Disagree. There’s no guarantee earlier government action would have eliminated the need to shut down businesses or ban gatherings. I do think more should be done to support workers. $1200 single payments are not even peanuts.
We know for a fact that some countries didn't need to shut down. Again, South Korea and Taiwan are examples. They are also denser than the United States, and less wealthy, and closer to the source of the virus outbreak. Yet they handled it much better.
By contrast, the United States is less dense than those countries, significantly farther away from China, the richest country in the world, and had months to prepare.
I find it unconvincing that the United States could not have rolled out broad testing and tracing if it had started back in January when the virus was known to be a threat. Even if you're right and all it did was buy time before an inevitable shutdown, shortening the shutdown would have hugely helped to limit the economic damage.
