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The best kinds of economic stimulus right now are those that directly fight the human toll from the coronavirus.

Examples include using federal money to build temporary medical facilities, buy ventilators and spur production of millions of virus tests. All of which may not only save lives but also hasten the day when life — and, by extension, economic activity — can return to normal. These measures have the additional benefit of doing what more traditional forms of stimulus do: Provide income and jobs at a time when both are badly needed.

“The most important thing you can do for the economy is slow the virus or show it has a lower bound,” the economist Austan Goolsbee has written. “Pay sick not to work, buy ventilators, test/isolate. Nothing works until you get a handle on this.”