Gail: The economy is certainly crashing, but I have hope that if the government is proactive enough in pumping money in where it’s needed, we’ll get by. For me, pandemic is scarier.

Bret: I get that. The same goes for my mom, who has been extremely disciplined about social distancing. I’m guessing there’s a generational San Andreas Fault running just beneath the surface here between younger people who are terrified their livelihoods will vanish if the lockdown goes on for a long time, versus many older people more worried about life than livelihood.

Gail: Now that I’ve mentioned the government — you’re very wary of any kind of intervention, aren’t you?

Bret: Not at all: I’m not a libertarian! The biggest challenge right now is to keep people and businesses liquid, lest they go bankrupt. Millions of people are being shut out from their jobs. Businesses across the country are being shut out from their customers. All through no fault of their own, and all on account of government orders. So there’s a moral obligation as well as an economic necessity.

Gail: Ah, you remind me a bit of Mitt Romney, circa 2020. Our new moral hero.

Bret: I’ll take that as a compliment so long as I don’t remind you of Mitt Romney, circa 2012.

The challenge is how to do it right. The federal government needs to create some kind of mechanism that can provide low-interest loans to every business that needs one, without political demands or heavy paperwork in order to speed the transmission of funds. Another idea, suggested by a friend who is savvy in these matters, is to use the tax laws to impose a four-month moratorium on interests and rents, since rent and interest are often the biggest expenses for many businesses. Congress could pass a 100 percent tax on rental and income interest during this period to enforce compliance without needing to void contracts.

My own brainstorm (not deeply thought through, so I’ll be grateful for reader comments on this) is to hand every American adult in a lockdown zone a government-backed credit card — call it a CovidCard — so that they can cover their essential expenses now and begin repayment, at zero-interest, starting in 2023, or at a gradually rising rate later on. Obviously there would have to be a fairly strict maximum limit to keep people from bankrupting themselves, but if the government worked with the credit card companies it should be relatively easy to do from a technical standpoint.