What distinguishes the United States from other countries “is not the nature of the bailouts. It’s the underlying structure,” said Carol Graham, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies safety nets. “People are more vulnerable from the get-go, even in normal times. You throw a shock like this at the system? It’s about as bad as it could get.”

American workers face extra anxiety over medical costs. The United States, unlike most of the developed world, does not guarantee health care.

While countries like Denmark have famously robust safety nets, even the Conservative government in Britain has, after years of austerity, adopted a similar approach. “For the first time in our history, the government is going to step in and pay people’s wages,” the British chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, said last week. The plan, which is still being developed, will pay up to about $2,900 a month to workers who have lost hours but are not laid off.

[Update: Boris Johnson, U.K. Prime Minister, has the coronavirus.]

The center-right government in Germany will spend more than $40 billion to help small businesses cover basic needs to stay afloat during the crisis. That is in addition to a program aimed at larger companies, called “kurzarbeit,” or “short-time working,” that covers lost wages for employees who are sent home, to avoid laying them off. Economists expect about two million workers to receive aid under the program, more than during the financial crisis a decade ago.