We should eliminate rent/mortgage for the duration, not for 60 days, but "as long as it lasts plus two months" and give everyone who needs it a paycheck to cover expenses for the same amount of time.

I agree in principle, but it's a pretty complicated situation with no obvious solution.

For one thing, banks can't just continue on without revenue from mortgages for the foreseeable future. It would lead to a credit crunch worse than what we saw in 2008. If we went that route we'd have to see huge loans to the banks. That wouldn't be a bad option, but people have very little appetite for "bailing out the banks", especially when the price tag would be measured in the hundreds of billions if not trillions.

Likewise, I'm not sure people like my landlords could survive if I stopped paying rent. My landlords are a retired couple who live modestly, and I'm pretty sure the rent money from the people in our little rent property is something they count on for their retirement. Rental property owners would need bailing out, and given that a lot of rental properties are owned by wealthy people and/or corporations, there's little political appetite to bail them out either.

There's also the option of giving cash payments/tax credits to people to cover rent or mortgage, but that's another can of worms. By nature such a bailout would be regressive, in that the rich people with higher rents/mortgages would get more assistance than those who pay less for rent and mortgage.

I actually support all three ideas, but they're politically impossible. The right won't give handouts and the left refuse to do anything that looks like it might help rich people.

I think a lot of people who want to end the shutdown don't understand the importance of slowing down

This, a million times over.

The way I see it, this country was well behind the curve in terms of pandemic preparedness. We're trying to do in a matter of months what we should have been doing over the last several years. Things like testing/tracing capability, health care surge capacity, and PPE supply chain management all needed to be reworked and this shutdown is buying time for responsible governor's to do that work without being under tremendous pressure from a huge surge.