Unless I'm misunderstanding, the US did do something very similar. A lump sum to individuals + huge increase to unemployment insurance + grants to businesses wi

Unless I'm misunderstanding, the US did do something very similar. A lump sum to individuals + huge increase to unemployment insurance + grants to businesses with the stipulation that they don't lay people off. Sometimes I think everyone is so caught up in the narrative that nothing progressive ever happens in the US that they don't stop to celebrate wins like the CARES act, because it was frankly a huge win for the progressive agenda even if temporary. But anyway, we did the expensive part of spending all the money. We just forgot to do the second part of locking people down and getting the virus under control. People were mostly always free to hang out with friends and family and congregate anywhere that wasn't closed. In some places there was better messaging in terms of trying to guilt people into not doing that, and calling it a "lockdown". But I don't know of anywhere in the country that actually had any consequences for individual people that chose to just ignore the guidelines (occasional businesses or organizers of large gatherings got fined, but not individuals).