> Canada is giving every Canadian $2,000 every month.

No they're not, if you worked even one hour, you don't qualify for any of the $2,000. Your income must be zero to qualify for that program.

Because you probably want to eat. And you probably want the electricity and internet to stay on. And you probably want things to continue to be available. All of those require the economy to be functioning.

All those need the supply lines and critical infrastructure to stay functioning, which they can be even if the rest of the "economy" isn't.

What's needed is money for households to pay for them, which is the biggest concern at the moment, but which can technically be solved by giving households a cheque.

Many of the things currently shut down are part of supply lines and critical infrastructure in the long term. Eventually we're gonna have to print books and build cars.

Books and cars are not ideal examples to pick in my opinion, in the case of books because they're easily substituted by electronic media. In the case of cars because all car manufacturing in the US involves imported parts [1][2], so that industry largely depends on other countries' sheltering policies. Also because both are very durable. I have tomes from the 80s, and a friend of mine just sold his van from 1995 haha.

I get the point though, and it's a fair one, but the "eventually" is important to consider here. Eventually when? No one is arguing in favor of permanent sheltering, Implying that the only option is to reactivate the whole economy "soon", knowing that there could be adverse health consequences isn't giving the alternative options, some of which might be better for public well-being, the consideration they deserve.

[1]: https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/02/news/companies/auto-tariffs... [2]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/20...

I'll claim the economy can function just fine with all the bullshit middle management and software engineers working from home. Let the essential people do their essential jobs at lower risk of catching the virus - and with less micromanagement.