your friend group then meeting up with your friends in a park would qualify as a public event that is now restricted.
Honestly, this sort of large gatherings restriction is just par for the course for epidemics, we just haven't had one that could potentially get this bad in quite a while.
To quote justice Robert H Jackson 'The constitution is not a suicide pact.' In sufficiently bad circumstances (wars, emergencies) governments will tend to enforce first and worry about legalities later.
And in cases like this, where the emergency is biological rather than political in nature, pedantic legalism is going to lose to common sense and pragmatism.
yes, you shouldn't meet anyone. Stores should be all closed except for pharmacies and grocery stores. Restaurants should be closed. Bars should be closed. Offices should be closed. For about 4 weeks. This is the only way we'll avoid hundreds of casualties.
Then we’re going to have hundreds of casualties, man. I dunno, I’m very much on the side of acting quickly and decisively, but “nobody meet anyone or do anything until April” isn’t a real option.
I don't think that's going to happen on the scale you describe, or that you've taken the cost to human life of the economic fallout into account.
But however we slice it, this is going to be bad. One professor from the University of Nebraska estimates it might result in 480,000 deaths in the US. That's a guess, but one made with conservative inputs, not from a harebrained or cranky analyst, and not out of line with the the guesses of others in this field. It's not the end of the world, but it will be quite socially and economically disruptive.
Not that I disagree, but how many stores, restaurants, and bars can afford to close for four weeks? And are they paying their employees during this time?
In Germany we currently have 28,000 beds in ICU (I expect we will try to increase this number ASAP). If (as expected) we have say 10% of the populace infected and 10% of them require intensive care we need 800,000 beds.
What happens to people who don't get proper care when they desperately need it? A lot of them will die.
If the measures result in less simultaneous infections it will save lifes for sure. The more of a delay we can achieve the better.
Also, banning all public events is much more likely to be found unconstitutional.