I think it’s totally fair to criticize the response and suggest it could have been better, I meant it more in terms of the people complaining never seem to entertain the counterfactual of how bad things could have ended up with no/poor fiscal response.
Well said! In hindsight, it is easy to forget that there was a lot of FUD at the time.
These programs were created quickly - some countries had better infrastructure to handle this than the US - but the alternative could have been an underwhelming response to an even larger problem.
