What role, in this scenario, would you expect the local bankers to play? Their job isn’t as important as that of the civil engineer or the people installing sandbags or the hardware store proprietor.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t help things. They could make affordable loans available to anyone who needs extra cash to stormproof equipment, and promise to be patient with repayment terms for businesses that are affected by the storm.

These aren’t the first, second or third most important things to happen to get ready for the storm, but they are constructive, responsible actions the bankers can take that reflect the depth of the looming crisis.

That is the Fed’s role in trying to contain the economic fallout of coronavirus. It can’t stop supply chains from being disrupted or the freeze-up of certain types of business activity, like travel and tourism. Mr. Powell said so explicitly in his news conference on Tuesday. And reasonable people can disagree on the scale of the economic risk in this situation.

What rate cuts from the Fed can do, however, is try to help prevent those disruptions from spiraling into an economywide recession. The central bank will most likely take other actions, some of them beneath the radar, to try to encourage a steady flow of lending to businesses and consumers in the event of coronavirus disruptions.

There has been a recurring idea ever since the financial crisis that the central banks are the only game in town in economic policy — that they’ve used their interest rate and quantitative easing policies to try to stabilize the economy because political authorities will not.

There are rumblings that the United States and other world governments will consider fiscal stimulus to pair with the easier monetary policy to try to keep major economies afloat. Of course, an effective response by public health authorities can do more than either fiscal or monetary policy alone.