The 2008-ish recession saw the Fed pay banks to keep money off the market. No wonder that economic activity remained sluggish.
For the 2020 recession, you had the Fed drop reserve requirements for bank, and move to average inflation targeting, and in general move much more aggressively.
See also Japan: since the 1990s they had a long history of fiscal stimulus and monetary tightness. When Abe came to power a few years ago, he loosened monetary policy, and the Japanese nominal GDP started to grow again.
There was hardy any useful stimulus in the US post-2008 because Obama (D) was in the Whitehouse and the GOP-controlled Congress didn't want to help him out. So it was mostly just monetary policy (Fed) that did things, and it was a long slog of pain to get unemployment down and get the economy going.
With COVID we had monetary policy (as before) but also fiscal policy (Treasury), and I think that fewer people suffered economically. Especially since the Fed can only work 'internal' to the financial system, but it takes the Treasury to get cheques-in-hands.
(Certainly the two scenarios are not directly compatible, but it seems obvious to me that fiscal can have more direct impact on regular people's lives, e.g., average savings rate increased.)